LAST Friday, Nokia unveiled to reporters in Cebu its latest music-centered device, the Nokia X6. The phone is a sleek touch screen unit that’s slimmer than its predecessors in the XpressMusic series. It also eschews the rounded edges of almost all Nokia devices with its sharp corners.

As befitting a music phone, the X6 comes with a relatively large memory—16 gigabytes, which is enough to store about 5,500 songs. The models sold in other counties come with a whopping 32gb on board memory.

"The Manny Pacquiao Blog". Click here for stories and updates on the Filipino boxing champ.

Nikka Abes, corporate communications manager for Nokia-Philippines, said that when you purchase the device, you will get a voucher to download 500 free songs from the Nokia Independent Artists Club (IAC). Among the artists in the IAC are unsigned bands from Cebu.

The X6 is a powerful and sleek music phone. It’s relatively lightweight for its size and features. It has the gamut of connectivity options we now expect from a phone: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and high-speed mobile broadband Internet.

GAMES. The X6 comes pre-installed with three games: Spore, DJ Mix tour and Asphalt 4. The phone also has five-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

The X6 also has assisted global positioning system, which is really cool when paired with Nokia’s Ovi Maps. If the phone’s large screen isn’t enough for you, you can connect the unit to your television set with the standard 3.5mm audio/video connector. The use of standard connectors is one thing that makes Nokia stand out.

Companies like Sony Ericsson insist on using proprietary connectors that limit the choice of consumers. These proprietary connectors, at least in Sony Ericsson’s case, wear out easily and in about a year, the phone user has to deal with intermittent connection.

With Nokia, you won’t have that problem. That’s one of the main reason why, after years of using Soy Ericsson phones, I decided to transfer to Nokia.

SERVICES. But one of the best features of the device doesn’t come in the box---it’s found online. The X6, as with all new Nokia devices, comes with Ovi, a suite of services for e-mail, files, maps and application downloads.

Ovi is a really great suite of services although its application store isn’t as well-stocked as, say, the iPhone App Store. I’m very dependent on Ovi’s Calendar to manage my schedule and Contacts to manage and back up my phone book. I am heavily dependent on Nokia Messaging for push e-mail.

When you get a Nokia device, I highly recommend that you use the Ovi suite of services. The X6 also offers easy access to social networking sites like Facebook. Abes said the X6 is already available in some stores.