A slight upgrade to the 6500 Classic in terms of both features and size, the 6500 Slide offers a 3.2-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, a microSD memory card slot and an FM radio.

Slightly thicker than the 6500 Classic, the Slide remains an elegantly crafted piece of industrial design. It features a brushed, stainless steel face that is very kind to scratches and fingerprints. Although it may not look as stylish as its candy bar sibling, the advantage of the Slide's larger frame lies in its controls; the keypad is well spaced out and a joy to type on, and the rest of the controls are well positioned and easy to press.

Call quality is adequate and volume levels are loud enough at their highest setting, so holding conversations with some background noise isn't an issue. The handsfree speakerphone also works well.

The 6500 Slide comes equipped with a 3.2-megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom and a dual-LED flash. A front mounted VGA camera is present for video calls. The main camera is equipped with a Carl Zeiss lens and takes respectable, but not outstanding photos. The flash works reasonably well for night-time photography, while the camera also doubles as a video recorder, with a resolution of up to 640x480 pixels.

A music player featuring a new look is included, but most features are the same. The interface is easy to use though and settings include shuffle and repeat play modes, stereo widening, preset and adjustable equaliser settings, and the ability to "skin" the player with various themes. Annoyingly, Nokia has opted for a 2.5mm headphone jack instead of the regular 3.5mm, though the inclusion of A2DP Stereo Bluetooth is a handy alternative to the included headphones.

On-board memory of 20MB is present, but a microSD slot caters for extra memory and a 256MB card is included in the sales package. Conveniently, the 6500 Slide will support microSD cards of up to 4GB in capacity, though it's slightly annoying to have to remove the rear cover to access it.

Other features include a voice recorder, push-to-talk and Java games, as well as the standard suite of PIM functions consisting of alarm, calendar, to-do list, notes, calculator, stopwatch and a countdown timer.

According to Nokia figures, battery life is rated at up to six hours talk time and 13.25 days standby time on a standard GSM network, faring slightly better than the Classic version.