We rarely review mobile handsets or any other hardware, but this time we were provided with an opportunity to review the new Nokia E6-00 by the WOMWorld guys. Nokia E6-00 is the latest smartphone in the business phones category and one of the first phones to get Symbian Anna, the latest polished version of Symbian. On the specs sheet, Nokia E6 is very much impressive with almost all features for a great smartphone, but will it be able to perform good with so many cheap Android phones coming out? Lets find out in this review.
Design, Looks and Build:
This is one of the primary things which any user would look into when buying a phone, it should be good looking, well build and easy to hold. Nokia E6-00 is just like any other E-series phones with a very good build. The Nokia E6 stands at 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm and features a 2.46” landscape touchscreen from the comfortable four-row QWERTY keyboard which is seen in other E Series phones. The rear cover and the battery cover is made of stainless steel and the build quality is simply superb.
The screen is landscape 2.46″ 16M-color capacitive touchscreen of VGA (640 x 480) resolution, although the screen size is small when compared to the competition, the resolution is what makes it stand out. The 2.46″ diagonal has higher pixel density than the iPhone 4’s Retina display on specs: 326ppi for the Retina and 328ppi for the Nokia E6, which is simply amazing and this is infact visible on the screen. The brightness is very good and you can easily read even in sunlight.
Image: Nokia E6 with Nokia E71, Galaxy 3 and XPERIA X1.
On the ports and keys side, the Nokia E6 comes with standard microUSB port, 3.5 mm jack, volume keys, slot for memory card and the power button. The rear portion comes with speakers, dual LED flash and 8MP camera unit. The camera does not have an protection cover.
Although it houses a capacitive touch screen, the unit also comes with a D-pad for scrolling. The touch screen is really responsive and has pinch to zoom enabled for browser and images, which is again a good feature.
User Interface (Symbian Anna):
E6 is one of the first handsets to have the new Symbian Anna OS and the main change you see when you open it for the first time is the new icons. Anna is pretty responsive and fast as well. The home screen comes with 5 panels, which can be changed by scrolling left or right. You can touch and hold the screen to add elements to it. You can either add a bunch of shortcuts or other widgets.
You can also delete any home screen panel and create a new one again, but the number of home screens are limited to a maximum of 5. The navigation is pretty much the same Symbian, which is folder/sub folder like hierarchy. The new icons, with curved edges on Anna gives you a fresh look of the UI.
The phone book is very good and is similar to the other Symbian phone books and you can actually connect a person on your phone book with the social networks and get all the details. The email client is very good and it supports all email networks like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Exchange server etc.
Multimedia Experience:
One of the main features of the Nokia E6 is its 8MP camera with dual LED flash. The camera although is 8MP, comes with a fixed focus which is pretty disappointing especially for macro shots, it doesnt work well. The video quality is however very good. There is pinch to zoon feature for image gallery, so you can magnify your images easily. The E6 comes with 2 handy tools- Image editor and a video editor which is really useful to edit images quickly. The editor is pretty well equipped as well.
The FM and Music player are also good with a easy to use and simple UI. The music player has equalizer to add effects to your songs.
Browsing Experience:
The web browser on Symbian Anna is upgraded with new UI and features when compared to old versions. It comes with pinch to zoom for reading content. The small screen is a disadvantage when using the browser. The browser is pretty fast and loads well, although there were few alignment issue for a few websites.
Overall the browser is improved, but not polished like the browser on Android.
Apps and Ovi
The app for Nokia E6 are delivered by Ovi and there are pretty good apps, but the screen size does not fit for many popular apps including Foursquare. The Ovi is still behind Android market when it comes to apps, but still easy use.
Maps and Navigation:
This is one area where the Nokia E6 is pretty good, the maps are good and useful to find locations and driving directions. You can download the maps of areas which you want to use. There are different map views available and the GPS works very well.
Social Networking:
The E6 comes integrated with social networking, but includes only Facebook and Twitter apps. The in-build apps for these are pretty good, but the screen size is again an issue when using these.
On the connectivity front, E6 is well equipped with GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSPA (10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2.0 Mbps HSUPA), Wi Fi, Bluetooth and USB. There is also a office document editor and a PDF reader included which serves the purpose of viewing and editing documents on the go.
Battery Life:
This is one of the most important aspects of any smartphone- good battery and Nokia E6 excels in this area. With heavy usage like Wi Fi (connected all the time when indoors), 3G, social networking, calls, listening to music and lots of images using the camera, the battery lasted for little less than 2.5 days. We feel this is simply amazing considering the fact that most of the common Android handsets lasts only for a day ( or even less).
Final Words:
There is no doubt, the Nokia E6 is a real good smartphone with is loaded with all features, an excellent screen and a good QWERTY keyboard. The touch screen is responsive, although you might find the size a bit low. The Symbian Anna is fast and responsive, but the device lags in browsing and apps segment. Based on our experience we would give it 8/10 for its features, usability and massive battery life.
