Mid range mobile phones continue to role off the production line and many of them are breing produced by Nokia. In the 6111 they have released a lightweight and compact slider phone with a reasonable list of features - including a 1 megapixel camera with 6x digital zoom.
Our first impressions of the 6111 were extremely positive. Measuring just 84mm x 47mm x 23 mm, the phone really is a delight to cup in your hand and its lightweight frame means you won't even notice it in your pocket. It is quite thick though, but at this size it's not something that detracts from the overall design. Furthermore, this design features a sleek, well built silver and black plastic casing finished off with chrome highlights - a similar look to Nokia's base model in this range, the 6060. Be warned though; the finish is quite difficult to keep free of fingerprint smudges.
The 6111 uses a slider mechanism and this felt sturdy throughout testing. Many slider and flip phones on the market are extremely flimsy and don't feel like they would be able to take everyday wear and tear, so its good to see the 6111 isn't affected by this common problem. Sliding the unit up reveals a comfortable and well shaped keypad that is a perfect for messaging. Our only complaint here is that there isn't much space between the first row of keys and the bottom of the slider mechanism - which means that some may find it difficult pressing the 1, 2 and 3 keys.
The rest of the controls are located on the front of the slider - a 4-way navigational pad, two selection keys and an Answer and End call key. Nokia have kept it relatively simple with the controls and this is just the way we like it. There is nothing worse than seeing a mobile phone overcrowded and squashed with useless shortcut keys that you'll never use. Rounding out the buttons on the 6111 are Volume Up/Down keys and a dedicated camera button on the right side of the unit, and a Power Button on top of the slider.
The 6111 uses a 256K colour screen for the display, but we weren't impressed with its clarity. While the specifications do sound good enough, the screen itself isn't comparable to some other mobile displays on the market, which are far more crisp and clear than this one. Still, the 6111 display isn't bad in any sense; it's just that we would have liked to have seen an improvement in this area - especially considering the camera functions this handset offers.
Nokia has retained the successful and highly user friendly interface seen on most of their other models, but in the 6111 they have changed the messaging interface. We didn't think this needed any work and instead of seeing the whole message on the entire screen, the interface is now divided into boxes; one box for the recipient, one for the message. There's nothing really wrong with this system, but we prefer the old one and feel that this is something that shouldn't have been changed.
The 6111 includes a 1 megapixel digital camera with 6x digital zoom. Although digital zoom is for most part irrelevant (its optical zoom that's more important), in this case it works really well and the camera is capable of zooming in without significantly blurring or distorting the image. The camera includes various settings including image sizes from 160 x 120 to 1152 x 864, Night Mode, Flash, a 10-second self-timer and a Sequence setting which takes three photos with one click. We were disappointed with the quality of images we uploaded though; they were quite blurry and lacked clarity. We were also perplexed with the lack of any camera effects, as these are usually present on most camera handsets. The camera also doubles as a video recorder, with up to one hours recording possible - although with only 26MB of onboard memory, you won't be doing too much filming. Disappointingly, there is no memory expansion slot present on the 6111, which is a real let down for those who like to make full use of their handsets multimedia capabilities.
Nokia have included a rich features list with the 6111; an FM Radio, MP3 and AAC ring tones, Speakerphone, Voice Recorder, Audio Messaging, Push to Talk and support for standard SMS, MMS and email messaging (with T9 predictive text) are all present. Unfortunately you can't use your own pair of headphones with the radio (as the included headset in the package doubles as the FM antenna), but the quality isn't too bad at all. We really liked the ring tones on this handset - they are extremely loud; probably the loudest we've heard on any handset to date and this is great for those who tend to miss calls due to inadequate volume levels.
The 6111 is also packed with PIM functions; an Alarm Clock with repeat function, Calendar, To-Do List, Notes, Calculator, Countdown Timer and Stopwatch are all available. Battery life is rated at up to 3 hours and 20 minutes of talk-time and up to 12.5 days of standby time. These are average figures, although with the multimedia features the 6111 possesses we should have expected more.
