Thanks to Nokia India, we managed to get an early hands-on with the Nokia’s latest business offering, the Nokia E6.
Taking traditional Eseries build quality, VGA resolution capacitive touchscreen with more pixel density than the iPhone’s Retina display, with a full QWERTY keyboard thrown in, and running Symbian Anna, the E6 is a pretty solid little device. Here’s what we thought.
First up, just to get you in the know, the Nokia E6 specs are:
General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, HSDPA 10.2 Mbps, HSUPA 2 Mbps, UMTS 850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz
Form factor: Touchscreen candybar
Dimensions: 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm, 133 grams
Display: 2.46 Inch 16M Color VGA TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen
Memory: 8GB storage memory, 1GB ROM, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
OS: Symbian Anna OS
CPU: ARM 1176 680 MHz processor, Broadcom BCM2727 GPU; 256 MB RAM
Camera: 8 megapixel fixed-focus camera with dual LED flash, 720p video recording at 25fps
Connectivity: Wifi, Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP, microUSB port with USB OTG, 3.5mm audio jack with TV-Out, Built-in A-GPS
Others: Accelerometer, Stereo FM radio with RDS, Flash support in the web browser
Battery: 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery
Granted, the E6′s hardware isnt as top of the line as other devices nowadays, its actually pretty good for what it’s main purpose is: to replace the Nokia E72 (which replaced the Nokia E71) as a Business Phone. Symbian Anna works very well too, which all together means the E6 probably wont be for everyone, but has more than enough features to be just that tempting.
Design and Construction:
For one thing, the E6 is quite the looker, with premium materials, and a great classic design.
It looks much like a combination of the E5, and E72, with a better design, and made of premium metals. It’s also quite compact at just 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm. There’s a 2.46 Inch landscape touchscreen, shortcut keys, and a full Qwerty keyboard all stuffed into those dimensions. And to add to all that, it only weighs about 133 grams, which is great for a phone made out of metals. There’s a white, silver and black color version of the E6, and as you can see we got the black.
The front is mostly plastic, which tends to get smudgy because of the touchscreen. The frame around the phone, and the battery panel at the back are all made out of metal (Nokia India said Anodized aluminum), with matte plastic used for the upper and lower parts of the rear.
Coming to that landcape 2.46 Inch Display, its a Capacitive touchscreen, at 16 Million colors and at a resolution of 640 x 480 which makes it Nokia’s first handset with this resolution, and the company’s first QWERTY Candy bar formfactor with a touchscreen. The screen size is also comparatively smaller to most touchscreen phones today, but the advantage is that it’s pixel density (328ppi) is even more higher than the iPhone’s retina display (326ppi).
Admittedly, one of the problems with previous touch-and-type phones we tried, was that the company usually went with a resistive touchscreen. Which isnt the case here at all, as we were glad to see that the LCD screen on the E6 was a capacitive touchscreen Which in turn meant it’s very responsive, even to the slightest touch, and had nice vivid, accurate colors on that very crisp screen. Granted, users with very large fingers might have issues because of the small screen though.
Right above the screen, you have the earpiece, proximity sensor, ambient-light sensor, and the front facing video call camera. Below the screen, you have the navigation deck with the Dpad. There are three buttons on either side of it, comprising of the two Calling keys and four softkeys.
The QWERTY keyboard is pretty much exactly the same as the one on the E5, with keys that are reasonably sized, and comfortable to use, with good amount of tactile feedback.
On the right side of the E6, you have the volume rocker switch, voice commands key in the middle (acts as voice recorder on short press), and a sliding screenlock key.
Also worth pointing out, is the lanyard cable inlet at the bottom end. Like other Symbian^3 devices, the screenlock key can also be used to activate the dual-led flash on the phone, to be used as a flashlight of sorts. Just slide down the key and hold it for 3 seconds to turn it on or off.
On the left side, you have only the microUSB port, covered with a hard plastic flap. No word on whether it supports charging over USB though. We’d assume it does.
On the top, you have the hot-swappable microSD card slot, covered with another plastic flap, and the power key next to the 3.5mm Audio Jack.
At the bottom of the device, you’ll only find the charging port, which is standard Nokia 2mm.
On the back of the E6, you’ll find the loudspeaker grill, Dual LED Flash, and an 8 Megapixel Fixed-Focus EDoF camera, all surrounded by a metal plate.
Unfortunately this protrudes a bit, which increases the risk of scratching the camera lens when you place the E6 on its back.
And powering all of that, is the 1500 mAh Li-on BL-4D battery underneath the metal cover, which is quoted at 672 hours of stand-by time on a 2G network. That’s 14 hours and 40 minutes of talktime. Nokia is saying that it’s the best battery performer on the market, and if the Nokia E71 and E72 were anything to go by, they just might be right.
So yes, its no suprise that the Nokia E6 is a very well built, solid portable QWERTY business phone. It’s an Eseries after all. The keyboard is top notch, and the battery seems like it can go on for a while (Which is really saying something in today’s smartphone market). Even the retail package is solid.
The Operating System and UI:
Symbian Anna is finally here! Hooray!
The much-anticipated, long-awaited Symbian^3 update is yet to roll out for current S^3 devices, but the Nokia E6 and the X7 are the first to have it out of the box.
The updated Symbian makes the whole OS a lot more user friendly, and a more modern looking with a revamped web browser, better user interface, split-screen text input, better homescreen, gallery, Nokia services and overall performances. There’s better animations, touch-optimizations everywhere, general improvements to bring it up to modern standards.
Unfortunately we didnt have enough time to make a full user interface walkthrough, as we usually do. But to give you an idea of Symbian Anna, here’s a brief video overview that we did along with my good buddy, Vaibhav Sharma from TheHandheldblog.com:
First impressions:
Rating: 
While Nokia is moving to Windows Phone and all, Symbian still has a lot of potential (till 2016 according to Nokia), and Symbian Anna utilizes it, bringing a slew of updates and improvements all around.
The camera though, is a fixed focus EDoF 8 Megapixel Lens, which we werent too crazy about. It gets decent shots in good lighting conditions though. You can check out our Nokia E6 Camera Samples post for a better idea.
The Nokia E6 is definitely a worth successor to the E72 and E71 QWERTY Eseries Business phones. The solid build quality, and keyboard, coupled with the touchscreen and high resolution display, means this actually might be come another Nokia bestseller provided it’s not priced too high.
As far as first impressions go, consider us very impressed with the Nokia E6. If only that darn camera wasnt EDoF.
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