Ok, well my contact with Orange was up for renewal this month, and I had my heart set on the Samsung Tocco Ultra, but I then found out I had to pay £100 for it, and seeing as I tend to break phones quite easily, I thought better of spending that much money on a phone when I am paying £30 a month for my contract!!! So after much looking I found this phone, I don't like touch screens as I cannot type in text mode on them, and as thats what I use my mobile phone for the most. And this phone was the only one which fitted the bill which I wouldn't have to pay a fortune for!!

I wasn't too happy about having to have it, but it was better than the one I had which was an old Samsung c300 which had no camera and was just a fill in phone because my Motorola had died a couple of months back! So I tried to cheer myself up by reading some reviews about it which to be honest weren't much good, they said the phone was ok, but that it didnt have many apps on it, and that its charge wasn't good and that alot of people had had problems with it over the last 12 months. This did nothing to cheer me up, and I was even considering changing my contract so I could get a different phone.

But it was too late and I decided to give it a go. It arrived, and when I opened it I was pleasently surprised by the look of the phone, its small and all black (you can get it in silver as the pic shows), which makes the phone look lovely and stylish, the screen is really nice and big too which is something I love on a phone, nothing worse than a tiny screen espeically when your looking at pictures!!!

On the front of the phone are 4 simple buttons, two navigation buttons and two call buttons (answer and hang up) as well as the middle been a third navigation key. When you slide the phone up, you uncover the usual collection of number keys as on any phone, so its a nice and simple phone to type on!

When you turn the phone on, you have a simple screen which you can edit to contain your own photograph or you can chose from the limited screensaver pictures which are already on the phone, or if you wish, you can download wallpapers from your Network provider.
Displayed on the screen is the date and time and three navigation keys. Menu, Names and Go To (this is a short menu where you can change the profile of the phone, turn on Bluetooth, lock the phone, put the phone on silent). You can press the corresponding button to go to that part of the menu.

The main menu contains 12 menu headings: Downloads, Address Book, Media Album, Music Store, messaging, Orange (if your phone isn't with orange this will differ), Settings, Call History, Media Apps, Organiser, Applications, Orange Plus (Again if your not with Orange this will differ).

The phone has a 3.2 Carol Zeiss camera, which is pretty good, I'm one of those people who thinks WHYYY do you need a brilliant camera on your phone if you have a digital camera?! But I am also someone who likes to have a camera on their phone, simply because I don't like to take my camera out to some places with me (if I'm going out drinking for example!) as I lose everything lol! And when I had a phone with no camera, it drove me mad if I saw something cute or funny and just wanted a quick snap and didn't have time to get my camera out or run upstairs to get it. And for this purpose the camera on this phone is good :)

Other than that, there aren't really many more "features" on the phone, which is what I like about it, I don't like confusing phones which have hundreds of buttons for one thing or another, I don't use the internet on my phone, I don't really do much with it apart from texting and calling.

The phone has a few games already on the phone: Snake III, Backgammon, RallySport; but if you want more, you can buy more from your network (these are around £3-£5 depending on the age of the game!).

You can customise your phone by using your own pictures as wallapapers, screensavers and contact pictures, by changing your ring tones (you can upload your own mucic to the phone for this purpose).

The phone comes with a memory card which means that you can store quite alot of pictures/videos and music. It also means that your not constantly been told by your phone to empty your message inbox, this annoys me, as I text my husband all night while he's in work, I tend to rack up an inbox of around 200 messages is not more a night and my old phone could only hold 100 messages at most, and that was only if there was nothing else on the phone, so I was told to empty my inbox around 3 times a night!

The phone is very good looking, its nice and easy to handle, although it feels a little heavy, but I like that in a phone, for one I knows its built nice and sturdy and won't break after 5 minutes (The Samsung u600 is the opposite to this is sooo light, it feels like its made of paper thin plastic that will fall apart if you even put it down a little too hard). It also means that when I have it in my pocket I can feel its there, so I know if its fallen out...for someone like me this is essential! Lol.

Its very good looking though too, unlike some phones these days which feel they have to be a stupid shape and design, this is just a plain slide phone, as its all in black it looks smart meaning its great for anyone.

I definitely recommend this phone to anyone, I haven't had any issues with it as of yet, though I have only had it for a few days...! The charge seems to be good, it only took half an hour to fully charge from empty the first time I charged it, and once fully charged it lasted me 24 hours (as I am using my phone constantly this is good, seeing as most of my other phones I have had have needed charging twice a day with my usage!

Ok now here for the boring bit...

TECHNICAL DETAILS:
General 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network UMTS 850 / 2100
Announced 2007, May
Status Available. Released 2007, September
Size Dimensions 96.5 x 46.5 x 16.4 mm
Weight 125 g
Display Type TFT, 16M colors
Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches
Sound Alert types Vibration; Downloadable polyphonic, MP3 ringtones
Speakerphone Yes
Memory Phonebook 2000 entries, Photocall
Call records 20 dialed, 20 received, 20 missed calls
Internal 20 MB
Card slot microSD (TransFlash), up to 8GB
Data GPRS Class 11, 53.6 kbps
HSCSD Yes
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G Yes, 384 kbps
WLAN No
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port No
USB Yes, microUSB
Camera Primary 3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash
Video Yes, VGA@15fps
Secondary QCIF videocall camera
Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML (Opera mini)
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS; Visual radio
Games High Roller Casino, Golf Tour, Rally 3D, Snake 3* + downloadable
Colors Steel, Black
GPS No
Java Yes, MIDP 2.0
- Stainless steel case
- Push to talk
- MP3/AAC/AAC+ player
- T9
- Organizer
- TV-out
- Voice memo
Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion (BP-5M)
Stand-by Up to 310 h
Talk time Up to 6 h

(above specs taken from http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_6500_slide-1996.php the rest of the review is all my own work)

All in all the phone is great :) I will write back on here if I have any problems with it at all, but up until now, all is good! :-D