Hardware Review: Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna

Sharat Jain, CTO, Impact Research and Measurement

BANGALORE, INDIA: The new Nokia E6 comes with a compact full QWERTY keyboard, large control - soft keys and a 2.46” VGA (640 x 480 pixel) Gorilla glass multi-touch display. The body of the phone is ergonomically well designed lending a solid metallic feel and the keyboard, similar to the earlier E71 / E72 phones, is a delight for anyone who does a fair amount of text entry. Overall the phone's build quality lives up to Nokia's reputation of great hardware.

While the E6 only has a VGA LCD screen, the small screen size provides for a higher pixel density, thereby making the display crisp and extremely pleasing to the eye. The capacitative touch is as responsive as it can get but obviously can't compare to an Apple. The small screen size does make the touch functionality a little difficult to use, but then that's the trade off of getting both touch and type in the same package.

The Nokia E6 also offers a 8MP fixed focus camera with LED flash, capable of HD video recording, a front facing VGA camera, 8 GB internal storage and support for up to 32GB external storage via a microSD card slot.

The key feature that the E6 offers is that it is the first business smartphone from Nokia which comes with the new Symbian Anna OS pre-installed.

The new Symbian Anna offers a fluid user interface, new rounded icons, crisp fonts and real-time scrolling across home screens. An on-screen portrait mode QWERTY keyboard and split-screen view while typing are also offered as part of this new OS upgrade, but these are of no use on the E6 given the small screen size.

The new web browser (version 7.3) is a distinct improvement and now offers a clean UI with options to search the web straight from the address bar, partial HTML5 support, Flash Lite and hardware acceleration. The new browser performs a lot better than the earlier avatar and the always visible back and menu icons are a useful feature. It also offers multi touch support and the pinch-zoom functionality proves useful when viewing web pages on the small screen.

Also included is the new updated Social (version 1.3) client which now provides status updates of Facebook and Twitter directly in the individual's phonebook contact details —a feature that I feel has little practical use. Other new features include the ability to re-tweet and view follower list in Twitter and higher resolution image uploads. I was expecting a lot more in the new social update and a fresh look at the UI and design was perhaps what was required rather than adding just a few features.

Symbian Anna also offers an upgraded Ovi Maps app which does seem to show up faster and better search results. Other enhancements include a new Ovi Store interface with improved search and auto-complete features.

The email application remains essentially the same, but now offers better screen layout, improved readability and an option to select multiple mails.

While the Symbian Anna still does not address the overall sluggish response of the Symbian ^3 operating system, it is interesting that Nokia has continued to offer support for this platform inspite of their Microsoft-WP7 commitment. It is important for Nokia to not loose their installed base of smartphone customers and this OS upgrade is perhaps an attempt to keep them engaged. Meanwhile, Nokia has also announced that the next upgrade — called the Symbian Belle, will soon be released. Just as all Android releases are names of desserts, Nokia is committed to name its releases after names of women. But that apart, Nokia claims that this release will bring their platform a lot closer in functionality and features to its two rivals — iOS and Android. This surely will be an interesting space to watch in the times to come.

Bottomline: At a price of Rs 15,000 and given the full QWERTY hardware keyboard, the Nokia E6 is the smart option to buy - if you are on a budget, need a 'business' smartphone and your primary application is email and messaging.