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 9780 and 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 E5 though. 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.
Nokia E6: Interface
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.
The numerous home screens enable the user to separate work and home life, with separate home screens for each and the ability to add up to three Favourites widget bars on each home screen, with four application shortcuts per widget. This makes the Nokia E6 screen interface more iPhone-like in appearance, with the ability to lateral swipe between screens.
Once you enter the main menu, you're welcomed with the standard Nokia application and folder structure provided on Nokia S60 and Symbian^3 devices, as finally incorporated into the iPhone 4.
A continuing frustration is that some folders have dedicated folder icons but others don't, making it harder to differentiate between folders at a glance. With the length of time Nokia has provided folder-based menus for, it would be nice if it provided user selectable folder icons like those on Windows PCs.
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.
Nokia E6: Contacts and calling
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.
All Nokia Symbian^3 devices come with High Definition call quality, providing a clear sound quality at both ends as long as the network signal strength supports.
During testing no issues were experienced with call quality, with reduced signal strength limited to known poor signal strength locations.
Nokia E6: Messaging
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. No touchscreen interface provides the feedback quality you get with a physical keyboard. Although the keys are small, the rounded feel and raised centre tell the fingertips that the correct key has been pressed.
To aid in text entry, the standard Nokia T9 word completion and corrective word prediction is provided. You can disable this and install the recently released Adaptxt software if you prefer the predictive text functionality provided on Sony Ericsson smartphones.
The Messaging app is a standard text message app, with inbox and conversation views with MMS support.
Useful cross-functionality between the Messaging app and the calendar means that meeting requests can be received by SMS, prompting meeting creation if accepted. Also, map locations can be received via SMS from other Nokia phones, opening OVI Maps to show the location.
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 that 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.
Nokia E6: Internet
Like all recent Nokia mobile phones, the Nokia E6 supports internet connectivity via GPRS or Wi-Fi, although, with the introduction of Symbian Anna, the Nokia E6 has the fastest, most powerful web browser yet seen on a Nokia Symbian handset.
With a 1.5MB Wi-Fi connection, the TechRadar website loads in 20 seconds with initial display in five seconds, compared to 30 seconds and 10 seconds on the Nokia N8.
The way in which the website is loaded means that the website is useable after the initial display, with the remainder of the time spent completing the load of all page data.
One difference between the default browser and other available ones is that it loads in partial readable view rather than displaying the complete, unreadable page. Preference between these two display types is down to personal choice, but we prefer the E6's partial yet readable loading view.
When it comes to page navigation, all Symbian^3 devices support multi-touch pinch to zoom in a number of apps, including the internet browser. In our experience this was very responsive in all cases.
The main alternative to the default Symbian Anna Web app is Opera, available in the forms of Opera Mini (a fast and compact remote server-compressed browser) and Opera Mobile (an on-device rendered phone browser).
Opera Mini provides faster, reduced data web browsing, with websites being routed through Opera servers to render and compress the information before it's rendered on the phone.
Opera Mobile provides a browsing quality akin to Symbian Anna Web, taking a similar time to the default browser to download and render sites, since rendering is achieved on-device. The TechRadar website full load time for Opera Mini was 13 seconds and for Mobile it was 30 seconds, with both taking roughly six seconds for initial load.
The Nokia E6's main menu appears the same as that provided on the previous Symbian^3 web browser, providing access to your homepage, bookmarks, windows switching, web feeds, history, settings and downloads. But all access to menus is now via a semi-transparent soft icon in the bottom-right corner, releasing screen space for the web page.
One disappointment in terms of internet on the Nokia E6 is that, unlike with previous Symbian web browsers, you're no longer able to choose to start on bookmarks, because this enables the browser to be opened without having to use data until the desired web page is being loaded.
One saving grace for the more tech-able is that the browser supports the creation of a local home page, and setting this as your home page. If you wish to do this, save the page to your E: drive and set your home page address as file://e/[filename.html].
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.
Nokia E6: Camera
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
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MINIMUM: This was taken in Landscape mode with the minimum zoom. Colours are fairly good and the image is clear
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MAXIMUM: The maximum zoom in landscape mode goes in close and retains good colour
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NIGHT FLASHER: Night Mode with flash produces a reasonably well-lit image
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DEEP DARK NIGHT: Night Mode without flash shows next to nothing
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AUTO: Night Portrait with auto flash produces a very similar picture to the manual flash
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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.
Nokia E6: Video
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.
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr28bV3dQLE
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.
Nokia E6: Media
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.
The sound quality of music playback on the Nokia E6 is on a par with the Apple iPhone 4, although the functionality provided by the Music app falls extremely short. This is a long-standing issue with Nokia phones, with no compilation album identifier, no support for gapless playback and tracks played in alphabetical rather than album order, if artists are selected rather than albums.
An FM radio is pre-installed on the Nokia E6 and, if other members of the Symbian^3 family are anything to go by, a DAB radio download will become available via the Software Update app.
The FM radio is simplistic in its form, with an auto-search facility and the ability to save the stations found.
Although this is all you really need, it would be nice to listen to the radio without needing headphones to work as the aerial. Along with this app comes an associated home screen radio widget, enabling the user to turn the radio on and off and navigate between the channels found by the auto-search.
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.
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, HTC Sensation, 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.
Nokia E6: Battery and connectivityBattery life
The Nokia E6 comes with a 3.7V 1500mAh battery, which is the same size as provided in the BlackBerry Bold 9780. However, the Nokia's quoted battery life is a lot better, at 14.8 hours of talktime compared to six hours on the BlackBerry.
The E6 is also quoted as having 28 days standby time and three days music playback time, compared to 22 days and 1.5 days on the BlackBerry Bold 9780.
The soon to be released BlackBerry Bold 9900 is currently being specified as having a 1230mAh battery, which isn't promising based on the battery life figures listed above.
From our experience, these times are somewhat optimistic, with the phone needing a recharge every couple of days after average use – with email synchronisation every hour, around three hours of Wi-Fi internet usage, two hours of GSM web browsing and two hours of calling each day.
This keeps it nicely in line with the BlackBerry range, but is miles better than the other smartphones of the moment, which need a re-juicing every day at least in some cases.
Connectivity
Like with other Symbian^3 devices the Nokia E6 comes with a plethora of connectivity options. For Wi-Fi, it supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi with WEP, WPA, WPA2 (AES/TKIP) encryption protocols.
Finding available Wi-Fi networks is simple. A tap in the top-right corner of the home screen brings up a small information menu, on which the Wi-Fi availability is identified. A tap of the Wi-Fi availability link opens up the available networks screen displaying hotspot names, signal strength and encryption information.
On tapping the desired hotspot you can click on Connect to use that wireless internet connection or on Details to find further information about it. When Connect is selected, an encryption password screen is shown before the phone connects. The hotspot is then saved to the default Destination access point group, so you can connect to it again later.
If no Wi-Fi hotspots are available, a third-party app called JoikuSpot is pre-installed, which enables you to turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot using the GPRS access point for the data connection.
Bluetooth 3.0 and stereo audio provide fast data transfer and crisp and clear stereo audio clarity on Bluetooth accessories.
Like with the Wi-Fi connection, a tap on the top-right of the home screen provides quick access to the main Connectivity menu, containing the Bluetooth sub-menu. Here you can turn Bluetooth on and off and set up and connect to available Bluetooth devices.
Bluetooth functionality is also built in to the Photos app, enabling you to quickly send images to other Bluetooth devices that are in range.
The Nokia E6 impresses with the Symbian^3 USB master functionality. This means that, if you buy a separate Nokia USB OTG adapter cable, you can connect your Nokia E6 to a USB drive and transfer data or read information off it.
The socket on the top of the Nokia E6 will be mistaken by many as being a solely audio connection, but if you buy the Nokia video-out cable you can use it to play video out though composite connectors to your TV - but no HDMI-out for the higher-res videos.
When it comes to getting your data on and off the Nokia E6 there are a number of PC programs available. The main one is Ovi Suite, which has been developing for years, providing a single route to synchronise your contacts, messages, music and pictures between your phone, PC and the cloud. It also enables map data and voice guidance file download and installation.
As well as the PC-based method of data backup, the Nokia E6 comes with Ovi Sync, which provides cloud-based synchronisation of contacts, calendar and notes. Additional to this, Ovi Maps provides cloud-based backup of user-created favourite locations.
Nokia also provides picture and video cloud backup capability via Ovi Share, which is another part of the current Ovi Service.
Nokia E6 review: Maps and appsMaps
When it comes to maps and satellite navigation, the Nokia E6 comes pre-loaded with Ovi Maps with free Navteq-based loadable global maps, drive and walk voice navigation, speed limit and safety camera warners and traffic information.
If used with Assisted GPS, Wi-FI/ network and network-based positioning methods enabled, along with the Integrated GPS positioning method, location information is provided within a couple of seconds.
With only the Integrated GPS positioning method enabled, to minimise data costs, a GPS fix can take minutes. This is because the GPS system has to search through the global satellite list to find the ones in range to provide position. It's a real problem on Nokia phones, namely because you can turn off the assisted element of the GPS - which you won't need to do should you have any kind of data plan.
As well as providing mapping and satellite navigation, Ovi Maps provides travel guides and check-in capability to many different geo-locational social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
Apps
The Nokia E6 comes loaded with a large selection of pre-installed apps. Many of the apps show the phone's business-minded credentials again.
File Manager does what it says on the tin, Zip creates zip files just like a computer would, Recorder is a simple Dictaphone app, Msg Reader reads texts messages aloud to you and F-Secure is an antivirus, firewall and theft protection app.
Calendar enables you to manage multiple calendars and keep them synchronised with the cloud. Meeting requests can be received and accepted via a text message or email, and meetings can have locations linked to them which can be displayed on Ovi Maps.
Our only frustration is that when meetings have locations linked, a "drive to location" prompt isn't presented when the alarm triggers.
On top of these, the Nokia E6 comes with a Quickoffice app, a Microsoft-compatible mobile client capable of reading, writing and modifying Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Adobe Acrobat is also on board to open PDFs.
For international professionals, Dictionary is a handy multi-lingual dictionary and translator app, while Traveler provides weather, currency conversion and flight information.
In terms of entertainment, music offerings include the Music Player, FM Radio, Ovi Music Store link and a link to Shazam, for music identification, purchasing, playing and a social app. Here and Now is a location-based app that provides information about movies, restaurants and events in your local area.
The main thing you may note is that there are no games on the E6, which further clarifies its target market, although even business people need to relax sometimes. Further apps can be downloaded from the Ovi Store, however, and the range is acceptable without being stellar.
Nokia E6: Hands-on gallery
The Nokia E6 is a very capable smartphone aimed directly at the corporate market. However, the mixture of touchscreen and physical QWERTY keyboard positions it very nicely for bloggers and heavy Twitter, Facebook, email or SMS text message users, because typing is a breeze.
We liked
With its 8MP camera and 8GB internal mass storage, the Nokia E6 provides more than enough memory for a small music library, a quantity of captured pictures and video and map data, with the ability to increase it to 40MB with an external memory card.
The widgets on offer aren't too bad anymore, and certainly a step up from the N8 - the thumb friendly interface is a real winner too.
The larger amount of home screens is a positive move from Nokia, as is the resolution on the screen... it may be small but it's pin sharp.
Physical keyboards are becoming scarcer these days, so it's great to see Nokia sticking with the formula and bringing a very usable keyboard indeed.
The internet browser is a great improvement on previous Nokia incarnations, although many will say that it has a distance to go before it truly competes with the responsiveness of Apple and Android smartphones.
We disliked
The main negative is for those who want to use the satellite navigation, because in our opinion, although the screen resolution is second to none, the physical screen size is too small, resulting in the onscreen text being too small to read.
This issue isn't limited to the Maps app, but this is the worst scenario because the phone is further away from you and could prove distracting while driving.
The music player doesn't show any real improvement, which is a disappointment because this is the area in which Nokia falls furthest behind its Apple iPhone 4 competition. When Nokia has invested so much in its music service, it seems surprising that this doesn't show in the E6's mobile client.
The interface still harks back to the golden Symbian days - meaning clunky icon management, with prescribed widget blocks to fit your four chosen icons into, rather than a choice of where they go.
The widgets themselves are proving more useful, but we still want to see more third party options and we wish re-sizing was an option too.
Verdict
The Nokia E6 is a well-built, very capable business phone with plenty of apps and features to suit business users. It's built for text heavy users, with a powerful camera for good light photography.
However, while Symbian Anna is a step forward, it still feels like it's hamstrung by previous iterations with a slightly clunky feel and long time to open some applications still present.
With MeeGo, Nokia has proven it can make a more modern smartphone interface. With the thumb-friendly touchscreen along with the proven E-Series physical QWERTY keyboard, this is a strong competitor to alternatives such as the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and BlackBerry Bold 9900.
The Nokia E6 won't convert Android and Apple users, because this isn't where it's aimed, but it is a smart buy for many text-heavy business users out there.
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