Nokia E6 hands-on: First look

Introduction

The E6 is Nokia’s latest business offer and it has just landed in our office. It’s the company’s first smartphone running the new Symbian Anna OS out of the box. The E6 is a touch phone with a QWERTY keyboard and it even has a higher pixel density than the iPhone’s Retina display.

It was a while since we’ve seen a high-end Nokia messenger. We are not trying to dismiss the previous E-series achievements, they’ve just became too conventional. Lucky for us the E6 brings a few interesting innovations to freshen up the lineup. It was about time!

The E6 is Nokia’s first handset with VGA resolution and also Nokia’s first QWERTY bar with a touchscreen. Its pixel density is even higher than the Apple’s Retina display. The E6 doesn’t stop here though – it packs the same camera module as most of its Symabian^3 siblings – an 8 megapixel fixed-focus sensor capable of HD video recording. Add the new Symbian^3 update – Anna – and we might have a potent business or messaging phone if not else.

Nokia E6 at a glance:
 General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 10.2 Mbps, HSUPA 2 Mbps
Form factor: Touchscreen bar
Dimensions: 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm, 87 cc; 133 g
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, geo-tagging; 720p video recording@25fps
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP, microUSB port with USB on-the-go, 3.5mm audio jack, GPS receiver with A-GPS, HDMI port
Misc: Accelerometer, Stereo FM radio with RDS, Flash support in the web browser, proximity sensor, Battery: 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery

 As you can see the E6’s hardware is not top of the line, but we can assure you it’s perfectly fine for what it’s meant – replacing the Nokia E71 and E72 business messengers. The new Symbian Anna has lots of optimizations and seems to work seamless inside the E6. Surely, the E6 won’t attract everyone, but it has enough features to prove worthy.