Labs

The 6500 Slide is the most expensive phone in the group, but it also feels the best made. Its metal front and rear and strongly sprung keyboard slide give an impression of high quality.

The 6500's display has a 240x320 resolution. It's bright, with clear text, but the font and interface aren't as attractive as those of Sony Ericsson's

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K800i and W880i. The 6500's applications rival those of the Sony Ericsson handsets. There's an organiser, a to-do list, a notes application, stopwatch and countdown timer programs. The phone comes with a USB cable and Nokia's PC Suite software, which makes it simple to synchronise your contacts and calendar with Outlook or Outlook Express.

The 6500 has an excellent 3.2-megapixel camera. Daytime shots are as good as the Sony Ericsson K800i's, and the 6500's painfully bright LED makes night shots possible, if not as clear as on the K800i. The 6500 comes with a 256MB memory card and has a powerful music player, which lets you sort your music by artist, album and genre. The supplied headphones are poor, though, and you can't connect your own.

Nokia's 6500 feels as if it would last forever, but it's too expensive compared with the equally capable Sony Ericsson K800i and W880i and Samsung's D900i to recommend.