Sindre Lia has taken Nokia's 6510 for a spin; a phone for business users that picks up GPRS and HSCSD from the Nokia 6310 and FM radio from the 8310 - giving it an 'ok' stamp.
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The first thing that happens when you're opening the box containing the 6510 is that its manual along with a few other papers drop right to the floor. You see, some clever guy with Nokia has obviously found out that such things are best contained under the cardboard inside the box, without anything to keep it in place. Fortunately, Nokia's quality assurance department must have picked up on this, since more recent models launched come in boxes of the good old kind. Inside the box, along with the 6510, we also dug up a handsfree set (which in reality has to be purchased separately).
The Nokia 6510 supports GSM 900/1800 MHz, measures 97 x 43 x 20 mm and weighs in at 84 gram - in other words, we're talking about a relatively short and narrow phone with a numeric keypad so small it's on the verge on being too small for my fingers. The biggest problem I've experienced with the keypad regards the up/down navigational button, where I've often found myself pressing the middle of the button which leads to moving nowhere in menus. This is reasonably annoying if you want to move around in the menus quickly and hassle-free, and I'd also believe that people with larger fingers than mine will face problems in using the keypad in general.
As previously mentioned, a handsfree set was bundled with our test kit, but Joe Bloe has to purchase this separately. The reason we were provided with the handsfree set was to test the built-in FM radio, which compared with the FM radio in the 8310 is far better in terms of reception. However, since the 6510 is mainly targeted at business users that need GPRS and HSCSD in a package that's as small as possible, the radio provides more of a 'tin can' audio picture and thus shouldn't be considered the ultimate boombox.
 | | The display of the 6510 is of standard size, and has this time around been treated with a blue backlight - as has the numeric keypad |
Since the Nokia 6510 is equipped with GPRS (3+1), it's also been fitted with time and data counters for GPRS under the Call Log menu entry. Here, users can see how many bytes have been sent and received in the last session, as well as a total overview. New is also the Wallet feature of the phone, which is found under the Extras submenu. The Wallet provides a password protected database to store among other things credit card info and other personal information the user would like to stay secure. With a SIM card that supports the Wireless Identity Module (WIM) standard, the option of conducting m-transcations through a digital signature is also present to further enhance security.
The voice quality of the 6510 is above average for Nokia phones, and voice commands can also be used without too much of a hassle. For its small size, the listed battery capacity is quite good - up to 14 days of standby time, 4 hours of talk time and 20 hours of listening to the radio. However, it soon becomes apparent that the listed battery capacity isn't quite up to par should your consumption of data services be above average. So, if battery capacity is a major concern and a good range of connectivity options than the size of the phone, the Nokia 6310 would be a far better choice. The latter model also supports Bluetooth, which the 6510 doesn't, and has in addition larger battery capacity with up to 5.5 hours of talk time and 18 days of standby time. The actual battery capacity of the Nokia 6310 also stands out as vastly better in comparison to all Nokia phones we've tested over quite some time.
Otherwise, the Nokia 6510 has a spacious amount of memory shared by messages and the calendar - important SMS messages can be transferred directly to the calendar and assigned alarms to. A total of 150 SMS messages and between 100 and 500 notes in the calendar can be stored, depending on the total memory consumption. The problem that arises when storing a large amount information is as in other places the need for a certain structure and search options for more than the phone book. None of these features are available in Nokia's operating system, and as time goes by one will increasingly find that more and more time is spent searching for information unless the functionality in the operating system is enhanced as the memory capacity grows.
The Nokia 6510 is available for approximately 350-400 EUR without a subscription in most European countries.
Conclusion
Briefly put, the Nokia 6510 offers some functionality from the 6310 and some functionality from the 8310 - Nokia's strategy concerning having a phone for absolutely every occasion or taste is emphasized by a product like this. The phone does however lack Bluetooth, and it's long past due for Nokia to get a grip and launch an enhanced version of its operating system for this kind of product.
- What's positive: GPRS and HSCSD
- What's negative: Lack of Bluetooth and constricting OS
Overall: 
Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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