Nokia 6650 clamshell phone

We're not sure how much all of this is necessary, but being able to control music playback without having the flick open the phone is a big plus. The downside is that you have to open the phone if you want to access any other application.

Underneath the hood is a surprisingly high capacity 1500mAh battery, which Nokia claims yields up to six hours' talk time and 350 hours on stand-by, and in real conditions we found that's largely what you get. Annoyingly, you can't charge through the USB lead – but even more annoying is the position of the charger connector, which is on the lower right-hand side and makes using the phone while it's charging almost an impossibility.

HSDPA 3G support and Bluetooth 2.0

From a technical standpoint, the 6650 has 3.6Mb/s HSDPA 3G support, which is fine for mobile broadband, and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP wireless stereo. There's a minute 30MB of internal memory, but a 1GB Micro SD card is provided in the box.

The 6650 also has GPS built in, which is very surprising on a unit of this size and low price. Nokia Maps is installed as standard, but you'll probably want to install Google Maps instead, which is freely available and handy for walking around big-city streets.

The Symbian software is not traumatic to use – although finding things is often a struggle, being incredibly nested and not entirely black and white over what option is considered a tool and what's considered an application. It is, however, responsive and anyone used to T9 won't have a problem sending text messages or email.

Verdict

This is a light phone with most of the features you expect to see on any S60-based device but at a very basic price. The lack of a standard headphone jack is a pain, but not a unique one - and the 6650 does good job of converging a mobile phone and media player on a budget.