Review: Nokia E6

Nokia E6
MRP: Rs 18,679
Street Price: Rs. 17,500 (Flipkart.com; LetsBuy.com)


The Nokia E71 was a huge success. It had takers not only from the corporate environment, but it was lapped up by college goers as well. This can be credited to its sleek design and an elegant use of metal. The Finnish company showed BlackBerry that business phones don't have to be ugly. Later, the E72 followed its path with a few upgrades, and so did the E5. Now, almost a year after having released the E5, Nokia has followed it up with the E6.

Times have changed with the arrival of iPhones and Androids, the harsh reality of which has been reflected in Nokia's financial report. It knows that another E71 variant won't cut it any more. Therefore, the company has spiced up the E6 with a fresh approach towards the UI and a lot of goodies normally not expected in a business phone. It is one of the first phones to run the much anticipated Symbian Anna out of the box, which features many of the promised improvements.


Design, Build Quality, And Display
The retail package contains the handset, a charger, earphones, USB data cable, and a nice Nokia branded pouch. The headset is sleek, as expected from an Eseries. Although the bundle is pretty balanced, a TV-Out cable and USB adaptor (for USB On-The-Go) would have been good additions.

The moment you hold the phone, you get a sense of the rugged build this handset offers. Nokia has been making phones for more than a decade and its experience shows in the design. The company has built a nearly seamless phone fashioned from stainless steel, matte plastic, and Gorilla Glass. The device looks like it can take a lot of wear and tear.

Keeping its target audience in mind, the design has been kept minimalistic. Measuring in at 115.5 mm (l) x 59 mm (w) x 10.5 mm (d), the phone feels chunky and comfortable to hold. Weighing 133 grammes, the E6 isn't the lightest among the lot, but I don't mind the extra 10 or 20 grammes entailed by the metallic body.

The QWERTY keypad is excellent and offers good tactile feedback. Many E71 users may find its keys softer, but the change is for the better. The D-pad is slightly raised, and accompanied by four one-touch keys.

The phone's left side is crowded with buttons. It features a volume rocker and a dedicated voice recorder key placed right in the middle of the former. A lock slider is placed below it. The memory card slot, a 3.5 mm jack, and the power button are located at the top of the smartphone. The left side and bottom of the device sport a microUSB and charger port respectively.

The E6 runs on a 680 MHz ARM CPU accompanied by a 3D hardware accelerator. However, a mere 256 MB of RAM is present, which is rather disappointing. The onboard camera features a fixed-focus lens assembly paired to an 8 megapixel image sensor. Other features include Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, 8 GB storage, and TV-Out.

The 2.46" screen covers almost half the phone, and is protected by Gorilla Glass. The screen is capable of displaying 640x480 pixels. Interestingly, it offers a pixel density of 328 ppi, which is 2 ppi more than the iPhone's Retina display. Needless to say, I failed to discern individual pixels on this impressive display.


Interface And ApplicationsNokia has been experimenting with touch-and-type devices, as evidenced by the X3-02 and C3-01. It turns out that those devices probably were mere guinea pigs to test and perfect the technology for the E6.

The combination of touch and type on the E6 works perfectly. You will soon find yourself using the touchscreen for navigation and the keys for typing. This gets work done quickly by offering the best of both worlds. One thing worth mentioning here is the pseudo-tactile feedback offered by the screen. You can feel the feedback coming from the exact point of the screen you've touched. While this doesn't add to usability, it reveals a minute attention detail on Nokia's part. Shortcut keys on the phone have been assigned to two separate tasks, which can be triggered by either a normal or long press of the key. Holding the screen lock slider turns the dual flash LEDs into a flashlight. This is a trademark Nokia feature, which however isn't easy to stumble upon.

The Anna update brings a much needed UI overhaul and user-friendliness to the Symbian platform. The new look is apparent right from the home screens and menu icons. Speaking of home screens, there are five of them now, and scrolling between panes is smoother than ever. The new icons are curvier and touch-optimized.

 

The E6 offers a good amount of customization, letting you add or rearrange widgets as well as shortcuts. The menu organisation mode can now be accessed with a long press of any icon. The addition of a touchscreen has left no room for the physical Back and Options keys. A small notification area is also a good addition, but don't expect it to be as useful as the one found in Androids.

Multitasking is nothing new to Symbian, but this time it has been implemented in a more user-friendly manner. You can press and hold the Home key to access Task Manager. It shows thumbnails of opened apps, with a simple way to switch between or kill them. 256 MB of RAM might sound insufficient, but the device actually manages to run 10 to 15 apps with ease.

Collectively, Symbian has been greatly improved, and laggy performance is history now. It still lacks the eye candy of the iOS or Android platforms. However, it gets the job done equally well.

Nokia has always done a great job with Ovi Maps, and version 3.06 is even better. The application is now touch-optimised with pinch-zoom gesture support. It lets you download entire map packs onto the device itself. This saves the inconvenience of having to connect the phone to a PC. Once the device is locked on to the satellites, internet connectivity isn't required for voice-guided satellite navigation.

Surprisingly, the phone just took two to three minutes from a cold start to lock onto the satellites, with A-GPS turned off. This is quite a feat during the monsoons, especially when the recently reviewed Samsung Galaxy S II would take hours to attain lock under similar conditions. The Lonely Planet city guide is a nice addition as well. Altogether, you get a free voice-guided sat nav unit that works without an internet connection.

The new browser version 7.3 is as fast as expected, and renders heavy pages with ease. The double-tap to zoom and kinetic scrolling features work well, making web surfing a pleasure.

You can manage opened tabs by selecting the Windows option. FlashLite 4.0 is good enough to watch YouTube videos in the browser, but Flash games are still a no-go. Other improvements and additions include a search-integrated address bar, different font sizes, better visual history, and a virtual Back button. Although the browser is pretty good, it still stands no chance against the latest Androids.

The phone comes with QuickOffice pre-installed. It can edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Additionally, Adobe Reader takes care of PDF files. The full-fledged file manager is a nice addition, and so is the dictionary. Unfortunately, the device doesn't ship with even a single game. Apparently, Nokia believes that corporate types don't like to play games (at least on their mobiles).

The Ovi Store has been one of the weakest links on Nokia smartphones. However, the store's UI has been improved significantly.

The store now offers better navigation and performance. Thankfully, it doesn't crash any more. It has a reasonable number of apps, and almost all the essential ones are present. However, it is nowhere near the scale of the iOS and Android repositories.

MultimediaThe music player is the same as the one found on Symbian^3 devices. It offers an interface similar to the iPhone's Cover Flow, which makes for good eye candy. Creating or editing a playlist is hassle-free, thanks to the combination of keys and touch. Supported audio formats include MP3, AAC, WMA, and WAVE.

The bundled headsets aren't good enough to please music lovers. Plugging in your favourite earphones in highly recommended. The device's sound quality is excellent though. It is quite loud, and provides a good amount of bass. You get five equaliser presets and an option for Stereo Widening. Finally, an FM receiver has been included, but works only when the bundled headset is connected.

Notably, the video player on the gadget supports DivX, XviD, MP4, WMV, and most MKV videos out of the box. Content up to 720p can be viewed without any issues. It also handles movies larger than 2 GB with ease, making it better than the player found on the N8. Moreover, it supports subtitles as well. The screen offers good contrast and viewing angles, but is let down by its size. That's something you can't complain about on a business phone though. On the whole, this business handset performs exceptionally well on the multimedia front. Interestingly, the 3.5 mm jack doubles up as a TV-Out port as well.

Camera
The 8 megapixel camera on the device performs well in broad daylight. The images exhibit good contrast and colours. However, the sensor fails to keep noise levels in check. This is due to the lack of autofocus. On the positive side, the interface has been tweaked so that most settings are just a press away.

The video recorder is capable of shooting 720p video at 25 fps, with video stabilization thrown in for good measure. The resulting video clips contain a good amount of detail and life-like colours.

Telephony And Messaging
The phonebook is pretty simple, with the contact's information being displayed in two tabs. The first provides quick buttons to call or message the contact, while the second lists all the available information associated with it. The inbuilt Facebook and Twitter integration will be appreciated by the socially inclined.

The E6's call quality is superb, and so is its signal reception. A voice dialling feature is present, but it doesn't like Indian names. However, finding a desired contact is simple, thanks to the combination of smart dialling and a physical keypad.

With its well-designed physical keyboard, the device offers an excellent texting experience. An SMS can be turned into an MMS simply by attaching an image or video. The messaging app supports both threaded and folder views.

The email client lets you add Ovi Mail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail accounts merely by entering the username and passwords. Messages can be sorted on the basis of date, subject, sender, and priority.

BatteryIt's now the second day since I received and fully charged the device, and the battery just refuses to die. I'll update the review once the battery gives in. Till then, all I can report is that the battery performance thus far seems outstanding.

Update: The battery lasted for a total of three days, with heavy use on the first two and moderate use on the third.


Verdict
The E6 offers great build quality, an innovative touch-and-type UI, excellent multimedia performance, and 720p video recording. Additionally, its satellite navigation capabilities and exceptional battery performance make it the ideal business companion. Those migrating from the E71 and E72 will love this handset. However, despite its improvements, Symbian still loses out to Android on the browser and third-party application fronts.

Having said that, the device is perfect for its target audience, because most business users will choose battery life over a fancy browser. Form factor-wise, the only true competitor to this phone seems to be the BlackBerry Bold 9780 that costs around Rs 22,000, while the E6 is available for Rs 17,500 on pre-order. Moreover, the latter comfortably humbles the Bold 9780 in many departments, including the UI, camera, maps, and storage.

In short, if you're looking for an all-round business phone and have nothing against Symbian, then the E6 is the way to go.


Features: 4/5
Design & Build Quality: 4/5
Performance: 4/5
Value For Money: 4/5
Mojo: 4/5

Overall Rating: 4/5

Thanx to techtree.com