Nokia 6500 Slide Review

The Nokia 6500 Slide is a slide design 3G phone with an excellent 3.2 megapixel camera and a large hi-res LCD display. It offers video calling, and MP3 player, an FM radio, expandable memory and Bluetooth. On the negative side it's heavier than average and its battery life could be better. Also, be aware that quite a few of our users are finding that their phones arrive with faults and have to be be replaced. Available in silver or black.
Best buy: *Free* with half-price line rental from Dialaphone (Silver) or Black or direct from Three (Black) or Three (Silver); or on Pay as you Go for £119.99 from Three (Black).

The Nokia 6500 Slide is ... wait for it ... a slide design version of the Nokia 6500 Classic. Or is it? You'd think that two phones that have the same model number and are so similar in appearance would have the same features, but no, the guys at Nokia clearly thought that would be too boring.

"Hey Aleksi! Why not release two phones with the same name but make them completely different inside?" ... "Cool idea Joonas! Let's put a nice 3.2 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus inside the 6500 Slide and a rubbish 2 megapixel one inside the 6500 Classic." ... "Niko thinks the Slide should have a bigger screen - that's what those Samsung boys do with their slide phones." ... "Roosa has a great idea - let's make them both 3G but only allow video calls using the Slide (hey, hey)"... "Arttu thinks that the Slide should have a memory card expandable to 4 Gbytes, but we won't put a memory card slot in the Classic at all!" ... "and why not put an FM radio into the Slide too, Kristiina? But not in the Classic!" ... "Oh and one more thing, Matias - because we left all the good bits out of the Classic we can make it ultrathin, but keep the Slide big and heavy!"

"So, run this past me one more time, Johanna. We make two phones with the same name. One is a Slide and one is a Classic. We put all the best features into the Slide, but we make the Classic really thin and better looking. And we sell them both for the same price! Our customers are gonna love this idea. How they will laugh at our wacky Finnish sense of humour! Those boring Swedish squares at Sony Ericsson will be so jealous!"