Difference Between Nokia C5-03 and Nokia C6-01

Nokia C5-03 and Nokia C6-01 are two good phones, though, not smart enough to compete with the cutting edge smartphones featured in the world nowadays. But against each other, it’s a different case. We can see Nokia C5 giving a good competition to Nokia C6 in all aspects. Let us explore them individually to figure out the difference between the two phones.

Nokia C5-03

Nokia C5-03, which we will call as Nokia C5 throughout this comparison, is one of the last phones to run on Nokia Symbian OS v9.4 Series 60. It has been well optimized to use the scarce resources of the handset, as Symbian OS v9.4 was at the maturity back in the days when this handset was released. Nokia is fond of featuring cutting edge phones, and this is actually one of them. It comes in flavors of Graphite Black, Lime Green, Petrol Blue, Aluminum Grey and Pink. The various color combinations a phone is offered with has always been Nokia’s enthusiasm. These two phones are almost similar in size with very little differences in the dimension. Nokia C5 is on the thicker region of the spectrum, scoring a 13.8mm thickness, but has a pleasing grip with its curved smooth edges. It is 93g of weight, which is on the lighter side of the spectrum.

Nokia C5 comes with a 3.2 inches TFT Resistive touchscreen with 16M colors featuring a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels and a pixel density of 229ppi. While the resolution and the pixel density are fair, the resistive touchscreen is a deal killer. Compared to the responsiveness of the Capacitive touchscreen, Resistive touchscreens are just not responsive enough, which degrades the user experience. It would have been really great if Nokia included a Capacitive touchscreen instead of a Resistive one for this economical handset. The fact that it comes with accelerometer sensor and handwriting recognition isn’t likely to compensate that setback. It is commendable that Nokia has ported C5 with a 600MHz ARM 11 processor with 128MB RAM. It may seem low end right now, but the handset was released in December 2010 and at that time, this was a mid-range processor that could handle decent amount of work efficiently. It comes with HSDPA connectivity with 10.2Mbps of speed which is fairly good. It also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g for constant connectivity.

Nokia has included a decent 5MP camera in C5. It comes with autofocus and Geo tagging with Assisted GPS. It can also capture videos in VGA resolution @ 15 frames a second which is pretty low grade even for the time of release. To the disappointment of the video chatters, Nokia C5 doesn’t come with a front camera. It has negligible internal storage but can be expanded up to 16GB with the use of microSD card. It also comes with Nokia’s standard features like Nokia Maps, photo editor etc. The 1000 mAh battery in C5 promises a talk time of 11 hours and 30 mins, which is really good, and a primary need of a phone.

Nokia C6-01

Nokia C6 is yet another Symbian phone but has a better Symbian OS than C5. Nokia C6 runs with Symbian v3 OS, and is upgradable to Symbian Anna OS, which is a feature rich OS that is comparatively better than earlier versions and can compete against the smartphone OS giants. The 680 MHz ARM 11 processor along with 256MB of RAM gives a decent performance boost to C6. As I’ve mentioned earlier, these phones were released almost a year back and in the case of Nokia C6, which was released in November 2010, it’s more than a year. At that time, this was a good mid-range handset everyone enjoyed.

Nokia C6 comes with a 3.2 Inches AMOLED Capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors and a pixel density of 229ppi. It also has a resolution of 360 x 640. As opposed to the configuration of C5, the AMOLED Capacitive touchscreen itself gives the buyer a differentiating factor for the user experience with it would be rather higher than the one with Resistive touchscreen. C6 only comes in two flavors, Silver Grey and Black. I has somewhat wedged edge to the bottom but feels comfortable in your hands. It is also on the thicker spectrum having a thickness of 13.9mm. To add that, it is also on the heftier side of the phone spectrum, scoring a weight of 131g, which really won’t please the users. It has Gorilla Glass display, which is scratch resistant and comes with accelerometer sensor, proximity sensor and a compass.

The C6 has 1GB of internal memory and the user can expand it up to 32GB with the use of a microSD card. This comes in real handy when the user wants to take an endless stream of photos and videos with the built in camera. It is 8MP camera with fixed focus and dual LED flash with face detection. It can also capture 720p videos @ 25 frames per second, which is better than C5. It also has Geo-tagging with Assisted GPS. To the delight of the video callers, Nokia has included a secondary camera bundled with Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP for ease of use. C6 comes with the same connectivity options as C5, which is HSDPA 10.2Mbps, and that really is a decent speed. If that’s any comfort, most of the time most of the phones won’t even score this much of speeds, even though they can support up to that point, because of the congestions in network infrastructure.

The battery in the Nokia C6 is slightly more powerful than C5, which is 1050 mAh, and it promises a talk time of 11 hours and 30 mins. As I’ve mentioned before, for a touchscreen phone, this is a pretty good score.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a decent enough phones, to get a good user experience, and is a loyal Nokia customer, C6 may be a good choice for you since it gives pretty good performance with the processor and the optimized Symbian Anna OS upgrade. Even in that context, Nokia C5 will not be an alternative since it has the last Symbian version, and it doesn’t come with a Capacitive touchscreen for better usability. That been said, if you’re a user who is looking for a Nokia phone that can perform decently and comes with a relatively low price tag, Nokia C5-03 would be the ideal investment for you.

However, they are more or less outdated in the fast growing technology field since Mobile phone manufacturers add new features to their handsets every day. Therefore, if you are looking for a cutting edge phone with most of the new features, you can forget these two phones.