The Nokia E6 follows on from its E-Series QWERTY predecessors such as 2010's Nokia E5, providing the best E-Series camera yet, touch screen navigation and the home screen capabilities of the Symbian^3 platform.
The Nokia E6 is priced at £320, twice the price of its simpler sibling, the Nokia E5, but £80.00 cheaper than its weightier big brother, the Nokia E7.
When we compare the Nokia E6 with BlackBerry's offerings it is slightly cheaper than the non-touch BlackBerry Bold 9780, at £340.
When we compare sizes, the Nokia E6 (115mm x 59mm x 10.5mm) is slightly slimmer than the E5, while both are longer, but narrower and thinner than the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and narrower than the chunky BlackBerry Bold 9900.
If we then compare the weight, the Nokia E6 has a comforting weight of 133g, making it the heaviest of the bunch, with the Nokia E5, BlackBerry Bold 9780and BlackBerry Bold 9900 weighing 126g, 122g and 130g respectively.
This increased weight contributes to the Nokia E6's feel of robustness and high build quality, rather than making it feel unwieldy.
Another area which is often compared is the processing power of these powerful phones, with the Nokia E6 sharing its 680MHz ARM11 processor and 2D/3D graphics hardware acceleration with the Nokia E7, beating the BlackBerry Bold 9780's 624MHz processor.
The BlackBerry Bold 9900 with its 1.2GHz processor beats the Nokia E5though. But, until the Bold 9900 becomes available for testing, we can't say whether this difference is worth the likely higher price.
The E6 is the first Nokia handset to come preloaded with Symbian Anna OS upgrade, providing numerous improvements over the initial Symbian^3 firmware installed on the Nokia N8, Nokia C7, Nokia E7 and Nokia C6.
These include a faster web browser, improved text input, a split screen view during touchscreen typing, a portrait QWERTY for touchscreen typing, new icons and Ovi Maps 3.06 pre-installed.
The text improvements aren't visible on the Nokia E6, however, as all text input is achieved via the physical True-Type-esque keyboard. All of the other enhancements are present though.
Scrutiny of the OS improvements provided by Symbian Anna finds that the only real improvement on the Nokia E6 is the improved browser, as Ovi Maps can be downloaded separately for free and the new icons are available in Symbian next+ mentioned in the Interface section of this review.
The Nokia E6 is the second E-Series mobile phone to support both the True-Type-esque keyboard and a touchscreen – a combination initially debuted on the Nokia E5.
But the Nokia E6 has a lot more to offer, with the Symbian^3 firmware providing four independent home screens, which is one more than the remainder of the Symbian^3 family, with the ability to add a fifth.
It takes a while to adjust if you're either a QWERTY or full touch user, but once used to the mixed interface the phone is a dream to use, providing the best of both worlds with easy touchscreen navigation and the advantages of a physical QWERTY keyboard for text entry.
One area where the Nokia E6 disappoints compared with the rest of the Symbian^3 family is in its small 2.46-inch screen when using applications such as Ovi Maps This being said, the Nokia E6 screen has by far the highest pixel count on a Nokia device for its size, at 640 x 480 pixels.
That's much higher than other E-Series phones with similar screen sizes, and far better than the Nokia E7, which has a disappointing 360 x 640 pixels on its 4-inch screen. In comparison, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 has a 360 x 480 pixel 2.44-inch screen and BlackBerry Bold 9900 has a 640 x 480 pixel 2.8-inch display.
Additional to the touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard, the Nokia E6 sports four dedicated hard keys, three of which can be user modified.
The fourth is the home screen/main menu button, which also opens the task manager on long press. The three user modifiable buttons are defaulted to Calendar, Messaging and Contacts, with icons to match.
The two modes of operation – long and short-pressing – of the buttons can be reassigned to any item in the shortcuts list used by the Shortcut home screen widget. Calendar, Messaging and Contacts each have two modes – open application and create new - which is excellent for users wanting to make the experience their own.
As well as these, there are the standard Options, Home screen switcher and Main menu buttons along the bottom of the home screen.
The home screens have two sections with three small, fixed widgets to the left: Clock for the date, Profile and Notifications for received calls, messages and emails.
To the right is the user configurable space, with a maximum of three widgets per home screen allowed here. Preinstalled options include News, Mail and Media offerings, or app links that users select themselves.
Transition between screens is fast, and the user interface is familiar for any existing Nokia owners, but may of course take some getting used to for others.
The new Symbian Anna icons are fresh and clean, but are also available on non-Anna Symbian^3 handsets by buying any of the Symbian Next+ themes by NovaG from the Ovi Store.
One of our favourite minor yet very welcome improvements introduced by Symbian Anna is that Main menu organisation can now be accessed by long pressing any application icon, instead of having to select Options and organise.
The Home screen and Main menu are easily modifiable through the above widgets and the user-configurable folder functionality provided on all Nokia handsets.
However, this is still clunky - you have to move icons up and down through the menu levels using the options list, and app icons can only be arranged in groups of four in a certain widget. Nokia has shown it can do much better on the N9, so we can't wait for it to use the same thing on Symbian devices as the current method feels very outdated.
Another issue is the opening of applications - the E6 sometimes decided to leave us staring at the spinning icon for loading on a few occasions, which doesn't give the impression of a high-end speedy smartphone - especially when you compare it to the hyper-quick dual-core brigade.
The Nokia E6 is enhanced by the contacts and calling functionality provided by the Symbian^3 operating system. The Contacts app saves a friend's name, address (which gets linked to, and shows up on, Ovi Maps), phone numbers, Facebook and Twitter profiles (via a Social app add-in), Ovi Chat, Google Talk, Yahoo Chat, MSN and ICQ usernames (which get linked to Chat, if you install and set it up).
Within the Contacts app, two additional tabs provide contact grouping and integration with Microsoft Communicator mobile. The Communicator tab automatically sets up a contact's details once the connection has been made between the phone and the relevant Microsoft Office communications server, which can be located behind a corporate firewall.
One disappointment on the Nokia E6 is that IM usernames entered in the Contacts app don't pull through to Ovi Chat, and vice versa. The Chat app also doesn't remember user details when setting up or changing services, requiring you to enter username and password details for all IM services separately. It seems disjointed that this information isn't added to the global Nokia/Ovi username system.
Contacts can be accessed through the Contacts app or on the home screen by typing a phone number, contact's name or company name, which will show an updating list of contacts with that number/letter combination in their details.
A third way of bringing up contact details is via the Search home screen widget, although this doesn't give results until after you've entered your search query and selected My Content. The speed on this was also surprisingly slow.
You can also use the integrated voice dialling and voice command system to speak to contacts, which works out of the box thanks to Nokia's voice recognition algorithms.
Once you have decided which method of making the call you prefer, we finally get to the call itself.
When it comes to messaging, the Nokia E6 excels, benefiting from the Messaging, Mail, Social, Chat and Communicator apps provided on Symbian^3 and accessed through the Contacts screen.
With the physical QWERTY keyboard the Nokia E6 is a dream when it comes to text entry. The Messaging app is a standard text message app, with inbox and conversation views.
The Mail app supports Ovi Mail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, Mail for Exchange, BT Internet and Virgin Media. Our main disappointment is the lack of a universal inbox as provided on the iPhone 4 and even on the Vodafone 360, released back in 2009.
This just seems to be a logical progression which should have happened a long time ago on Nokia phones.
Instead of integrating social media with other messages, as seen on rival phones, Facebook and Twitter are accessed through the Social app, which shows separate and combined timeline views.
Instant messaging is available through the Chat app, which supports Ovi Chat, Yahoo Chat, Google Talk, MSN and ICQ. This doesn't come pre-installed, which is disappointing, but can be downloaded from the Ovi Store.
Communicator is a corporate IM app that links to a Microsoft Office communication server through an enterprise firewall.
With the introduction of Symbian Anna, the Nokia E6 has the fastest, most powerful web browser provided yet on a Nokia handset. With a 1.5MB Wi-Fi connection, TechRadar.com loads completely in 20 seconds, with initial display in 5 seconds, compared to 30 seconds and 10 seconds on the Nokia N8.
A new introduction on the Nokia E6 is an Intranet app for protected access to corporate websites completely separate to the normal web browser, further aligning the Nokia E6 for business use.
The new browser automatically cleans up after itself too – not requiring the user to manually select to clear privacy history, like on previous phones – which is another welcome improvement.
The 8MP camera is an area in which the Nokia E6 excels when compared with the 5MP offering from the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and BlackBerry Bold 9900. In addition to this, neither of the BlackBerry offerings incorporate a front camera or video call functionality.
The Nokia E6 camera provides 2x digital zoom, 28mm focal zoom, an f-stop/aperture of f/2.4 and resolution up to 3264 x 2448.
Camera functionality on the Nokia E6 is slightly less than that of its more expensive relative the E7, and substantially less than the N8, which is known as a good camera phone.
Whereas some phones, such as the Apple iPhone 4, provide an onscreen tap-to-focus function, the Nokia E6 relies on fixed autofocus via an onscreen shutter button.
Scene modes on the Nokia E6 are the same as those on the Nokia C7 and Nokia C6, including Portrait mode with face recognition, Landscape, User defined mode for custom settings and Automatic.
PORTRAIT: Face recognition works well in portrait mode
MINIMUM: This was taken in Landscape mode with the minimum zoom. Colours are fairly good and the image is clear
MAXIMUM: The maximum zoom in landscape mode goes in close and retains good colour
NIGHT FLASHER: Night Mode with flash produces a reasonably well-lit image
DEEP DARK NIGHT: Night Mode without flash shows next to nothing
AUTO: Night Portrait with auto flash produces a very similar picture to the manual flash
One of the biggest indicators that the Nokia E6 is aimed directly at the business market is the removal of a physical Camera button and its replacement with a Dictaphone/Voice Command button.
Once your images are captured, the Nokia C6 has a picture editing app pre-loaded, capable of fairly extensive editing including rotating, resizing, cropping, colour, sharpness and brightness adjustments and red eye removal.
It also offers the opportunity to add clipart, speech bubbles, stamps and "funny effects", which most business users will obviously find...essential
The Nokia E6 supports up to 1280 x 720p resolution videos at 25fps with 3x digital zoom. As with its camera, this exceeds the capabilities of the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and BlackBerry Bold 9900 with their 5MP cameras. One nice feature in video mode is that the LED flash can be turned permanently on, to light the subject in low light scenarios.
Although there are no scene modes, the video flash modes on the Nokia E6 are shared with the C7 and C6. These are Low light, Night and Automatic.
Once your video is recorded, the Nokia E6 also has a preloaded video editing app capable of cropping and joining video and adding captured images to your video clips.
The Nokia E6 includes all of the media functionality available on other Symbian^3 devices other than the removal of the FM transmitter available on the Nokia N8.
The means that the user is presented with an FM radio and a Music player supporting AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, MP3, MIDI, MIDI Tones (poly 64), SP-MIDI, WMA EFR, FR, Mobile XMF, True tones and WAV audio formats.
In comparison, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and BlackBerry Bold 9900 only support AMR-NB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, MP3, MIDI and WMA audio formats, although this is enough for most people - so isn't going to make a difference to Nokia's target business audience.
A Nokia YouTube app acts as a web shortcut to the site. This has disappointed us, as there's an official YouTube app available that provides a much improved interface than the mobile website.
When it comes to video, the Video Player supports 3GPP formats (H.263), Flash, H.264/AVC, WMV 9, MPEG-4, RealVideo 10, Sorenson Spark, VC-1 and VP6 video formats at a frame rate of 30fps.
The high resolution screen means that image quality is excellent, with the only drawback being the limited size of the screen.
This is where larger touchscreen devices such as the Nokia E7, HTCSensation, iPhone 4 and many others win out, as the Nokia E6 screen is far too small to watch videos for any substantial period of time.
Another important factor when it comes to media is the amount of memory in the Nokia E6. It has 350MB of internal memory and 8GB of internal mass memory, with an external card slot enabling you to add a further 32GB of memory.
With a spec like this, the Nokia C6 beats both the BlackBerry Bold 9780 – which has 512 MB internal memory and up to 32GB via an external card – and the BlackBerry Bold 9900 – which has 8GB internal and up to 32GB via an external card - which means it's better for downloading more applications to the phone, although still not excellent.
Source: TechRador
0 Reactions to this post
Add CommentPost a Comment