Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have owned Nokia Symbian smartphones since the 6682, and in the E-series, I have owned the E71 and E72. I loved both the E71 and E72 phones, and I had very high expectations for their successor. Many of my expectations were met, but the phone has several serious issues that prevented me from giving a higher rating.
Form Factor & Build - 10/10
- Nokia really did their homework when putting together this phone. Symbian Anna is a nice evolution for a hybrid hard key and touch interface. I was skeptical at first, but I'm now seamlessly using both.
- The phone feels very solid, and it feels a little stronger in my hands than even the E71. It is certainly sturdier than the E72.
Battery Life - 10/10
- Battery life is fantastic. As with previous E-series phones, this phone was designed to go the distance.
- The battery is proportionately large and makes up more than half the width of the phone. I think that it was a good move on Nokia's part to get the extra hours and is a definite advantage over most touch screen phones. As they were still able to keep the phone small, I would say it was worth putting in the larger battery.
Keyboard - 6/10
The Good:
- I am a hardware keyboard addict, and I loath the cell phone industry's move to all-touch phones.
- In terms of feel, the E6 has another solid portrait layout keyboard from Nokia.
The Bad:
- I can't believe they put the apostrophe as a function access on the `L.' I would much rather have a thinner spacebar if I could still have a functional apostrophe - no question. Though not as important as the apostrophe, the double quote and parentheses were relegated to function accessed keys as well.
- The `Ctrl' key now has its own, coveted bottom row position, but what's the point? The entire user guide only mentions it once, and it is supposed to help with copy and paste functionality. I didn't even remember that my E72 had this key (it was a secondary function to the `silent mode' shortcut - something foolishly done away with in the E6).
- The E6 has slightly raised keys, but Nokia got rid of the domed keys from the E72 which I preferred for typing speed.
- The keyboard backlight has taken a step back from previous models. By default, the backlight won't turn on in seemingly random situations and never turns on when entering the lock code - even in pitch black darkness. When I first drafted this review, I gave the keyboard a 3/10. After lots of digging and playing with settings, I found that the keyboard backlight is controlled by Menu>Settings>Phone>Display>Brightness. If you turn the brightness setting above 50%, the keyboard and screen backlights work 10x better, and the keyboard backlight is on when typing the lock code!
Screen - 9/10
- The screen is beautifully detailed, the color appears accurate, and the black levels are very good.
- The touch interface is remarkably good. I have found it to be one of the more accurate touch screens I have used, and multitouch gestures work consistently.
- I had to mark it down slightly because the default backlight setting is much too dim and gets even dimmer when the sensor deems it appropriate. The screen is beautiful when the backlight is well-illuminated, but it's hard to read when it's often too dim at the default setting.
- I immediately deactivated the touchscreen vibrations as they felt cheap and were noisy.
Notifications - 5/10
- I really miss the `breathing light' from the previous two phones. This made the phone brilliantly easy to watch for the status of emails, sms, and calls even when the phone had to be completely silent during a meeting. There is a menu setting to enable the breathing light (off by default), but it seems to have respiratory problems as it is dim and hard to view off-axis.
- I have not had any problems with the vibration as reported by other users. Symbian tailors vibrations to match audio tones even when the tones are turned off, and they might just need to make a tweak to get it working properly again.
- The charging light is annoying, bright, and cannot be turned off in the settings menus. I have to cover my phone when I place it on my nightstand.
- Email notifications are abysmal - More on this later.
Sensors - 8/10
GPS: Seems to work well as in previous models and is able to quickly lock on a signal.
Electronic Compass: This is a pretty slick new feature, but it seems to be a little off. I have retried the built-in calibration every way I can think, and it still seems to be about 10degrees off. It also doesn't notice if I turn the phone 180degrees.
Accelerometer: I haven't found many practical uses for this feature on the Symbian Anna phone, and I quickly disabled the feature to deny calls or turn off my alarm by `turning' the phone. This seems like a recipe for missing calls and oversleeping, and I'm surprised it is enabled by default without warning the user.
Camera - 6/10
- I would rather have fewer megapixels in exchange for better picture quality, and unfortunately Nokia decided to pack an unwieldy number of pixels (8MP) in the little E6. To be honest, a close inspection of the pictures makes them appear as if they have been upconverted, but this could simply be a result of trying to rescue an image from a sensor with such tiny pixels. The camera would be far better with half the megapixels, the E72's autofocus lens, and newer low-noise sensor technology rather than an 8MP pixel density on such a tiny chip.
- The autofocus camera from previous models had far superior contrast and sharpness compared to this "endless depth of field" camera. This is important to me as I like to be able to use my cell as a document camera when traveling, something EDoF cameras are notoriously poor at. Some reviewers have reported better results with this camera when shooting portraits and landscapes, but I rarely take a photo of something further than an arm's length away.
Email - 1/10 => Abysmal (I would give the E72's email an 8.5/10)
Though the interface is similar to previous models, the email on the E6 has taken a huge plunge. As a reference point, I have pushed the capabilities of Nokia email for several years using four or five different accounts of various types at any given time. Nokia sold their push email company due to financial problems, and they have already removed true push capabilities from the E6.
This causes a multitude of problems:
- Emails take so long to arrive that carrying on an email conversation is impractical. I have conducted tests on Exchange, Gmail, and imap accounts, and the fastest arrival time was 4 minutes, the longest was 13 minutes, and the average was about 8 minutes. Compared to the E72's nearly instant email around the clock, this is a huge disappointment. It doesn't sound like long on paper, but it's a huge pain in actual use.
- After buying a new phone or performing a hard reset, the phone will no longer download all settings from Nokia's secure servers. This made setting this phone up frustrating.
- Unlike the quick configuration of the E72 and E71 email clients that utilized Nokia's push service, setting up all my accounts has been a nightmare on the E6. Though it quickly accepted the settings of one imap account, it still refuses to accept another. When I got into the settings, it had reset the incoming server to the smtp server (a result of sloppy coding), and it still won't work after reconfiguring all the settings. I had no trouble configuring this account on my E72.
- As on previous models, only one Exchange account is allowed. This is quite frustrating for anyone who has more than one, and the workarounds (the aforementioned imap account) are ineffective and very limited.
SMS - 9.5/10 (I would have ranked the system in the E71 or E72 a 3/10)
- The sms interface is much improved over any Nokia device I have previously used.
- The threading not only replaces free-isms which I had used previously but works even better with a cleaner interface.
- I have to mark it down a half point as there are aspects of the interface that still need a little tweaking. While it has improved a great deal, the user experience design still has a little ways to go to streamline message replying, forwarding, and flow between senders, time, and the homescreen.
Browsing and Tethering - 9/10 (8/10 for Browsing and 10/10 for Tethering
- Symbian phones have never had great browsers, but I have always found them functional. Like previous models, the browser is a little outdated and weak, but it works for 95% of the internet. I admit that this is very frustrating in the 5% of time that demand more, but I haven't ever worried much about it as I always have a laptop to tether nearby.
- The browser on the E6 is an improvement over previous models, and touch speeds up browsing.
- I have to lower the rating because there are several features that are poorly designed - Several features that wouldn't make any sense to a user who hadn't previously used the keyboard only version. For example, RSS feeds can only be removed using the D-pad and backspace key, something I found immensely frustrating using touch until I remembered the keyboard way to do it.
- For the record, I don't use Opera because I don't like my data tunneling through 3rd party servers - just a personal preference due to privacy management.
- Tethering on this phone is top notch. Assuming you have a laptop nearby, it makes up for many of the browsing shortcomings.
- Tethering speeds are much higher than speeds on the built in browser. I don't know why the built in browser is slow, but the tethering speeds...Read more›
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Nokia E6 Unlocked GSM Phone with Touchscreen, QWERTY Keyboard, Easy E-mail Setup, GPS Navigation, and 8 MP Camera - Silver
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