Nokia E6-00 review

Back in the day, before Apple fixed the iPhone to make it viable for business users, Nokia’s E-series phones such as the E71 were the kings of the hill thanks to their excellent keyboards and support for Exchange and Office files. Much has changed since then, however, so we were slightly disappointed to find that the E-series has hardly changed in the intervening years.

It still has the same, excellent keyboard, and support for Microsoft’s Office and Exchange product families is comprehensive. The E6 is slightly thicker and heavier than its ancestor, however, but makes up for it with a far better screen with four times the resolution; in fact, the 640×480 screen has an even higher pixel density than RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9900, at 326dpi.

On top of that, it has a capacitive touchscreen, which complements the directional pad. Overall build quality is excellent, with a tough metal back cover and sturdy covers for the memory card slot and microUSB port. Battery life in our light usage test was exceptional, as we’d expect from a Nokia: it’ll play music for almost three days non-stop, so you certainly won’t need to charge it every day.

Another obvious improvement is the camera: an 8-megapixel snapper plus a front-facing 0.3-megapixel version for video calls. No video calling software is included, however, and Skype for Symbian doesn’t support video calls yet. Photos and videos taken with the main camera were surprisingly noise-free and having a dual-LED flash means that you aren’t limited to daylight shots. Unfortunately, even brightly lit shots lacked strong colours.

It’s in the software department that time has really taken its toll: today’s iPhone and Android phones have intuitive touch interfaces that make them vastly more productive than the previous generation of smartphones, and Nokia’s Symbian operating system hasn’t kept up. It’s had numerous cosmetic changes, but the underlying logic of its interface has remained largely unchanged and it’s nowhere near as usable as its competitors’.