I'm sure that you have spotted the commercial for Nokia's latest midrange ‘candybar' handset, the 6500 classic where thousands of commuters converge on a lost & found desk eager to take a look at this highly desirable product.

This commercial plays into one of the key aspects of the 6500 classic – looks. With a 9.5mm thick body and aluminium casing, the design and feel of the handset is stunning. Believe me, once you hold it in your hands, you won't want to put it down willingly.

In making the 6500 classic such a thin handset, of course a few sacrifices have had to be made to accommodate the ‘less is more' approach. This manifests itself in the removal of the traditional power key located at the top above the screen, which would also enable quick-switching of profiles, and the lack of a volume key on either side. Speaker volume on calls is now controlled by using the ‘up key on the centre d-pad, and the power key is now the ‘end call' button.

This is a slightly risky move as it takes away some of the ease-of-use, which is commonly thought of as one of Nokia's strongest points, but as the thing looks so darn good, it's by no means a mistake, just takes some getting used to if your used to standard models such as the 6300 on which the 6500 Classic is loosely based on.

For such a small unit, the handset feels solid and could quite easily cope with the normal bumps and scrapes of normal usage, but don't go expecting it to be bullet proof. When it looks as good as this, it's likely you'll be treating it like one of the family.

In terms of features, the 6500 Classic packs in a 2-Megapixel camera, Bluetooth v1.2, 3G support (though not the ability to make video calls), Micro USB port, 1GB of built-in memory as no SD memory slot is included and a 16M colour QVGA display. With the trend for slim phones showing no signs of dying down, this is quite an impressive achievement.

Directly underneath the impressive screen, there's the usual start & end call buttons, the 2 soft keys and a nicely proportioned d-pad with confirm key located in the centre. In addition to this you have the standard keypad located where you would expect it and with a light horizontal curve, this makes it a pleasant experiencing in normal use, though in my opinion, a little more elevation would have been welcome.

In addition to the usual applications, the 6500 Classic comes with the Opera-Mini browser available as a viable alternate to the standard web browser.

Though the 6500 Classic will not convert consumers previously wary of Nokia's in general, if you're searching for a good-looking, mid-range handset this would be a very good option, particularly if you get it for free on contract.