Nokia E6 Review

Introduction:

When we open our Nokia E6 package and gaze upon the high grade industrial design, we feel bittersweet. The device looks great, feels great in the hand and seems to check all the boxes, but leaves us with a waning trepidation when it comes to the operating system. We already know that the combination of Symbian Anna and the X7 is lacking, so why should the experience be any better on the E6?

Well, the E6 actually represents a totally different idea. With its QWERTY keyboard, smaller, but sharper screen, as well as classical Nokia business series form-factor, the handset might just provoke some nostalgic feelings amongst its targeted audience, and ultimately, end up in the pockets of a good number of people. The question is, does it offer enough to make us recommend it over the slew of other QWERTYs on the market?

Design:

As far as styling goes, the Nokia E6 is one slick contender. Marrying sharp, clean lines and classic Nokia styling with a distinguished look and feel, Nokia's forte in terms of delivering great hardware comes to light in this phone. With some weight behind it, the Nokia E6 feels solid and durable, but may not be for everyone.



You can compare the Nokia E6 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The screen is without a doubt a highpoint of the handset. Delivering 2.5 inches of capacitive display with VGA resolution, it's one of the most tightly packed pixel bearers around, making for super sharp viewing. Quality videos looks fantastic on this handset, with great colour and contrast levels, as well as very good viewing angles that only add to the positive impressions.


The QWERTY form factor is a tried and tested format for Nokia and with us generally liking the design of the E5, the E6 builds upon and refines it. Below the gorgeous screen are call and end buttons, a five way d-pad and four shortcuts to home, calendar, messaging and contacts. Venture down further to get to the four tiered QWERTY keyboard, with each key individual and curvaceously raised. The volume buttons are to the right along with the lock slider and the microUSB port sits to the left. At the base is the proprietary charging port while up top is the power button, 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot. On the reverse of the Nokia E6 is the 8MP camera, dual LED flash and loudspeaker.



As you can probably tell, we really do appreciate the great attention to detail Nokia handsets tend to demonstrate in terms of build and the E6 is no exception.

The QWERTY keyboard is performing very well indeed with easily identifiable keys, good amounts of click feedback and intuitive key placement (despite our unit containing international characters). Despite good overall performance, the E6 is slightly narrow and so is the keyboard, therefore may be a little cramped for larger hands.

Interface:

The Nokia E6 runs Symbian Anna, the latest version of the OS. With an element of visual evolution over the generations, Symbian Anna adds some curved corners to icons, improves transitions and makes the device look more 2011 than its predecessor, the E5, which ran Symbian S60 v3. You can check out a full run down of the features found in Symbian Anna in our article on the subject. For now though, we'll be brief, highlighting the key interface elements.

The adoption of a touch screen makes interacting with the handset much more intuitive than with the E5, offering easy adding and changing of widgets as well as swiping between homescreens in the same way as found in Symbian^3. The traditional Symbian^3 interface has been given an overhaul in Anna, incorporating a brand new set of icons and improved browser. Under the hood, the Nokia E6 runs on a 680 MHz processor, enough to keep it ticking along, though with occasional stutters, you can definitely notice that lag affects the overall performance.


The contacts and messaging applications remain similar to those in previous editions of Symbian.

Despite cosmetic tweaks and a few noticeable performance improvements though, Symbian Anna is still a multi-tiered, process laden mission. The menus and notifications are convoluted, the widgets and homescreen shortcuts lack customizability and even the aesthetic feels tired despite the visual revamp. With suggestions circulating round the blogoshpere that the next iteration of Symbian will be bringing something markedly different to the table, unfortunately, until then, the OS remains a somewhat uncompetitive contender in a marketplace of rich operating systems.

Camera and Multimedia:

The Nokia E6 comes with an 8-megapixel fixed-focus camera with dual-LED flash. You can access it through the applications folder or through a shortcut on your homescreen. As with the X7, it is extremely fast, however the reason for this speed lies in the camera's biggest drawback, the lack of auto-focus. This therefore means no macro shots, with anything closer than 20 inches appearing blurry.


Overall, we find the quality of the image stills on the Nokia E6 to be average - decently detailed and moderately sharpened, but colors seem washed out and in most (if not all) we ended up with under-contrasted images. When it comes to the camera interface, you're treated with plenty of options including scene modes, face detection, self-timer and color tones. You can even set the white balance and ISO light sensitivity, as well as the contrast and sharpness of pictures. There is a 2X digital zoom on board as well as a front facing camera.


The 680MHz processor allows recordings of up to 720p HD videos running at 25fps. The sample footage we recorded had the same issues with washed out colors as in the stills, but it's the skipped frames that bothered us more. Switching to the video recorder, you end up with a similar alas shorter set of options, but it's the quality of the footage that matters the most. If you don't set the bar too high, the Nokia E6 offers average video quality at best.

Nokia E6 Sample Video:



Despite not being marketed as a multimedia phone as such, the Nokia E6 contains the same image and video editing tools found on the X7 and N8. For stills, you can crop, rotate, add frames, text and some basic effects, while for videos you can stack up a couple of clips and add transitions and music.


The music application hasn't changed much in Symbian Anna, and along with standard file support, the handset also comes with Stereo FM radio with RDS.

The built-in movie application plays back MPEG-4 and DivX/Xvid encoded files out of the box, so despite the screen size being less than ideal for movies, with its great resolution, the quality and experience is very good indeed. We managed to run files encoded at up to 720p smoothly. Combined with its support for microSD cards of up to 32GB, for short movies and episodes, The Nokia E6 delivers a surprisingly capable offering.

Internet and Connectivity:

Browsing in Symbian was not the prettiest of experiences mostly because of the dated and cluttered browser itself. The Anna update changes that with a reworked Browser 7.3 with support for Flash Lite, HTML5 and hardware acceleration, as well as an improved, clean user interface. The experience can be choppy, especially when pages are loading, but is still tangibly improved. Multi-touch worked well, while double tap was on the slow side.

In terms of the user interface, you only have the small back and settings buttons on the left and right side at the bottom. This frees up the screen for viewing, while at the same time tapping on the settings button brings up the numerous features of the stock Symbian browser.


Connectivity on the Nokia E6 is very good with pentaband 3G and quad-band GSM support. The phone also comes with a GPS receiver, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP and Wi-Fi b/g/n.

Software:

The Nokia E6 is the business side of Symbian Anna and accordingly you can expect a range of productivity applications to be present including the full version of Quick Office, PDF Reader and F-Secure to keep everything safe.


In addition, Nokia has also stepped up its Facebook and Twitter app support through its social hub, bringing updates together in a unified view.
 

Free turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation with GPS and digital compass is a great asset to have. Nokia's Ovi Maps is a great tool allowing you to download local maps for free. It simply works and having that service for free on a handset remains probably one of Nokia’s biggest advantages.

Performance:

Symbian Anna improves the overall performance of Nokia's platform noticeably. But even with the update, the humble 680MHz CPU and only 256MB of RAM memory means lag is definitely noticeable.

The call quality on the Nokia E6 is good overall. We were happy with the volume on both the mic and the earpiece and our caller reported our voice to be clear.

Under the back cover is a 1500 mAh battery providing you with an above average talk time of up to 14.8 hours of talk time and 18 days in stand-by. We found using this for a day left about 50-60% of juice in the tank, so two full days bordering on three is a realistic expectation from this smartphone, which is great.

Conclusion:

It isn’t all bad. The Nokia E6 delivers some delights, not least of all in terms of build quality, screen performance and battery life. It’s such a shame that the area the handset falls down hardest is usability, a vital bridge between user and handset. Symbian Anna doesn’t modernize the OS enough to make it competitive and it repeatedly presents a convoluted and frustrating user experience just begging to be streamlined.

It may be hard to believe, but pushing the negative aside for a moment and the E6 also manages to do something wonderful – it fills us with hope. With beautiful hardware, this handset serves as a beacon, highlighting what Nokia can get very right. So while we can’t recommend the Nokia E6 unless you’re into your Symbian, we’re watching this space closer than ever to see what’s next in terms of OS, because chances are, it’ll be fundamentally better. For an alternative to the Nokia E6 in an Android guise, check out the HTC ChaCha or the Samsung Galaxy Pro, which are not only running a much better OS, but also come at a cheaper price.

Software version of the reviewed unit: 021.014

Nokia E6 Video Review: