Nokia 6210 Navigator

Discontinued
11th February 2008

The follow-up to last year's Nokia 6110, the Nokia 6210 Navigator comes with an improved satellite navigation system, numerous upgraded features.. and it's better value for money too.

One of four GPS-enabled phones launched at the same time, the Nokia 6210 is the only one to be sold as a Navigator, meaning that it has been designed to act as an in-car or personal navigation device from the outset.

We will look at the technical specifications of this handset in a moment - but fundamentally, the Nokia 6210 Navigator seems to be a flawed proposition. In the past 12 months, the price of dedicated SatNav systems has dropped a lot, with the price for a basic TomTom starting at around £110 / €165. Bear in mind that the SIM free price of the 6210 Navigator in the UK will be around £235 / €350, and you can see that the Nokia is relatively expensive. And it doesn't matter how many improvements that Nokia have made to the Navigator, the simple truth is that a dedicated SatNav system will tend to have a large, touch-sensitive display where the Nokia 6210 simply does not.

So why does the 6210 exist at all? Presumably the target market is someone who wants to carry a single device, and one that can cope with phone calls, email, web access and multimedia as well as navigation. But most likely, the Nokia 6210 Navigator will appeal to someone who can get the phone for free on a contract.. in other words, this is GPS on a budget.

It is certainly a better device than the old 6110. In particular, the mapping and navigation software has been improved. With added features for people navigating on foot, turn-by-turn directions and voice guidance, the 6210 is certainly better. The 6210 is also better in many other ways - the display is larger (at 2.4"), it comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera, HSDPA high-speed data (market dependent) and an FM radio. The 6210 runs the Symbian S60 operating system, so new applications can be added on. Navigation time is up to 6 hours (with no backlight), or 4 hours (with the backlight on).

All the usual features are here too - there's an MP3 player, web browser, email client and instant messaging. It's certainly more capable overall than a standalone SatNav, but we don't think it represents much of a threat to the likes of TomTom or Garmin.

Nokia say that the 6210 Navigator should be available from the third quarter of 2008 in various GSM / WCDMA configurations depending on market.