Nokia 9000 Communicator

Brand:	Nokia
Manufacturer:	Nokia
Hardware–Designer:	Nokia
Model;ID:	RAE-1N
Release:Date:	August, 1996
Physical:Attributes
Dimensions (width x height x depth):	173 x 64 x 38 millimetres 6.8 x 2.5 x 1.5 inches
Bounding:Volume:	420.7 cubecentimetres
Mass:	397 grams (battery included)
Software:Environment
Embedded;Operating;System:	GeoWorks GEOS V3.0 Nokia GUI
Operating_System:Kernel:	DOS 3.0 (32 bit version)
Microprocessor,:Chipset
CPU:Clock:	24 MHz
CPU:	Intel 386EX
Width+of;Machine+Word:	32 bit
CPU_Core:	Intel 80386
Instruction–Set:	x86 (i386)
Memory,_Storage;capacity
RAM+type:	EDO DRAM
RAM–capacity:	4 MiB
ROM+type:	EPROM
ROM:capacity:	4 MiB, including 2MiB user-accessible non-volatile storage
Graphical;subsystem
Display–Type:	monochrome STN display
Display+Color:Depth:	2 bit/pixel (4 scales)
Display+Diagonal:	4.5 ” (115 millimetres)
Display+Resolution:	640 x 200 (128000 pixels)
Viewable_Display+Size:	4.32 ” x 1.35 ” (109.77 x 34.3 millimetres)
Pixel;density+(dot+pitch):	148.1 pixel/inch (0.17151 millimetre/pixel)
Secondary–Display:Type:	backlit monochrome STN display
Secondary:Display+Color;Depth:	1 bit/pixel (2 scales)
Secondary_Display+Resolution:	50 x 38 (1900 pixels)
Audio–Subsystem
Audio+Channel(s):	mono sound
Microphone(s):	mono sound
Loudspeaker(s):	mono sound
Audio_Output:	Proprietary plug
Cellular+Phone
Cellular_Networks:	GSM900, GSM1800
Cellular–Data–Links:	CSD
Cellular;Antenna:	Open-out antenna
Call_Alert:	1 -chord melody (monophonic)
Speakerphone–:	Supported
Control+Peripherals
Positioning_Device:	Not supported
Primary–Keyboard:	Built-in QWERTY-type keyboard, 74 keys
Secondary:Keyboard:	Built-in numeric phone keyboard, 21 keys Automatic keyboard backlight (upon press of any key)
Directional:Pad:	Four-way (without action button)
Scroll–Wheel:	Not supported
Interfaces
USB:	Not supported
Bluetooth;(802.15):	Not supported
Wireless+LAN/Wi-Fi–(802.11):	Not supported
Infrared:Gate:	IrDA 1.0, 115200bit/s (SIR/CIR)
Serial+(UART):	RS-232, 115200 bit/s Proprietary connector
Multimedia_Broadcast
Analog+Radio:	Not supported
Digital_Media;Broadcast:	Not supported
Power+Supply
Battery+Technology:	Lithium-ion battery
Battery:Build:	removable
Estimated;Battery–Life:	30 hours
Battery:Capacity:	800 mAh
Estimated+Average–Current:	27 mA

Source : http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=879&c=nokia_9000_communicator

Nokia E6 (5)

Video playback

With its small-screened QWERTY form factor the E6 is not, in design terms, a multimedia centric device. Under the hood, it offers the same broad range of multimedia specifications as the other Symbian^3 devices (see multimedia sections of our reviews for the C7, C6-01, E7 and X7). However, there are other factors at play, especially when trying to watch video content:

• The E6’s screen is only 2.4″, making video consumption far less satisfying than on the likes of the N8, E7 and X7. This size issue is made worse by the next point….
• The E6’s VGA resolution screen has an aspect ratio of 4:3 (the other devices are all 16:9), so black bars will be present for playing back most video content in 2011, whether sourced online or converted locally. Add the small screen size to the presence of typical ‘bars’ and you end up with an effective screen diagonal of around 2.2″ when watching videos – a far cry from the 4″ of the Nokia E7 and X7, in particular.
• The screen technology used on the E6 is excellent for all purpose phone and messaging use – it really is quite visible in most light conditions and of good colour and contrast. But it’s not a patch on the colour saturation and brightness of the AMOLED screens on the other Symbian^3 devices. Again, this doesn’t matter much for enterprise and messaging use, for day to day organisation of your life – but video colours in particular don’t leap out in the same way as they do for AMOLED.
• The QWERTY candybar form factor means that videos have to be watched with the device held up in ‘portrait’ mode – it’s harder to find something to prop the E6 up to watch a video than it is for (e.g.) the X7 or N8, which have a lower centre of gravity by being used in ‘landscape’ for video watching.

Add all four points together and they combine to make the E6 by far the worst of the Symbian touchscreen devices for watching video content. Which is not to say that it can’t be done – the performance and codec compatibility is the same – just that you won’t enjoy the experience anywhere near as much.

It’s somewhat telling that Nokia has relegated video playback into a sub-folder (‘Videos and TV’) inside the Applications folder. Any MP4, WMV (etc) files that you side-load onto your mass memory or memory card (in any folder) will be picked up in the Videos app and presented with title, duration, size and a thumbnail of the opening frames.

 

 

Also in this (token) folder is a YouTube icon, which links through to the m.youtube.com web site. Playback from this is actually acceptable once you know the trick of double-tapping a playing video to bring it up to full-screen. It’s a shame this isn’t documented anywhere obvious, as I bet most normal users will miss it. What’s really needed is a decent YouTube Symbian client, of course. Perhaps Nokia needs to sweet talk Google at some point….

 

 

A ‘Get more…’ icon is another shortcut, this time into the Ovi Store client’s ‘Web TV’ section, with entries for the usual (fairly trivial) contenders, including Eros Bollywood, India Today, DailyMotion and GazettaTV, plus the well known SPB TV application and a handful of ‘premium’ video portals, including Mega Man TV, Right Network TV and Wild Earth TV – each at £4.

 

Finally, thinking, slightly laterally, the Ovi Store has an ‘Audio and Video’ category, which is useful for quick access to movie trailers and the like, as shown here.

 

 

Not included as such but well worthwhile, for UK users at least, is BBC iPlayer – going to bbc.co.uk in Web on the E6 produces the usual iPlayer browsing interface for streaming and downloading BBC TV programmes (though note that the E6 needs the official BBC DRM update to handle most downloaded videos).

 

Much has been written elsewhere about the relative weakness of the Nokia/Symbian ecosystem in terms of multimedia content – it’s not completely true, there are at least casual viewing options above. However, with the aforementioned hardware-related factors, suffice it to say that most users are unlikely to find the E6 very compelling for video in the first place.

 

Music and podcasts

Thankfully, things are somewhat brighter when looking at music on the E6. Because the default screen orientation is landscape, the default view for ‘Artists and albums’ is the pretty ‘coverflow’ implementation. In other words, this is your first view of your music on the E6. In fact, Nokia gets you off to a flying start so that there are some pretty covers to look at even on a virgin device, by shipping a free set of ‘ambient’ tracks with glorious cover art, preloaded on the mass memory.

 

 

How you get your music onto the device is then very much up to you, but dragging and dropping 5GB or so of favourite artists from my iTunes library was the way I chose. Symbian devices support both mass transfer (i.e. a USB disk) mode and ‘Windows Media’ mode, so most people will find a way that suits them. In most modes, ‘Refresh library’ (to pick up the newly copied songs) should happen automatically and may take a few minutes after a big song transfer.

Again pointing to how much Nokia is de-emphasising the E6 for multimedia, only a very cheap stereo headset is shipped with the device, with outer ear buds and only a call-pickup button in the lead. Thankfully, plugging in my own high quality stereo in-ear headset produced great results, as you’d expect, since the internals here are basically the same as on the N8. Any Nokia multimedia headset (with the playback controls) will work fine with the E6.

Volume increments are in 5% intervals, the maximum volume (limited by the EU) is just about loud enough, and there’s a selection of equalisation presets but no way to configure your own.

We’ve now become used to Nokia Podcasting being missing on Nokia’s 2011 handsets, but the third party Podcatcher works just fine and its downloaded podcasts are recognised by the ‘Podcasts’ filter in Music player, so all is well. With the decent speaker on the E6, the phone is fine for playing podcasts while you do chores around the house and garden.

 

 

As with most Nokia phones, there’s an FM radio receiver, with your headset as the aerial, plus a shortcut link through to the Ovi Music store on the web, for buying DRM-free music as needed. This is a system that works very well for spur of the moment purchases.

There’s also Shazam, the familiar service for ‘tagging’ music by listening to a sample and matching its characteristics to Shazam’s database. There’s no link through to buy the track (e.g. from the Ovi Music store), which seems a missed opportunity, but the recognition is top notch and you can opt to send your tagged track info up to Facebook or Twitter.

 

Photography

The E6’s EDoF camera is the same 8 megapixel unit as on the C7, X7 and E7, among others. We’ve written extensively about the performance and limitations on EDoF, but the short summary is that it should work well for the average user, capable of capturing both high quality photos and HD (720p) video of everyday life. Macro performance (sub 40cm) is poor, and Rafe commented in part 3 of this review about snaps being OK as ‘aide de memoire’ but not good enough for detailed Optical Character Recognition.

Here are some sample photos from the Nokia E6, click through to download them or enlarge as needed to full 8 megapixel resolution:

 

Classic EDoF shots – good lighting, nice colours and contrast, everything in focus (the bollard was a good metre away)

 

Lovely EDoF cat shot from Rafe – in fact I’d challenge anyone to get this right with an autofocus camera, given the scenario. Dwarves are still clear enough, despite the semi-macro situation

 

EDoF works VERY fast. A frozen goose moment here, despite less than perfect lighting. And where EDoF falls down – trying to get too arty and close-up results in your main subject being blurred and all the rest nice and crisp!

Nokia’s decision to go down the EDoF route for the E6 is debatable – the EDoF unit is certainly smaller (thinner) than the auto-focus one in the E72, enabling the camera ‘hump’ to be less pronounced, and the video quality it produces is spectacular. But a small fraction of the existing E71/E72 user base are going to, rightly, be frustrated that a simple photographic operation that they’ve done for years (e.g. scanning a business card) is no longer possible. EDoF remains a gamble that Nokia is taking and, not being a betting man, I’m not one to place money either way! I can certainly see the pros and cons for EDoF and auto-focus and, to be honest, they’re well balanced. See my earlier pieces on the technology, linked above.

The E6’s form factor again raises a few relevant issues, however:

• Snaps are taken with the device upright, i.e. in portrait mode, so that the screen is in landscape. This means that there’s no need for a camera shutter button and so the d-pad does the job instead. Once you get used to this, it actually works rather well, plus there’s no need for focussing (using the ‘t’ key on the E71 and the optical d-pad on the E72) here because of EDoF.
• The camera glass on the back is flush with the surface of the ‘hump’, i.e. there’s no recessing at all, just as on the E7. This looks stylish and seems efficient, but whereas most E7 owners are liable to keep their Communicator housed in a case, the E6 is much more likely to be thrown into a pocket and this ‘scratch resistant plastic’ camera ‘glass’ is awfully, awfully vulnerable. We’ll report back in due course.

As with video playback, Nokia has buried camera functionality slightly, with the Camera icon deep down in Applications and with no default hardware shortcut (though you can assign a long press on one of the one-touch keys, of course). The interface is almost identical to that on the E6’s larger brethren, though it actually works better here. Not because the d-pad might be used to navigate around (it can’t) but because the S60 ‘touch’ Camera software was always optimised around stabbing options on screen, with no thought to efficiency. At least here all the camera options are close enough together that you can adjust them one-handed, with your thumb – on the larger devices, changing a setting is definitely a two-handed operation!

Video capture quality is again excellent, with EDoF providing fabulous footage as long as you steer away from ‘macro’ subjects. And the same super MEMS microphone as the E7 and N8 appears in evidence, providing a crisp soundtrack. In the video embedded below, up the resolution and maximise as needed:

In exactly the same way as on the other Symbian^3/Anna phones, there’s a thumbnailed photo gallery and the usual sharing and editing functions. There are no surprises for anyone who’s seen the other phones in the series, other than that the size of screen interface elements has been tweaked to make the buttons and icons finger friendly even on a 2.4″ screen.

 

 

The most common photo editing operations will be cropping, plus some red-eye removal – it’s all quick and painless and the original photos always stay as well, so you can have multiple goes at improving a shot. Despite the enlargement of the main control features though, plenty of elements in the applications are at original size and using the photo editor can be a bit fiddly on such a small screen.

The same video editor is included as on the other Symbian^3 devices – it’s only a novelty though, especially on a screen this small. Putting video sequences together is fiddly and the existing huge downside of not being able to save projects and tweak them later remains. Best avoided unless you’re trying to impress your friend down the pub.

 

 

Steve’s concluding thoughts on the E6

There’s no doubting the popularity of the QWERTY candybar (or ‘slab qwerty’, as others call it) form factor. Having a relatively compact, robust phone with a permanent full keyboard is an obvious boon and there will always be something of a niche for this. Whether this is a viable form factor for a 2011 smartphone is slightly less clear cut. So many of the activities we associate with smartphones now – consuming multimedia content (as above), browsing desktop-class web sites, playing high resolution games, managing high traffic social networking accounts – are all far better with a larger screen, which is why we’ve seen the Nokia N8, E7 and X7 in the Symbian world and even larger displays on phones running Android.

Back in 2009 when the E71 was launched, these expectations weren’t so high and the fabulous build quality of the device, combined with the huge battery life, was enough to sway users over – the E71 was a big hit. The followup E72, a year later, even though a superior device in many ways, wasn’t quite as sought after – partly because the build quality was lower and partly because of the above mentioned factors – a QVGA display on a device sold through 2010 just didn’t ring true for a lot of smartphone buyers. Yet Nokia has been keen to keep the form factor going, which is why we now have the E6, with four times the number of display pixels, E71-class build quality, E7-level specifications and the very latest Symbian build. What’s not to like?

The hardware of the E6 is indeed spectacularly good, rolling in most of the best bits of the E71 and E72 – it’s very solid indeed and there are some lovely detailed touches, from battery cover catch to tethered microUSB port cover to volume buttons to screen quality. But I also remember further back in Nokia’s timeline, to 2005, to the E61 (and then E61i), a similar form factor but with a much larger 2.8″ screen and more spacious keyboard. This was the form factor that I, for one, really wanted to see Nokia revive, with VGA screen and up to date internals. It’s interesting that two of the E6’s biggest competitors are the Samsung Galaxy pro at 2.8″ and the Blackberry Bold 9900 at 2.8″. Yes, the device ends up being slightly wider, but for me it would have been a compromise well worth making.

Especially if you’re going to put in a high resolution VGA display. One of the biggest issues on the E6 has been the struggle to present information and controls on screen at a sensible size for the average person’s eyesight. Thankfully, almost all dialogs and layouts have indeed been tweaked for the E6, though every now and then a (HTML-based) screen pops up that has clearly not been modified significantly from the nHD original (on a 3.5″ or 4″ screen), e.g. some of the message renders in Nokia Email, the pop-up options in Web, or the login screen in Ovi Store. Third party applications are a mixed bag and, yes, games are a particular challenge, playing with bars beside their display, playing erratically or not working at all.

 

With the caveat that for the most part you’ll still need quite good eyesight to use the E6 and that you may have to resort to the bundled Font Magnifier, as I did, the Nokia E6 is a largely successful transplant of the nHD Symbian touch interface onto what was resolutely a non-touch, d-pad-driven form factor. As Rafe has mentioned, you quickly get used to the virtual soft keys and indeed it’s easy to get so sucked into the touch interface that you forget the d-pad is still there. Yet when you need it, the d-pad does the same faithful job it always used to. The rest of the E6 hardware is terrific – the keyboard is better than ever, the presence of dual 2mm/microUSB charging is a delight, the one-touch keys are really useful and the screen is much clearer than it has any right to be.

It’s true that the 2011 activities mentioned above are still not a natural fit for this form factor, which means that the E6 is destined to remain in its own niche in the industry, for those who appreciate compactness and battery life and yet still need hardware qwerty. For those who spend a lot more time on email, text messaging and time/life management than they do on entertainment and the Web.

If it sounds like you’re firmly in the E6’s niche though, you won’t go far wrong with it and Nokia has made sure the phone is built to last a lifetime.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13075_Nokia_E6_part_4-multimedia_and.php

Nokia X7 (5)

It’s still the case that a Symbian powered smartphone comes with a huge number of utility programs on the device. Out of the box there is an impressive collection of PDA-based applications, push email clients, web browsers, MS-Exchange support (although only to one account), turn by turn navigation, social network clients – and the icon count on the X7, just because I do it for every review, is fifty eight.

One thing to point out here is that Symbian Anna has continued the trend from Nokia of deprecating the use of a specific icon to represent a folder of applications. On the X7, icons for folders have the same shape and styling as the built in applications. To get to the count of fifty eight icons out of the box, I had to tap everything just to make sure there wasn’t another screen of icons behind an icon. Confusing for me, mystifying for someone new to the system. It’s not a great start for the human/machine interface.

But the marketplace today is not just focussed on the “out of the box” experience, it’s about the app economy. How well can you extend the functionality of your smartphone? How well can the X7 cope when you think “I want a standalone Foursquare client”, “I want to find a new game to keep me amused in this queue” or “can I get to my Dropbox files?” The X7 is a consumer device, so we must keep consumer perceptions in mind, and that means looking at the X7 with the app-economy filter in place, because that’s how it will be measured at the point of sale, in use, and by the markets in the majority of use cases.

 

So it’s great to see the “Store” icon in the top level of the application launcher, and one of the default icons on the home screen (the others being “Contacts”, “Web” and “Maps”). Hit the icon and you get taken to the Ovi Store (expect that branding to slowly change back to give prominence to Nokia in time!) and the featured applications list.

I like that you’re not automatically asked to sign into an account when the store is launched. You’re given the opportunity to browse, take a look around, and it’s only at the point of purchase/download that you are asked who you are. That’s smart thinking.

Existing users can simply log on with their Nokia account, while others (let’s be honest, my gut feeling is that most people buying the X7 will be new to Nokia) can create their Nokia account on the device over two screens (asking just for an email, password, mobile number and an ‘accept the terms & conditions’ confirmation). Either route should see you logged into the store in under a minute.

 

We can ignore all the problems that the Ovi Store has had in previously lives. What’s on offer here is a well laid out store, with lots of content, that keeps your application version up to date (by checking for later versions whenever it is run) and is fun to use.

The biggest battle the X7 has is not going to be in the volume of content, it’s going to be in two perceptions of the content. The first is the online view that the Ovi store does not have a lot of content, and that there are “no apps” for Nokia. The latter is clearly false, and over the last few months we here at All About Symbian are finding more and more choice every day in applications and games that we should be reviewing. But being clearly false in empirical terms is not the same as the perception, and we come back to how the X7, and Symbian as a whole, is being portrayed in the market.

That also leads into the “dead platform” argument which has been running since Feb 11 this year, and is likely to run through till at least 2016. What is clear is that while many new apps are being released for Symbian, it’s not in the first tier releases of big brands. Those go to iOS and Android, with Symbian popping up as the “third” platform (and sometimes “fourth”) of many major games and utilities. There’s every chance you’ll get the same genres and titles on Symbian, you just might not get them the same days as Android and iPhone users will. Is that something the X7 audience will live with?

The question is more: are you a follower of fashion, or happy to get something that’s similar but unique. The latter viewpoint is far better suited to the Ovi Store and the Symbian App economy. It’s not the same as Android or iOS (which share a huge commonality, if we’re honest), it’s different. Does it deliver the same results? No – that’s the whole point. Am I personally happy with what’s on offer? Yes, but I can see why many people will want each smartphone OS to have exactly the same choice of apps from the same developers.

Okay, we’ve found some apps we want (through direct website links, using the search dialog, or just browsing through categories), we’re signed in, let’s download an application. Passing through the payment screen (if required) we can use credit card payment, or Operator Billing if available. The latter is one of the more impressive points that Nokia has to offer. It’s far better for developers to have the point of payment as frictionless as possible – and “would you like this added to your bill or deducted from your PAYG balance?” is about as frictionless as accounting can get.

 

Once downloaded, you’re given the chance to launch the application right away (another sensible touch) but of course it’s also installed into the phone, and available from the system screen, handily under the “Applications” folder icon (which happily is a folder, and not an app called applications). You can re-organise these at a later date, and the expected action of a long press on an icon will bring up the Edit Applications mode. Old sweats like me can still choose “Edit” from the Options menu to have the same effect.

Probably the only issue I have with the Ovi Store is the delay in switching between screens and scrolling quickly through long lists – even with caching, a lot of information is being pulled over the internet connection from the databases at the Ovi Store end. In action, the delay is similar to that of other operating systems (trust the stopwatch), but subjectively it feels longer.

The Ovi Store is pretty welcoming to new users – from opening with a list of featured applications, to hand-picked collections of applications to help you get the best from your phone (I love the idea of “Apps to impress your friends” but it seems to be full of rather trivial suggestions). Yes there are issues – the maximum of five downloads/updates of an application, as opposed to a title being assigned to your Ovi account in perpetuity, being the main one – but I think that the Store has matured over the last year or so to become a genuine contender in the smartphone ecosystems. Thanks to the Ovi Store, the X7 has a flow of fresh content to users, with fun and functionality in equal measure.

 

Let’s be honest though, Symbian has not been designed for such a free-flowing number of applications.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13080_Nokia_X7-Part_4_The_Applicatio.php

Nokia E6 (4)

Introduction

Nokia, with its current Symbian^3 phones, is striving to maintain as much commonality between the software on the devices as possible. The E6, therefore, has the same enterprise software features as the other Symbian^3 phone. Symbian Anna does bring some important enterprise related updates and additions, which means there are some differences in the short term, but with the E7 and other Symbian^3 devices due to get the Symbian Anna update next month that’s only a consideration for the next few weeks.

This approach contrasts with the earlier generation of devices where Eseries and Nseries device had different software features. Nonetheless the E6 is clearly positioned as an enterprise focused device; as such, the business dimensions become more important when assessing the device. With that in mind, this part of our E6 review considers the enterprise capabilities of the device in more detail.

 

Mail

The Mail application, which can be accessed via the email homescreen widget, via the dedicated hardware key, or direct from the top level of the app launcher, provides the hub for all email activity on the E6. There’s support for the key email features, such as multiple accounts, HTML email (including pinch to zoom), folders and on-server contact search.

Email set up is easy, in most cases you’ll only need to enter your email address and password. Once set up, you’re dropped into a client that uses the standard conventions of collapsible lists, column headings, drop down menus, and so on, to display and sort email. The reading and composition views are similarly straightforward. Taken as a whole, it is a solid implementation that should serve the average user well. It also works with any email account, providing the same core feature set regardless of which email provider or technology you use.

Standard email (POP, IMAP), by default, is routed through Nokia’s Mail service, which means your email passes through Nokia servers. This is done for two reasons, first it allows push functionality to be added to any email account, and secondly because it allows Nokia to optimise data transfer to and from the device, cutting energy requirements and thus giving longer battery life. This second factor becomes especially important if you’ve configured two or more email accounts. You can choose not to have your email routed via Nokia’s gateway – when setting up the email account, decline the term and conditions screen and the direct settings will be used instead.

Reading an HTML email; composing an email. Note the auto-complete on the to: field.

Microsoft Exchange is also supported. Nokia’s implementation, previously known as Mail for Exchange, is now fully integrated into the Mail application, appearing as one of the options when setting up a new email account. Exchange functionality has continued to evolve over the years, becoming increasingly feature rich and mature. The latest additions, which arrive with Symbian Anna, include full support for meeting requests and improved security policy support (including the capability to turn on encryption on the device remotely from the Exchange remote device management software). One notable limitation is that only one Exchange account can be configured at a time. In addition to email, an Exchange account can also be set to synchronise contacts, appointments and to dos.

Each email account can have its own homescreen widget, which shows the two most recent emails and the number of new emails in the top right hand corner. The widget acts as a shortcut, touching it drops you straight into the inbox for the appropriate email account. As with other Symbian devices, email notifications are a relatively weak area for the E6. There’s no integration with the notification light (it’ll only alert you to missed calls and text messages) or the notification widget (calls, messages, appointments). The email widget graphical flag, plus an audio and/or vibrate alert, set via the Profiles, are the only options available. On the plus side, the E6’s dedicated email key makes it quick to jump into the Mail application from anywhere on the device. A short press takes you to the inbox, a long press takes you to the ‘compose new email’ screen. Both of these can be changed (including which email account they apply to) from the E6’s Settings application.

Nokia E6 shortcut keys

When comparing devices, it is important to realise that the email experience on any device depends a great deal on the underlying service provider and infrastructure. For example, Android devices provide an excellent Gmail implementation, but are arguably weaker if you do not use the Google powered service. Nokia, with its Nokia Mail service/gateway, takes a more generalist approach, delivering a similar email experience, regardless of the email service provider. Similarly, Blackberry devices coupled with BES, arguably continues to provide the best mobile messaging experience. However, for Blackberry devices coupled with BIS, things are, perhaps, more evenly matched.

Email was previously a relatively weak area for Nokia devices, but the latest incarnation of Nokia’s Mail application is a good general email client and the Nokia Mail service provides an easy way to set up and get email onto the device. This means Nokia now, in general, matches the functionality available on competing smartphones. Overall speed, most notably when dealing with HTML email, is a little slower than on the latest iOS and Android devices, but this can be set against other quirks on the respective platforms.

Combining the E6’s email software and associated services with its hardware gives a device that has very good messaging credentials. There is room for improvement on the software side, but for the majority of users, especially with the E6’s excellent keyboard, it should be a happy experience.

Nokia E6’s Mail application

 

Contacts and Calendar

The Contacts application remains as important as ever, but there’s not a great deal that has changed here in recent years. As on the other Symbian^3 devices, Nokia Social and Ovi Maps are integrated into Contacts to a limited extent, for social networking information and location respectively, but these are both very much add-ons rather than core functionality changes.

Contacts can be searched from within the application or via the dedicated Search application, but with the E6 the easiest way is start typing a name from the homescreen. The smart dialer will kick in, switch to the Telephone application, and list the possible matches. Selecting a name will drop you into the appropriate contact card, but you can also press the green/send key to jump straight into a call.

If you have a lot of entries in your address book then it’s worth using the ‘favourite contacts’ feature. This places favourite contacts at the top of the list in the Contacts application, making them easier to find. Annoyingly, there’s no connection to the Favourites homescreen widget, so you’ll need to set these up twice.

We mentioned the Calendar in the previous part of this review, in relation to Symbian Anna updates. There’s not a great deal to add here; the remaining functionality will be familiar from previous Nokia smartphones. Those coming from the E72 will appreciate the addition of support for multiple calendars (colour coded throughout), which was added in Symbian^3. Other than that, the basic functionality remains unchanged, as should be clear from the screenshots below.

Both Contacts and Calendar have dedicated shortcut keys. A short press jumps into the respective application, while a long press takes you to the new contact or new appointment screen. Having these one touch shortcuts keys is a good use of space, but also reinforces the idea that this is a business focused device. It means you can jump into core application very quickly. It is possible to change these actions in the device’s Settings application. For example, you could opt to have a long press of the Contacts key open the Web application.

 

Enterprise applications

Outside of Mail and PIM, the key enterprise applications are all found in the Office folder, which sits here in the top level of the application launcher; this an example of one of the ways Nokia rearranges the application and folder structure to suit the target market and positioning of each of its Symbian^3 phones.

The usual standard applications (File manager, Dictionary, Intranet, Notes, Zip, Calculator, Recorder, Message reader) are all present, along with a number of fully licensed third party applications (Quickoffice, Adobe Reader, Communicator, F-Secure and Joikuspot).

A new addition to the standard list, arriving with Symbian Anna, is the Intranet application, which aims to make it easier to access internal company networks (e.g. Intranet, VoIP, file servers) via VPN connections. For the most part, users will be reliant on their IT department for fulfillment, but if you know what you’re doing then it is possible to enter the necessary settings yourself. VPN connections are configured in the Settings application (Connectivity->Settings->VPN). Although not directly tested during the review period, the VPN functionality appears to require a policy server to configure it and may only work with specific VPN gateways.

Quickoffice (version 6.4.413) provides full document viewing, editing and creation for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Quickoffice is excellent at maintaining document integrity (i.e. preserving layout and formatting) after editing on a mobile device. The word processing options cover the most common use cases but are relatively basic (fonts, formatting, bullets, tables). Similarly, the spreadsheet editing is sufficient for formula changes and data entry, but more advanced features such as charting are not available. Likewise, presentation editing just allows for quick text changes and some basic positioning.

Quickoffice for Symbian hasn’t really moved on much in the last 12 months. Understandably, following the Microsoft-Nokia partnership announcement (the first one), Quickoffice has chosen to focus their efforts on the Android and iOS platforms. The Symbian version has received maintenance releases, but no major updates. This is not as serious as it sounds, the current version is still more than sufficient to meet the majority of ‘on the go’ office document viewing and editing needs, but it is a good example of how Nokia’s changing strategy can impact on third party applications.

Adobe Reader, in part developed by Quickoffice, provides a PDF viewer, completing the standard set of programs for handling email attachments. Communicator Mobile, a client for Microsoft’s business-focused instant messaging service (recently rebranded to Lync), which is integrated into the Contacts application, completes the Microsoft-related enterprise tools.

F-Secure Mobile provides a range of security-related functionality. However, only the Anti-Theft element of the software is licensed, upgrading to the other components (Virus protection, Firewall and Browsing protection) requires an additional subscription payment (€36.90 for 12 months, €56.90 for 24 months). This seems pricey, and aside from giving IT managers peace of mind, isn’t really unnecessary, given the current virus and malware situation on Symbian^3 (non-existent). In some markets, the Track and Protect application and service from Klomptek is bundled instead of F-Secure Mobile. It may not have the same brand recognition, but is a superior solution, so it’s a shame it was not used worldwide.

Also bundled with the E6 (in the Applications folder) are World Traveler, which provides miscellaneous travel utilities, and JoikuSpot Premium, which turns your phone into a WiFi hotspot. This provides an alternative to tethering by USB cable or Bluetooth. The advantage of the hotspot option over tethering is greater device compatibility (e.g. tablet, eBook reader) and the ability to connect more than one device at a time (e.g. share a connection with colleagues); the disadvantage of the hotspot approach is that it uses a lot more power.

 

Enterprise settings and features

Tucked away in the Settings application are SIP and VoIP (Connectivity -> Admin settings). This will usually be set by via an automatic configuration (provisioning) file from your service provider, but you can enter the settings manually if you download and install the SIP VoIP Settings application, which means it is possible to set up the E6 with any standard SIP-based VoIP service. VoIP calling is integrated into the Telephone and Contacts applications and can be set as the default calling type, making integration almost completely seamless. Available via Ovi Store are the Nokia Call Connect applications for Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent, which make it easier to set up the E6 with PBX products from both companies.

Also in the Settings application are a number of security-related configuration options (Phone -> Phone Management -> Security Settings), which have the greatest relevance to enterprise users, but will also be of interest to consumers concerned about the security of data on their device. Phone and SIM card settings allow you to set a PIN code for the device and configure when you should be prompted to enter it. To protect your phone if it is stolen you can also specify a lock code and set the phone to lock if a different SIM card is used and/or on receipt of a specified ‘secret’ text message (remote locking).

New in Symbian Anna are the encryption settings. Each drive (phone memory, mass storage, memory card) can optionally be encrypted, providing additional data protection. This does, theoretically, add an overhead to device operations, but encryption and decryption is hardware accelerated and we couldn’t detect a noticeable difference during testing.

 

Enterprise multimedia

With the QWERTY form factor, the E6 is not, in design terms, a multimedia centric device, but there are some features that have a bearing on enterprise functions. Primary among these is the camera. On the E71 and E72, this was used for business card and document scanning via the Multiscanner application. However, this application and functionality is no longer present on the E6.

This is because the E6 has the same 8 megapixel EDoF camera unit as the E7, C6-01 and C7 (in contrast to the E71 and E72 which had 3.2 and 5.0 megapixel auto-focus cameras respectively). We’ve written extensively about the performance and limitations of EDoF. The short summary is that EDoF units work well for the average user, capable of capturing both high quality photos and excellent HD (720p) video, but have major limitations in macro performance (sub 40 cm). The poor performance in macro mode makes document and business card scanning difficult. It is theoretically still possible to do this (hold the camera more than 50 cm away from object), especially if you’re just looking to create an aide memoire (rather than OCR), but the absence of the Multiscanner application (or a decent third party replacement) effectively means this functionality is not available on the E6.

EDoF camera, good for cat pictures, not so good for macro (click through for original size).

In more general terms, the E6 offers the same broad range of multimedia software capabilities as the other Symbian^3 devices (see multimedia sections of our reviews for theC7, C6-01, E7 and X7). It’s worth considering these in more detail, so Steve, in part four of this review, which we will publish in the next few days, will be looking at multimedia consumption on the E6, plus real world camera usage and performance.

 

Enterprise conclusion

Fully integrating the E6 and other Nokia Eseries products into existing corporate infrastructure is relatively straightforward when using standard set ups. During our own tests we didn’t come across any major issues when trying out Microsoft Exchange server configurations. However, text book set-ups do not always exist in reality and past experience with previous Nokia devices suggests that stability and compatibility issues can sometimes arise. For example, some users reported problems with set up on anExchange account with security settings; this has now been fixed, but is a good example of what can happen. The same is true in a wider sense, when considering integration of VoIP, VPN and other services. This is somewhat inevitable given the myriad combination of possible set up and policy environments. It’s not really fair to criticise Nokia too heavily here, as, for the most part, we’re talking about levels of integration significantly beyond what the typical user will use. It is beyond the scope of this review to cover every possible combination in every enterprise environment. Instead, as for any device, we would recommend that companies carry out a full testing program before any wide-scale deployment.

Taken as a whole, the E6 has a wide breath of enterprise features, putting many of its competitors to shame in terms of functionality out of the box. Competing devices can address the majority of inbalances via third party software, but do not always enjoy the same level of integration, with VoIP being the best example of this. Both the Nokia E6 and RIM’s Blackberry devices set the standard here and can both justifiably be said to have enterprise capabilities that are a cut above their closest competitors.

Part of the reason that some QWERTY slab form factor devices have lesser enterprise functionality is that they are becoming more popular amongst consumers. As a result, it is possible to see two classes for this type of device, one orientated towards consumers, the other towards enterprise. On the consumer side, there are devices like the HTC Cha Cha, on the enterprise side there are the Blackberry devices. Nokia, with the E71 and E72, looked to compete against RIM on the enterprise side of the line, but also had some consumer appeal too.

Of course, a strict divide between consumer and enterprise has always been artificial – after all, no one works 24/7. Nokia recognised this when it implemented the ‘Switch mode’ functionality of the E71 / E72, but that was only the start of the trend. Since then, the idea that, to be competitive, enterprise devices need to have a consumer side too has become much more prominent, as RIM knows only too well. The E6 is well placed to take advantage of this trend, it remains a business focused device, but it does have the capabilities to appeal to both enterprise and consumer users.

 

Concluding thoughts on the Nokia E6

With Nokia’s decision to switch to Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, some may question the wisdom in purchasing a Symbian phone. Yes, the wider Nokia strategy is a factor to be aware of, but it is short sighted to write the phone off for this reason alone. It’s worth seeing beyond the narrow vision of the tech aware elite and remembering that there is a very large pool of existing happy Symbian users. As with Nokia’s other Symbian^3 devices, the E6 is less about gaining users from competing platforms than it is about retaining existing Nokia users, be they smartphone owners or Series 40 owners looking for an upgrade.

In the E6, a hybrid device, the characteristics that are most often criticised in Symbian, the legacy of option menus and selection lists, left over from its non-touch past, arguably provides something of an advantage. It means, as we noted in the first part of this review, that the vast majority of the E6’s functionality can still be accessed using only the on-screen softkeys and the D-pad. In a more general sense, it is possible to see the implementation of Symbian on the E6 as emblematic of the platform’s greatest strengths: fully operational with one hand, feature rich, communication centric and conservative in energy usage.

On the hardware side, once you understand the limitations of the form factor, there is, with the possible exception of the camera, little to criticise about the E6. It combines one-handed size, a great keyboard, outstanding battery and excellent connectivity options, with a robust and attractive design.

The hybrid nature of the E6 means that it has all the advantages of a physical keyboard and many of the advantages of a touchscreen device. However, this duality comes at a price; having a physical keyboard means a smaller screen. Thanks to the high screen resolution there’s more information displayed on screen than you might think, but this in turn means that on screen fonts can get quite small. For most, an evaluation of the merits of this inevitable design compromise will be the key factor in determining whether you have any interest in buying the device or not.

This does means that the E6 will appeal most to existing fans of the QWERTY candybar form factor. If you have or have had a Nokia E71 or E72, then the E6 is the ideal upgrade, offering a natural evolution into the touch world, while maintaining the best of the non-touch world. Similarly, it provides a possible alternative to RIM’s Blackberry devices and would also be a good step up for users of the Nokia C3 and similar devices.

In a direct comparison with other smartphones, the E6 is not, with the exception of battery use times, going to be winning many specification races. However this belies the power that lurks within. It may not have the same zeitgeist as the full touch devices, but if you are looking to get stuff done, then the E6 will be a very able companion.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13069_Nokia_E6_part_3-multimedia_ent.php

Nokia E6 (3)

Introduction

The E6 ships with Symbian^3 with the Anna software update. As with the N8, C7, C6-01 and E7, Nokia is striving to maintain as much commonality between the software on the devices as possible. In general, this means the same software functionality is available on all the devices, even if the marketing materials and positioning of the device promote different features.

This means that what we said about the software in our reviews of the N8 (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5) and E7 (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6) can also be applied to the E6. However, the Nokia E6 is one of the first devices to ship with Symbian Anna, which brings some important changes to the Web, Calendar and Messaging applications. More importantly, the E6’s unique screen resolution means there are some important UI layout differences, which has implications for both the built in software and third party games and applications.

 

Symbian^3 on the E6

In general, the UI layout you’ll see on the E6 is a compressed version of the landscape mode on other Symbian^3 devices. The softkeys, the text of which is slightly enlarged, are always at the bottom of the screen, with additional areas (e.g. toolbar), where used, on the left or right hand side of the screen. All of these elements are increased in pixel size to take account of the high pixel density; the end result is still a decrease in physical size, especially when compared to the X7’s 4″ screen, but they remain finger-touch friendly. As an illustration of this, here’s a series of screenshots comparing the view of the X7 with the E6:

E6 UI layout compared to X7; pixel scale

E6 UI layout compared to X7; approximation of physical scale

However, this compressed landscape view is not universal. The Messaging application, for example, places a thin toolbar along the top of the main mail list view, which maximises the space available for showing names and subject lines. This variation between applications is a good indicator of the amount of thought that’s gone into optimising UI layout. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot more polished than some devices that have made a similar transition.

Similarly, both the homescreen and app launcher have tweaked layouts. The E6 allows for up to five homescreens, with three widget slots on every page, for a theoretical maximum of 15 widgets (compared to 18 for other Symbian^3 phones). The reduced number of widgets per page means they remain readable and usable despite the E6’ssmaller screen. On the left hand side of every page of the homescreen there are status panels for clock, profiles and notifications (missed calls, SMSs and appointments). In a similar vein, the app launcher screen has three rows of four icons, rather than two rows of six.

With the E6’s relatively small physical screen size, on-screen text can get very small. There’s clearly a balance between font size and how much is displayed on the screen at one time. In general, a good balance has been struck, but there are some occasions where fonts seem to be too small or are out of proportion with each other. Potentially, these could be fixed in a software update, but regardless there are still going to be occasions when those with poor visual acuity will struggle to read what’s on the screen. Fortunately, there are a couple of options to help get around this issue. Symbian^3 includes settings to control the font size (Settings -> Phone -> Display -> Font size), but this only effects a limited number of UI elements, limiting its usefulness.

A better option is the bundled Font Magnifier application from PsiLoc. This allows you to adjust the font size from 80% to 140% (in 1% increments), offering both a finer degree of control and a larger maximum font size. More importantly, the application has a bigger effect than the built in settings. Some fonts, including some of those in HTML controls, remain unchanged, but all of the key areas seem to be covered. Font Magnifier is hidden away in the Applications->Tools folder and, despite initial appearances, is fully licensed for the lifetime of the device.

Font size set to 100% (left) and 120% (right).

 

Symbian Anna

The Symbian Anna software update that ships with the E6 offers a number of usability improvements. However, two of the most significant, the virtual portrait keyboard and split screen text input, are not applicable to the E6 due to the presence of a physical QWERTY keyboard. The updated iconography adds visual appeal and gives the device a more contemporary look, but more significant are updates to the Web and Calendar applications.

Web is updated from version 7.2 to version 7.3, but the improvements are larger that this numbering would suggest. Performance is much improved, especially on large web pages, with both page rendering and scrolling significantly faster. The biggest improvements come in the application’s UI, which is now less clunky. The address/search bar sits at the top of every page, but is also available, at any time, by swiping down from the of the screen. At the bottom of the screen, two floating buttons, on either side of the screen, give access to navigation (back) and additional browser functions. This layout maximises the browsing area without relying on the full screen mode switch of earlier versions.

Web standards support has also been improved, though not to the same extent as the UI. For example, improved JavaScript support (1.8) now means the commenting system of All About Symbian is fully operational, the first parts of HTML 5 support have also been introduced, but more work is required here. As a whole, the new browser doesn’t quite measure up to the latest releases of Android or iOS, but it is a lot closer than before and should be sufficient for most users.

It’s worth pointing out here that web browsing on the E6 is somewhat inherently limited by the small size of the screen. While the browser can handle ‘desktop’ sites just fine and the high resolution screen helps pack a lot of information onto the screen, there’s a point at which you start squinting to read text. The zoom in/out and/or pinch to zoom does help here, but there is a limit to what you can do with a 2.46 inch screen. This means it’s worth seeking out the mobile version of websites, far more so than is true for the bigger touchscreen devices.

The Calendar application has been updated with an improved ‘Month’ view, split between a month grid and list of appointments for the currently highlighted day. A new ‘Day’view has been added, showing appointments in a grid form, making it easier to see schedule conflicts and free time slots. The old ‘Day’ view has been renamed to ‘Agenda’view, which shows the day’s appointments in a list.

The iconography, Web and Calendar are the most obvious Anna updates, but there are others too. Of particular note for the E6 are a handful of enterprise updates, which we’ll cover in more detail below. A number of other applications have small tweaks (e.g. Photos now opens up in the thumbnail view, rather than the album view) and there are behind the scenes performance and power management improvements. The impact of the latter is difficult to assess – the Symbian Anna devices do feel quicker, but some of that may come from factory fresh configuration (i.e. less loaded with data and applications). As you would expect, Symbian Anna ships with updated versions of the application libraries (Qt 4.7 etc.) and Ovi service applications (e.g. Ovi Maps 3.6). Even so, there still a few updates available (in ‘Sw_update’) as soon as you get the phone out of the box (Ovi Store, QtWebKit, Nokia Social, Videos update),

 

Third party software (apps)

Nokia’s Ovi Store gives an easy way to get third party apps and games onto the device. The E6 ships with version 2.03, which means that the first time you open the client you will be offered an update to version 2.08. This version adds support for application updates, which is well worth having. This lack of alignment between device releases and Ovi Store client releases is a little frustrating, but it seems churlish to complain too much, given the steady rate of updates.

The E6’s VGA resolution screen complicates the picture for third party software. Looking in Ovi Store, it’s quite obvious that there’s less content for the E6 than other Symbian^3 devices. While part of this can be attributed to the limited amount of time the E6 has been available, the X7, announced at the same time, does not suffer the problem to the same extent. So the non-standard (for Symbian) resolution is definitely a contributing factor in app availability.

Comparison of catalogue size for E6-00, X7-00, N8-00 and E72; data from AAS tracking June 2011.

Whether an application works depends on how a developer has implemented the UI. In general, applications that stick to the style guide and are written in Symbian C++ should work correctly. For other applications, including many of those written in Qt, at least some effort will have been needed to be resolution independent or specifically support the E6. Applications using QML are a particular culprit here – the inherent nature of the declarative UI means that the majority of QML applications are resolution fixed. While it is relatively easy to add support for a second resolution (e.g. some do this for landscape versus portrait orientations), very few fully support the E6’s VGA resolution. A few applications support the VGA resolution, but have font related glitches, presumably related to how text is being scaled; an example of this is the Guardian app (second line in headline below is partially obscured).

The situation is worse for games; this is because they are typically written to support a single resolution or aspect ratio. Adding support for the E6 shouldn’t be difficult in most cases, but it does require game developers to create an additional variant and carry out more testing. This means that almost none of the higher graphics quality (‘HD’) games for the N8 are currently available, via the Ovi Store, for the E6 – no Angry Birds, for example. Given the business and messaging focus of the E6 this is, in my view, not a critical failing, but it is something that potential purchasers should be aware of.

The situation is not quite as simple as it may first seem. Because VGA (640 x 480) is a superset of nHD in landscape (640 x 380) a significant portion of applications and games will work, but with blank bars at the top or bottom of the screen. QML applications and games like Nokia Trailers and The Impossible Game fall into this category as do many games, as can be seen in the screenshots below. The small physical size of the screen can make it tricky to use the applications or play the games, but they do work. Understandably, such resolution-degraded applications are not being listed as available for the E6 in Ovi Store (presumably failing the content guidelines). It’s easy to see why this decision has been made, but I do wonder whether it might be worthwhile listing such application anyway, but with a warning about screen resolution support?

Another factor limiting current E6 content availability in Ovi Store is the way the submission process for Ovi Store works. Ovi Store content publishing procedures allow developers to mark an application as being compatible with a certain screen resolution. All devices using that resolution will be implied to work with that application. This means a device like the X7 will already have a significant amount of software available on launch day. However, because the E6 has a different resolution, this automatic assumption, quite sensibly, is not applicable. This means that developers need to explicitly list their software as being VGA (E6) compatible. Inevitably, some will fail to do so even if their application does work on the E6. It’s impossible to know how many applications this might apply to. During testing, I installed the popular game Fruit Ninja, assuming it would have bands similar to those described above, only to find, to my surprise, that it was in fact fully operational. There’s no reason I can see why it should not be listed in Ovi Store for the E6.

As things stand, with a large number of applications and games only available from Ovi Store (i.e. no developing on other ESD sites), the tighter gate-keeping on Ovi Store is essentially exacerbating the E6 third party software situation. In general, the move to app stores has made things a lot easier for consumers, but the E6 resolution issue is a good example of where their more controlled nature may frustrate some users. You can still side load applications, which helps get around some of the issues noted above, but that’s not a real solution.

Fortunately, many of the most popular applications (Opera, Nimbuzz, Fring, Shazam, Mobile Documents, Podcatcher, Gravity) do support the E6’s VGA screen resolution, work without any major problems, and are listed in Ovi Store. It’s not possible to provide a full list of compatible content here, but you can browse the E6 section on the Ovi Store’s website to get a better idea of what’s available.

The third party application situation should improve over time as more E6’s become available and developers take the steps necessary to prepare their content for the E6 and mark it as compatible in Ovi Store. However, it is reasonable to assume that it will always run behind the other Symbian^3 devices.

 

Ovi Services

As with all recent Nokia smartphones, Ovi services provide an important part of the experience. Nokia recently announced it would be retiring the Ovi brand and switching back to Nokia, which means the E6 is likely to be one of the last devices to ship with the Ovi brand.

Nokia’s execution of Ovi service strategy rightly attracted plenty of criticism. There have been some obvious failings (N-Gage, Share, Files),  but the remaining constituent components have now matured and offer a great deal of additional functionality. Ovi Maps, as the industry leader, is the strongest element, but Ovi Music (automatic sign on, carrier billing support, DRM free) and Ovi Store (increasing catalog size, improved client, application update support and improved installations) are better than they are often given credit for.

The limited physical screen size of the E6 means it is perhaps less suited for in-car use, but the QWERTY keyboard makes for very convenient text entry. The UI has been tweaked for the E6’s screen. The main menu has icons arranged in a 4 x 3 grid (6 x 2 on other devices) and the pixel size of the touch elements (e.g. zoom bar) have been increased to ensure they remain touch friendly. The place pages are cramped, so there is room for improvement, but in general the E6 version is well optimised.

Also well implemented is the integration of Ovi services into the phone set up process. When you first switch on the E6, you’ll be asked to log into or create a Nokia account. If you’re already registered with Nokia you should be automatically recognised (this is done using the SIM card) and will be greeted by name.

Once you’ve logged in, the Ovi services on your device will be activated. When you first start Ovi Store, Ovi Music or Ovi Maps you will be automatically signed in. It is a useful time saving measure, although you will need to re-enter your password when making a purchase.

Once you’ve set up Ovi services on the phone, you’ll be offered the opportunity to set up an email account, transfer data from an existing handset and customise the E6 (Bluetooth name, ringtone, wallpaper, and theme). If you follow all these steps, which should take around five minutes, you’ll have a phone that’s fully set up and personalised to you. In a world where post-PC is a buzz word it’s all rather impressive!

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13059_Nokia_E6_part_2-software_and_i.php

Nokia E6 (2)

Nokia E6 review: The E spirit

Introduction

Don’t let your E71/72 smartphone read this. No, it won’t have a heart attack or anything. But you don’t want it suddenly feeling sad and useless. You certainly realize the E71/E72 duo is getting old and rusty. Like it or not, it’s time to move on.

The Nokia E6 will not take No for an answer. A super crisp VGA touchscreen, the finessed Symbian Anna, the strong messenger bloodline and the stainless steel armor are a tempting combination. The package will make long-time Eseries users feel right at home and cheer the upgrades.

   
Nokia E6 official photos

Touchscreen or D-pad is not a decision you’re forced to make. It will come naturally instead. Where the small screen won’t allow the required level of touch precision, the D-pad will fill in. Five homescreen panes to fill with shortcuts and widgets will do better than the good old Active Standby with alternative setups for business and leisure.

Most importantly though, to even the most old-school of Eseries loyalists, touchscreen will be a fair price to pay for finally upping the screen resolution to acceptable levels.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Penta-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA
• Symbian Anna OS
• Messenger bar, stainless steel body, four-row QWERTY keyboard
• 2.46″ 16M-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of 640 x 480 pixel resolution; Gorilla glass protection
• 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 256 MB RAM
• 8GB internal storage, 1GB ROM, microSD card slot
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
• Digital compass
• 8 megapixel fixed-focus camera with dual-LED flash, 720p video recording @ 25fps; geotagging, face detection, smart zoom in video
• Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port, USB-on-the-go
• Flash and Java support for the web browser
• Stereo Bluetooth 3.0
• Smart dialing and voice commands
• DivX, XviD and Matroska video support
• Social network integration
• Office document viewer and editor
• Excellent battery life
• Excellent audio quality

Main disadvantages

• Symbian Anna is still catching up with Android and iOS
• The tiny touchscreen has no room for big fingers
• Fixed-focus camera
• Relatively limited 3rd party software availability

This phone seems to have almost everything – well, save for HDMI and an actual life-size touchscreen. But we’re talking Eseries and the E6 is the business. It feels like Nokia really wanted to rekindle the magic. The E6 makes the E72 look like a routine, cursory attempt at an update. Where the E72 wanted quietly keep on cashing in, the E6 is keen to make a difference. A tall task indeed, considering the times.

   
Nokia E6 live shots

Let’s waste no more time on the introduction and cut to the chase. Follow us on the next page for our traditional hardware inspection.

Unboxing the E6

With an ample 8 GB of inbuilt storage, the Nokia E6 doesn’t come with a memory card in the box. It’s a basic package featuring a compact charger, a microUSB cable and a single-piece headset. That’s that.

 
A basic set of accessories

Nokia E6 360-degree spin

The Nokia E6 stands at 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm. A reasonably spacious control deck separates the 2.46” landscape touchscreen from the comfortable four-row QWERTY keyboard. The phone weighs the respectable 133 grams – a solid piece with a stainless steel battery cover.

http://st.gsmarena.com/vv/spin/nokia-e6-00.swf

Design and construction

The E6 is a looker – in the traditionally sober, understated style of the Eseries. The premium materials and high build quality go without saying.

   
The Nokia E6 in gray and black

We had the chance to use both the black and silver version for our review. There should be a white paint job available too. A limited but carefully chosen selection, considering the target audience.

   
Nokia E6 compared with HTC ChaCha

The front of the black Nokia E6 tends to get all smudgy, while the silver variety is good at hiding fingerprints.

At the rear, the battery cover and camera deck are made of metal, with bits of matt plastic top and bottom.

   
The front • the battery cover and the camera plate

The landscape 2.46″ 16M-color capacitive touchscreen of VGA (640 x 480) resolution takes almost half of the phone’s face. We never missed an opportunity to slate the Eseries messengers for their poor QVGA screens. Even in their prime, they were put to shame by BlackBerries. The E6 will have no more of that.

A VGA screen with a 2.46″ diagonal has higher pixel density than the iPhone 4’s Retina display: 326ppi for the Retina and 328ppi for the Nokia E6.

  
The 2.46” VGA touchscreen

The capacitive screen of the Nokia E6 is as responsive as they come. It is quick to register even the slightest of touches and even pinch zooming is enabled (in the gallery and web browser). Viewing angles are quite good, the colors vivid.

Here’s the table with our brightness measurements. You can learn more about the test here.

Display test	50% brightness			100% brightness
	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio
LG Optimus Black P970	0.27	332	1228	0.65	749	1161
Nokia X7	0	365	∞	0	630	∞
Motorola Atrix 4G	0.48	314	652	0.60	598	991
Apple iPhone 4	0.14	189	1341	0.39	483	1242
HTC Sensation	0.21	173	809	0.61	438	720
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S	0	263	∞	0	395	∞
Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc	0.03	34	1078	0.33	394	1207
Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II	0	231	∞	0	362	∞
Nokia E6	0.52	757	1456	0.57	1004	1631

Our dedicated brightness test confirmed our observations and showed that the Nokia E6 screen is really bright. In fact it’s the brightest unit we have seen, dethroning the LG Optimus Black. Its blacks, on the other hand, aren’t the deepest we have seen, but they are okay for the LCD league. This means that the overall contrast is, among the best we have seen from an LCD.

Something else that the test shows is that the E6 brightness setting has little effect on the actual brightness of the screen. You can see that the difference between the 100% and 50% settings is minimal.

The D-pad is welcome when you need to hit small links on websites – and it is perfectly usable to navigate the menus. You can pretend there’s no touchscreen if you want. Just one thing: a trackpad would’ve made quite a lot of sense – especially in the web browser. The touchscreen is fine but they didn’t get rid of the D-pad. Could’ve easily used the E72 combo and thrown in a trackpad.

 
Make sure you’re comfortable with the screen size

Just above the screen we find the earpiece, a bunch of sensors and the video-call camera.

Underneath the screen is a spacious navigation deck built around a reasonably tactile and palpably raised D-pad. Call and End knobs are on both ends of the deck, the One Touch keys closer to the D-pad. Soft keys are moved over to the screen. The One Touch keys have the usual varying short press / long press functionality.

  
The video-call camera, earpiece and light sensor above the screen • A spacious navigation pad under the display

The QWERTY keyboard is virtually the same as those on the E5 and C3. The keys are reasonably sized and spaced, with good press feedback. They do feel just a tad softer than the E71 but other than that you shouldn’t have any problems.

 
The full QWERTY keyboard promises hassle-free typing

The right side of the Nokia E6 is quite crowded. The volume rocker is on top, with an extra key squeezed in for activating voice commands (long press) and the voice recorder (short press). Just below is the typical Nokia lock slider.

There is also a lanyard eyelet at bottom end of the right side.

  
The crowded right side

The lock slider has another job too: it turns on the Dual-LED flash to serve as a flashlight. You just slide down and hold.

The left side’s only feature is the microUSB port covered with a small plastic lid. There is USB charging and USB-on-the-go functionality provided by the port.

  
The microUSB port on the left

The top accommodates the hot-swappable microSD slot with a plastic flap, the 3.5mm audio jack and the Power key.

The only thing at the bottom is the charger port.

   
Power key, microSD card slot and the 3.5mm audio jack on the top • The charger hole at the bottom

Rearside we find the loudspeaker grill, the dual-LED flash and the 8 megapixel fixed focus camera lens sharing a slightly raised strip of metal.

  
The rear side • the 8-megapixel camera has no autofocus

Under the metal cover is the 1500 mAh Li-Ion BL-4D battery, which powers the Nokia E6. The battery is quoted at up to 672 hours of stand-by in a 2G network or up to 14 hours and 40 minutes of talk-time. Nokia is quick to call it one of the best performers on the market. In real life, the battery lasted two and a half days of really heavy usage: playing videos and music, continuous Wi-Fi connection and 3G data transfers, browsing, social networking, document editing, heavy camera action, etc.

The 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery is promised to be quite a performer

Eseries have long been the standard-setter for build quality and the E6 is well on target. This pocket friendly QWERTY messenger has good ergonomics and high-end looks. It’s a solid attempt to bring the Eseries up to date and we found the touchscreen / D-pad combo to work fine. The screen resolution is a major upgrade, and about time too Nokia showed its messengers the respect they deserve.

   
The Nokia E6 held in hand

Symbian Anna brings new icons and refreshed homescreen

The Nokia E6 and X7 are the first devices to have Symbian Anna out of the box. The new release takes the OS to the next level with a more user-friendly and contemporary user interface, an improved web browser, new split-screen for text input and a better homescreen.

Starting with the homescreen, Anna is showing its fresh coat of polish and a new feature here or there. The homescreen of the E6 consists of five panes, which you can fill up with various widgets (and shortcuts) and reshuffle as you see fit. You can add or delete panes but you don’t get more than five.

  
Symbian Anna comes with a new homescreen

The homescreen scrolling has been vastly improved – the panes move with your finger, not after you’ve done the swipe as it was in Symbian^3.

  
The widget catalogue • re-ordering widgets

Here is a demo video of the Symbian Anna running on Nokia E6:

The menu is mostly unchanged, retaining the hierarchical folder structure, but the icons are new – they are now rounded squares. It’s an aesthetic change mostly

You are free to rearrange icons as you see fit so you might go for placing them all in the main folder and get a flat-ish menu system. You can create custom folders too, which can help you organize your apps. A list view mode is also available but that involves much more scrolling and that’s why we preferred to leave things in grid.

  
Not much has changed in the main menu

The task manager shows screenshots of the running apps, instead of just icons. You also need only a single click to kill them. The downside is the task manager manages to only fit three apps on the screen and you often have to scroll to the one you want.

The refreshed Task manager • only three apps at a time fit on the screen

A neat feature is the popup available by tapping the top right corner of the screen. It gives you a bigger clock, a shortcut to the connectivity menu, a button for battery info (charge in % and “Activate power saving” shortcut) plus notifications: e.g. missed calls, new messages and others. It just shows the number of events, it won’t show you the beginning of a new text message like Android’s notification area will.

The popup gives quick info on events and some handy shortcuts

You can also toggle Wi-Fi and USB connectivity settings from here.

The Lockscreen

The slide naturally locks or unlocks the screen but if you hold it down you’ll turn on the flashlight. The same action will turn it off.

The Nokia E6 handles very well but Symbian Anna brings no bump in performance compared to Symbian^3, the Anna release is more of a feature, rather than a performance update. Although heavy multi-taskers will frown at the 256MB of RAM we didn’t get any “Out of memory” errors even with a couple of RAM-intensive apps running in the background.

Symbian Anna is definitely a step in the right direction, but we’re afraid the competition has zoomed far ahead. While Apple and Google are trying to outdo each other with all sorts of user interface innovation, Symbian has just caught up with a few years ago.

One positive change is that there’s always a Back virtual key visible, which makes navigating apps simpler.

On the other hand, the Options menu still relies on the menu/submenu structure, which is a relic of the non-touch days of Symbian and is begging to be changed to an Android-like solution (menu key that shows a panel with 6-8 buttons for the most common options, maybe a More button if you really want to dig into the settings).

Good phonebook, the QWERTY saves a few clicks

The Nokia E6 comes with almost the same fully functional phonebook that Symbian^3 had to offer. There are a few cosmetic changes plus the new aspect, but that’s pretty much everything. The phonebook can be synced with an Exchange ActiveSync account (Gmail offers that too), but as all the previous Symbian versions, the Anna will also cause some annoying problems here.

Symbian has been offering users virtually unlimited phonebook capacity and excellent contact management for quite some time but plus some social networking integration.

  
The E7 phonebook is pretty good

Contact details are displayed in two tabs. The first gives a summary of the contact info – a quick shortcut to call the primary number and then several lines, each of which groups similar info (e.g. tapping the “Message – 5 numbers” line lets you pick which number to send the message to). There is a shortcut to the Social Services app too.

The second tab just lists all available info sorted by type (names, phone numbers, email and so on). This tab isn’t structured so it takes a bit more scrolling to find what you need.

  
Viewing a contact

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name. You can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

Searching is very easy – just type something with the QWERTY keyboard and you are in. There is also alphabet scrolling in case you want to use the touchscreen.

Selecting some of your contacts as favorites moves them to the top of the displayed list. This saves you quite a lot of scrolling.

 
Marking a contact as favorite moves it on top of the list

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like.

You can assign personal ringtones and videos to individual contacts. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

  
Editing Dexter’s details

A really nice touch when editing a contact’s details is the option to enter their address by locating it on a map.

The social network integration includes Facebook and Twitter, which should be fine for the vast majority of users. However you will need to go an extra step to check out your contact’s status and then another one to see their profile. We agree it might have created a mess if that was all added to the already lengthy phonebook profile but one of those extra steps is probably redundant.

  
Checking out the Dee Dee Facebook profile through the phonebook

Excellent telephony

Making and receiving calls is vital for a business phone and the Nokia E6 is a champ at it and we didn’t experience any poor reception issues or dropped calls.

  
The in-call screen • Nokia E7 supports smart dialing • There’s well tuned voice dialing too

Smart dialing is available on the E6 and is practical as ever. You just punch in a few letters from the desired contact’s name and select it from the list that comes up to initiate a call.

Another option that the E6 offers is voice dialing. It’s activated by pressing and holding the call key or the dedicated Voice key in the middle of the volume rocker and is fully speaker-independent. As far as we can tell performs greatly, recognizing all the names we threw at it.

In noisier environments though, its effectiveness might suffer. Bear in mind too, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, the system will dial either the default number or the first in the list.

The final option for starting a call is via the Favorites widget on your homescreen.

Thanks to the proximity sensor the screen turns off automatically when you hold the phone next to your cheek during a call. The E6 also has the neat accelerometer-based feature that lets you mute the ringer by turning the phone face down.

The Nokia E6 sat our traditional loudspeaker test as well. Unfortunately, the phone managed only an Average result. More info on the test, as well as other results can be found here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Nokia E72	65.7	60.2	66.3	Below Average
Nokia E6	68.8	61.5	70.7	Average
Nokia E71	68.0	66.5	76.2	Good
Samsung Galaxy Pro B7510	69.6	72.0	81.9	Very Good
LG Optimus One P500	77.1	74.5	77.9	Excellent

A messaging expert

Nokia 6 is a business oriented smartphone and as such it’s all about messaging. The E6 has an excellent hardware QWERTY keyboard and will tackle all your messaging needs with ease.

  
The Nokia E6 messaging app • Conversation view

All your incoming messages arrive in a common inbox. If you like, you can also get them sorted as conversations, in threaded view. The Nokia E6 uses a common editor for all types of messages too.

Stuff like a character counter in SMS goes without saying.

  
Sending Dexter a message

Insert some multimedia content and the message is automatically transformed into an MMS. In that case, the character counter turns into a data counter showing kilobytes.

The Nokia E6 email client allowed us to setup our Gmail account quite easily, while getting it to sync with an Exchange ActiveSync server required some extra work (we explained that in our Phonebook section). In most cases though, all you need is to enter a username and a password and you will be good to go in no time.

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia E6.

Messages can be ordered by various criteria such as date, sender, subject, priority or even by attachments, searching is available as well.

  
The email client

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. You can set it to check only on given days and have it check more regularly than usual during peak time (which you can define).

There is also support for attachments, signatures and everything you would normally need on a mobile device.

Same ol’ gallery

Symbian Anna offers exactly the same gallery as the Symbian^3 and its predecessors, which only qualifies as passable by modern standards. The only new addition is the kinetic scrolling (finally!)

The sweep gestures and getting pinch-zooming are here, but still there is nothing eye-candy inside.

  
The E7 image gallery

Unlike its Symbian^3 predecessors, the E6 finally introduces the kinetic scrolling but not kinetic panning. We are just tired of asking for those simple gestures.

The familiar pinch gesture works for zooming in/out, as the double taping or even the on-screen slider. You can’t zoom with the volume rocker though.

 
Zooming in on a single photo

Selection of multiple photos for deleting or sharing is available straight from the gallery. There are plenty of sharing options – you can send the image via MMS, email or Bluetooth or you can share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. To do the latter you should configure your social accounts first.

The final features of the image gallery include the image tagging system for easier image sorting, the slide show and the albums system (again helping you sort your image database).

Overall, picture browsing is relatively fast even with 12 MP pics, even when you are zooming.

Image and video players

Nokia E6 has two very useful apps – the image and video editors. Both have very simple interfaces but offer a powerful set of functionality.

With the Image Editor you can crop, rotate, resize, apply text/effects/pictures/stamps, clean red-eye effects, etc. Everything is touch-optimized and unless you have really big fingers, you won’t have problems here.

 
The Image Editor

The Video Editor has two modes – make/edit videos (from your pictures and videos) or create slideshows from your photos. Once again the controls are touch-optimized and really simple to use.

  
The Video Editor

Eye-candy music player

Symbian Anna running on the Nokia E6 has the same music player as Symbian^3 has – the one with the new Cover Flow-like interface.

  
The music player with the Cover Flow-like interface • The Now playing interface

There’s automatic sorting by artist, album, genre and the option to create custom playlists straight on the phone. The music player supports a huge number of formats and it has an equalizer plus a stereo widening feature.

There are five equalizer presets, including Bass booster, but you can’t create your own.

  
Equalizer and stereo widening are available

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case you can control it through the music player widget on the homescreen, which also displays the currently running track.

FM radio with RDS

The FM radio on Nokia E6 has a simple UI and supports RDS and alternative frequencies. RDS displays the station name and some extra info (say, their website URL) and the alternative frequencies feature automatically re-tunes the radio to another frequency broadcasting the same station when the first signal is weak.

  
The FM radio app is nice to look at and easy to use

Impressive video player with subtitle support (via a small update)

The E6’s video player is even better than the one on the N8 or the E7. It comes with DivX and XviD support out of the box and is quite capable.

The playback was silky smooth on all files with a resolution up to and including 720p, which is quite impressive.

 
Nokia E6 video player

The media player app itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode (not that we need anything beyond that). When in fullscreen, a press on the screen shows the controls, which are normally hidden. The screen is quite small so we recommend using the zoom to fit option so you can enjoy what you are watching the most.

  
Watching a video on the E6

The E6 handled everything we threw on it – all the AVI, MP4, MKV and even WMV files played like a charm. It also comes with subtitle support (there is an update waiting for this right after you turn on the handset), but don’t expect lots of supported languages. The handset is also capable of playing files bigger than 2GB unlike its predecessors.

Some restrictions do apply, though. The E6 can’t play MOV files and can’t handle the audio AC3 codec. If some of your files are encoded with AC3 (the MKV ones for example), you won’t hear any sound while playing them.

We didn’t experience any lag while testing with our samples both in playing or fast-forwarding.

Impressively good audio output

Just like most of its family members we have tested recently, the Nokia E6 did great in our audio quality test. Pretty loud and clear, it really deserves a pat on the back.

When attached to an active external amplifier (i.e. your car stereo or your home audio system) the Nokia E6 does marvelously with no weak points whatsoever.

There wasn’t much quality deterioration when we plugged in headphones either (it’s even less than on the multimedia flagships of the company, the X7 and the N8). Sure, the stereo crosstalk got a bit worse and we recorded some increase in intermodulation distortion but both of those readings are still quite a lot better than average.

And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia E6	+0.05 -0.21	-88.0	87.9	0.0041	0.019	-89.1
Nokia E6 (headphones attached)	+0.16 -0.13	-87.9	87.8	0.0098	0.215	-65.6
Nokia X7	+0.06 -0.34	-88.9	88.4	0.0058	0.016	-89.1
Nokia X7 (headphones attached)	+0.51 -0.18	-88.6	88.5	0.022	0.370	-60.2
Nokia N8	+0.07 -0.33	-89.9	90.0	0.0059	0.015	-90.9
Nokia N8 (headphones attached)	+0.50 -0.18	-89.9	89.9	0.016	0.300	-55.6
Samsung Galaxy Pro B7510	+0.11, -0.47	-83.8	85.6	0.021	0.060	-81.2
Samsung Galaxy Pro B7510 (headphones attached)	+0.95, -0.21	-83.2	83.6	0.024	0.487	-43.1
Apple iPhone 4	+0.01, -0.07	-90.1	90.0	0.0068	0.012	-89.6
Apple iPhone 4 (headphones attached)	+0.01, -0.07	-90.4	90.4	0.0036	0.092	-68.4

Nokia E6 frequency response        

   

8 megapixels photos but without the autofocus

The Nokia E6 is equipped with an 8 megapixel camera for a maximum image resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels and it’s accompanied by a dual-LED flash. However, this is Nokia’s 8MP fixed-focus camera module, which trails behind in the 8MP shooter race.

The user interface is far from friendly – there are only three shortcuts available in the viewfinder. Those allow you to toggle camcorder and still camera, set the flash and access the rest of the customizable settings.

  
The E6 camera user interface

The remainder of shooting options is put in the Settings menu (which is an update since Symbian^3 where you needed to go to another Settings menu). Here you can change scenes, ISO, white balance, exposure, adjust contrast and sharpness, turn the Face detection on/off, activate self-timer, etc.

As for geo-tagging, it lets you record your current location in the EXIF information of the photos, using the built-in GPS.

Unfortunately, image quality is a traditional weak spot for the 8 megapixel fixed-focus Nokia smartphones. Even some of the problems we met with before are solved, this is still not enough. The contrast and the colors are good, but despite its 8MP resolution, the captured detail isn’t all that much, there is excessive noise too and corner softness.

On the other hand if you don’t need the full 8MP resolution (an let’s be honest – most of us don’t) then after a quick downsizing the results are quite acceptable and should satisfy most of the users.

  
  
Nokia E6 camera samples

We tried a close-up shot – a known weakness of fixed-focus cameras and we weren’t surprised at the results. Anything closer than 50 cm and you can kiss any semblance of sharpness goodbye.

 
Nokia E6 is not really good at close-ups

Photo quality comparison

The Nokia E6 enters our Photo Compare Tool to join the other 8MP fixed-focus shooters. The tool’s page will give you enough info on how to use it and what to look for.

There you can see for yourself that the Nokia E6’s 8 megapixel fixed-focus camera falls behind most of the competition.

  
Nokia E6 in our Photo Compare Tool

Very good video recording despite the lack of auto-focus

Still imaging is not the E6’s strong suit but the video recording helps the camera save face. The Nokia E6 shoots in 720p resolution at 25 fps and offers digital image stabilization. Clips are stored as MP4 files.

To sum it up, the videos shot with the Nokia E6 did manage to impress us. The amount of resolved detail is good, colors look nice, noise levels are kept low. Most videos stayed very closely to the 25fps mark and were very smooth.

The price of the lower compression affects the file size – 15 seconds of video take about 26 MB.

The Nokia E6 camera also uses the clever zooming technique that Nokia first used on the N8. It allows you to zoom up to 3x while shooting 720p video without losing sharpness or detail as you normally would and generally works very well.

  
Video recorder interface

Here’s an untouched video sample from the Nokia E6 – 720p@25fps. You can also check out this longer sample we uploaded to YouTube.

Video quality comparison

We entered the Nokia E6 in our Video Compare Tool database too and put it head to head with other 720p mobile camcorders.

The still shots might not be impressive, but the HD videos are definitely something to look forward to. The videos produced by the Nokia E6 are quite good whatever you are comparing them to.

  
Nokia E6 in the Video Compare Tool

Connectivity well geared

Nokia spared no expense when it comes to the connectivity of the Nokia E6.

For starters, all kinds of network connectivity options are at your disposal – GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSPA (10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2.0 Mbps HSUPA). The GSM/EDGE networking comes in quad-band flavor and the 3G covers all the five bands available worldwide – 850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz.

Bluetooth connectivity is version 3.0 with stereo support and there’s a WirelessN-enabled Wi-Fi radio.

USB is version 2.0, with the standard microUSB port capable of charging the phones besides transferring data. We already covered the USB On-The-Go functionality, but just for the record, we had very little trouble connecting to USB mass storage devices – phones (including Andoids), card readers and thumb drives. Unpopular card formats were a problem though but how often would you need to connect a CF card anyway.

A 3.5mm port rounds off the wired connectivity where you can connect a standard Nokia 3.5mm A/V cable for both audio and video output. There is no high-definition TV output though.

Updated web browser

Unfortunately, Symbian^3 didn’t deliver the browser overhaul that the platform needs desperately despite the added multi-touch and FlashLite 4.0 support. Symbian Anna is here to make up for this and Nokia E6 is granted with a better web browser.

The new browser (v7.3) promises faster loading times, better responsiveness, search-integrated address field, always visible back button and more. The reality is quite close to what Nokia has promised – the new browser is indeed both faster and more responsive, with improved history and address field.

 
 
The Symbian Anna web browser

There is better tab management now similar to the iOS’s Safari – you choose the dedicated Windows key from the menu and then you can add or close tabs or just scroll between them.

 
The tab manager

The browser has better page rendering and offers some nice features such as different font sizes (5 options), auto fill-in of web forms and a password manager. Double tap and pinch zooming work good, but the smaller screen makes the double tap gesture feels more natural here. There is also support for kinetic scrolling, which also seems to work quite well.

The address field auto hides when you scroll the page down and supports search. When you type something you need to choose explicitly the search option below, otherwise you’ll probably get an error.

The Find-on-page feature enables keyword search. The visual history is a nice bonus that can help you find a page you’ve visited more easily. There’s also a popup blocker.

The Flash Lite 4.0 support is enough for playing flash videos, but YouTube plays only up to 360p videos so you might as well be using the mobile site. Also, Flash games don’t work so it seems like a good idea to use the option to switch Flash off to cut down on loading times and save some yourself some data traffic.

  
Digging deeper into the settings menu

Nokia E6 offers generally good experience. Its performance is still nowhere near most of its competitors today, but is a huge step into the right direction. And the best part is this browser will surely satisfy most of the E6 targeted users.

Office document editor onboard

The Nokia E6 comes with an Office document editor out of the box (Quickoffice). It has plenty of features and it even doubles as a file manager. The Recent files option is the fastest way to go back to some of the documents you’ve worked on lately.

  
Quickoffice comes preinstalled • it works as a file manager too

Quickoffice can view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. All the Office docs open directly in editing mode, there is no viewing-only. Pinch zooming is supported everywhere and works like a charm.

  
Viewing Office docs

Editors have plenty of features – advanced formatting, editing tables, full list of Excel functions and so on, but their menu/submenu based interface is less than user friendly and while it’s not a deal-breaker, it certainly detracts from the ease of use.

  
Editing Word docs with Quickoffice

The PowerPoint editor was the worst offender here – it can’t edit when you zoom in and once you do start editing, you need several clicks just to change the text in a label.

Editing documents is generally fast enough even when you are working with the Office 2007 docx format.

As for the file managing functions of Quickoffice, it’s not better than the standard File browser and we did notice slight (but annoying) lag when scrolling.

For viewing PDF files, there’s the standard Adobe app – it’s quite sluggish, but supports pinch-zooming which works reasonably fast.

 
The Adobe PDF viewer

Organizer has it covered

The E6 is Nokia’s business flagship and they’ve made sure that the phone comes with a very capable organizer out of the box.

The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and a to-do list, which allows you to check all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are three types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has some specific fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

  
The calendar has seen some further touch optimization

The Nokia E6 comes with a Zip Manager and a mobile antivirus program (F-Secure) preinstalled, which along with the Office package make for a very well-rounded productivity suite.

  
There’s also a ZIP manager and an antivirus program on board

The calculator application is very familiar but it lacks the functionality of some of its competitors. The square root is the most advanced function it handles and this is hardly an achievement. If all you do with it is split the bill at the bar though, you’re more than good to go.

The calculator is simple

The organizer package also includes a dictionary, voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. The good unit converter we’ve come to know from Symbian^1 is strangely gone but you can grab one yourselves from the Ovi store.

  
The dictionary, the voice recorder and the notes app continue the organizer marathon

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, set-off day and repeat pattern. As we already mentioned, thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone over.

  
You can set an unlimited number of alarms on the E6

Finally there is the Message Reader app, which can read all of yours text messages aloud.

The Message Reader

Social networking integration

The Nokia E6 comes with social networking integration, part of which we saw in the phone book. The Social app however is the nexus for al things social – it supports the two most popular networks, Facebook and Twitter. You can have multiple accounts on each network but only one of each can be active at a time.

The Facebook section offers extensive options with an easy to use, touch-optimized user interface. Posting a status update is simple as is attaching a photo or video (or shooting new ones on the spot) as well as adding geo-tagging information.

  
Facebook integration is pretty extensive

Twitter is accessed through a similarly easy interface. There’s a handy button to shorten links and you can attach photos and videos to your tweets as well.

  
Twitter integration is great too

A cool feature is the All Activity section that becomes available when you add both Facebook and Twitter accounts. It pools status updates from both networks into a single list. You can also post a status update on both networks simultaneously from here. Unfortunately, there’s no option to post only to one of the networks – you have to go to the networks specific section to do that.

  
The Social app pools all status updates into the All Activity section

Friend search also becomes available on both networks – it searches both accounts for a given name.

Ovi Store for Symbian

Symbian is still one of the most popular smartphone OSes in the world but its application store is pretty barren compared to the two juggernauts, the iOS App Store and Android’s Market.

The company has refreshed their Ovi store interface to make it more user-friendly for Symbian^3 and it’s what you get on Anna too. And while the UI is indeed very handy to use, the number of apps is somewhat of a problem.

  
Symbian Anna borrows the Ovi store from Symbian^3

The default screen shows a list of featured apps or you can browse the apps available in the Ovi Store by categories – Applications, Games, Audio and Video content, Personalization; or by collections – Summer Gift of Games, Chat Collection, Apps Start Kit, Travel, Tools for Professionals and Apps for Kids are the collections available at the time of this writing.

  
The number of apps is increasing too

Your account profile keeps record of all the apps you have installed under My stuff. You can now also select where games and apps should be installed and where audio and video should go. That’s nice – we wish Android had that right from the start.

Free GPS navigation

The Nokia E6 comes with a built-in GPS receiver, which managed to get a satellite lock from a cold start (A-GPS turned off) in a little under two minutes. You also have A-GPS for getting a faster lock or use Cell-ID/Wi-Fi positioning if you don’t need the accuracy.

As you probably know since the start of the year Nokia made their Ovi Maps navigation free for all their smartphones, which naturally includes the E6. The voice guidance is currently available in over 70 countries and over 40 different languages, with even traffic information for more than 10 of those.

In addition, Nokia did a pretty decent job of the Ovi Maps application itself, blessing it with a cool, touch-friendly interface, as well as nice features such as the Lonely Planet city guide, HRS hotels and the Michelin restaurant guide. There’s also an Event guide that lists all that’s happening within a 3km range of your position.

With Ovi Maps 3.06 you get three different view modes including satellite and terrain maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand and can be used with preloaded maps. Pinch zooming and downloading maps straight to the phone via Wi-Fi work like a charm here.

Updating Ovi Maps if it doesn’t come with the latest version out of the box is quite worthwhile.

 
 
Ovi Maps gives you free lifetime voice-guided navigation over the excellent Navteq maps

The route planning algorithm is also rather easy to customize to best suit your preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Routes can be set to either fastest or shortest.

Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map.

Final words

It’s been almost two years since the E72 was keen to stress it was business as usual for the Eseries. It now seems like an eternity. A few iPhone versions and Android releases later, the business is not what it used to be and Nokia have been learning it the hard way. Tablets are all over the place, dual-core’s in charge and even BlackBerry want a piece of the touchscreen pie.

What about the Eseries? Well, they’ve been trying to adapt. The neat and reliable E5 is the younger, friendlier face of the Eseries, affordable and social. The E7 is the usual solid job, which, under different circumstances, could’ve been a flagship to fear and respect. Nokia have been trying to keep up with the rest to the best of their ability. Symbian Anna lifts their game and some of their recent phones look to win back some of the lost pride.

The E6 is called to take over from the E72, connect the dots between the past and the present. The Eseries spirit is so intact it leaves a major upgrade somewhat in the shade. The screen makes quite a difference – mostly for the bump in resolution, less so for actually being a touchscreen.

We should note though, that the latest Symbian Anna helps appreciate the QWERTY/touchscreen combo. And the improved media package makes the E6 a better entertainer than its Eseries predecessors. The new Symbian browser is another point in favor. It’s the browser too – along with text editors – that makes the D-pad a credible addition to the multi-touch enabled capacitive touchscreen.

Keyboard and touchscreen is a combination that works and one that Nokia has already tried in the sweet little X3-02 Touch and Type. It’s not alien to a smartphone context either: from olden-day PocketPCs to messenger droids in the bar form factor.

Even RIM are giving it a try with the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900. We’re looking forward to yet another chapter of the Eseries rivalry with BlackBerry when the Bold Touch is released this September. The latest RIM invention is based on the BlackBerry OS 7.0, runs on a 1.2GHz processor (double the clock speed of the E6), has the same high-res touchscreen but slightly bigger and an optical trackpad.

BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900

The HTC ChaCha should be in the picture too, though it’s not exactly a threat – it targets a younger demographic than the E6, and falls in a lower price bracket. The Facebook-experience HTC ChaCha runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Sense on top. It’s got an inferior HVGA display a few things missing, including a document editor and free voice-guided navigation.

HTC ChaCha

Another recent Android messenger is Samsung’s Galaxy Pro B7510. It’s probably in the same league as the HTC ChaCha, obviously cheaper running Android v.2.2 Froyo.

Samsung Galaxy Pro B7510

Looks like a two-horse race – we’re not sure we can count the Motorola Pro, which is due later this year. With a proper 3” touchscreen, it’s almost a different from factor.

   
Nokia E6 next to Nokia E71

Anyway, it was time for the Eseries to move on and Nokia couldn’t have done better than the E6. With phones like the N8, N9 and the X7, Nokia is busy showing us they still have it in them. The E6 has nothing to be ashamed of in this company. Is this enough for it to hope to leave a footprint the size of the E71? Probably not. No one knows that better than Nokia themselves. They deal with the message rather than kill the messenger.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e6_00-review-616p9.php

                                                           

Nokia E6

Introduction

Pure touchscreen devices seem to have become the standard smartphone form factor, but there are many who retain a preference for a physical keyboard. For such people, the Nokia E6 offers an intriguing option. A software feature set equivalent to the Nokia N8 and other Symbian^3 phones, but in a very different hardware package. Rather than a portrait orientated screen only design, it offers a landscape orientated screen with an accompanying full QWERTY keyboard.

In talking about the E6, it is impossible not to reference the E71 and E72, its two immediate predecessors. The E71, in particular, was an iconic device for Nokia and both devices were among the best selling in Nokia’s smartphone portfolio. The E6 is a refinement of these earlier devices: specification bumps in nearly all the key areas, a few hardware additions and updated software.

The most important change is the removal of the hardware softkey buttons and the addition of a touchscreen. With this comes the move from S60 3rd Edition to Symbian Anna, from a non-touch UI, to a touch centric UI. While this has only a small visual impact, it has a major influence on device operations and the overall user experience. Thus, while the E6 is a refinement of its predecessors, it also breaks new ground, as Nokia’s first touch QWERTY slab form factor smartphone.

There have been a number of touchscreen devices launched recently with similar form factors to the E6 (e.g. the low-end Samsung Galaxy Pro and HTC Cha Cha), but none offer quite the same level of refinement or enterprise focus. The E6 will face off against the Blackberry 9900 later this year, but until then it is something of a unique offering.

While the dominant form factor trend for smartphones remains the touch slab, there is plenty room for other options. Given the popularity of QWERTY in the last few years, most notably those in devices from Blackberry and Nokia, the touch QWERTY slab looks set to be one of the most popular alternatives.

 

In the box

The E6 arrives in the slimline version of the standard Nokia box. Inside, you’ll find the phone, Nokia BP-4L battery, Nokia AC-15 charger, Nokia Stereo Headset WH-207 and a USB connectivity cable. In some markets, the device also comes with a leather slip case. Note that there is no USB OTG adaptor cable, so if you want to take advantage of that functionality you will need to buy the accessory (Nokia CA-157) separately.

Also in the box you’ll find a “Get to know your Nokia E6-00” fold-out leaflet. This replaces the slimline guide that Nokia was previously using. The topics covered are similar, but there’s less text and better use of accompanying illustrations, which means it’s quicker to read and more digestible. This should mean that it is more likely to be read, hopefully resulting in fewer frustrated users and lower support costs.

The idea of having a full user guide in the box are long gone, rightly so given the waste implication and their ready availability in both PDF and HTML formats online. However, it is still helpful to have a getting started guide in the box and this new approach is one of the best I’ve seen. Couple it with the extensive and illustrated on-device User guide application (which can be accessed from other applications in a context sensitive manner) and you’ve got a device that is much more welcoming to new smartphone owners than many of its competitors.

 

Design and styling

Visually, the E6 is obviously messaging and business centric. It retains the strong identity of its predecessors, with the same clean lines and harmonious front aspect. Nonetheless, as we shall see, over the next few sections, there are some important design refinements in the E6.

Critical in the design is balance between the keyboard and the screen. There’s an element of aesthetics to this, but more important is getting the balance in the hand right. What impresses most about the design of the E6 is that the device feels balanced and comfortable to use, regardless of whether you are using the keyboard (one or two handed) or using the touchscreen.

In terms of materials, there’s a combination of Gorilla Glass (screen), hard plastics (keyboard and sides) and stainless steel (front bezel and back). It’s a similar combination to the E71 and E72, but with refinements to some of the detailing, such as the curved edges and camera hump, that make it feel more like a 2011 device.

At 115.5 x 59 x 10.5mm in size, the E6 presents a similar front profile size to the N8 (113.5 x 59.1 x 12.9mm). These phones clearly take very different approaches, but the inherent size limitation for one handed devices is common to both. That said, the E6 is thinner and therefore significantly smaller in volume (66cc against 86cc), making it a sleeker, more pocketable device.

Nokia has a reputation for building robust and dependable devices in this form factor and the E6 is no exception. Overall build quality is outstanding, with no untoward flexing or creaking as you use the device. In this respect, the E6 is the equal of, or better than the N8, an impressive achievement given the added complexity of the form factor.  

 

Keyboard

The E6’s keyboard reflects the refinements that Nokia has made over the years in this form factor. The E61 had a basic calculator style keyboard. The E71 dramatically improved usability and speed, with a superior layout, domed keys and better tactile feedback. The E72 improved the material of the keys with a matte finish, which increased speed and improved accuracy, but arguably, with its small space bar, took a step back with the layout.

The E6 combines the best characteristics of all of these designs and adds a few tricks of its own. The material of the keys is slightly grippier, which means fewer sidewaysslips. The whole keyboard has a slightly curved, smile shaped, layout which improves accuracy, especially on the bottom row. The individual keys each have their own, slightly round-cornered dome, sitting on a flat base. This slightly increases the space between the raised portion of each key, which means fewer mis-hits and more accurate text entry.

Sitting above the letter keys is the control cluster. In the centre there is a D-pad/Navi key, with an outer raised ring making for easy directional movements. This is surrounded by four shortcut keys: Home, Calendar, Mail and Contacts; the target application for the last three of these can be changed in the phone’s settings. On the outer left and right edges of the shortcut keys are the send (green) and end (red) keys.

Before spending time with the device, I thought the absence of hardware softkeys might be a major issue, but this worry proved to be completely groundless. It does feel a little strange at first, but after a few days you adjust to touching the screen directly and after a week of usage I wasn’t even thinking about it. A big part of the reason for this is that the on-screen softkeys are just where your finger would expect to find the hardware keys, but the subtle haptic feedback from E6’s vibra motor helps too.

The E6’s keyboard is fully backlit, with illumination controlled by the light sensor on the top right of the device. In order to be as energy efficient as possible, the intensity varies according to the light level, with brightest level of illumination in dusky conditions and the lowest levels when it’s pitch black. There’s a notification LED inside the D-pad ring which is used to signal missed calls and messages and can also be used as a ‘breathing’ light. However, it is currently very dim, which means it is only usable in dark conditions (e.g. on the bedside table at night). This is a known bug which Nokia are aware of and are looking into. It maybe be possible to fix with a software update.

The E6 ships with the same text auto correction and prediction software as the other Symbian^3 handsets. By default it is turned off, but it is worth considering switching it on (Options -> Input options, in any text entry field). It is able to correct many of the most common mistakes (e.g. “teh” -> “the”). There’s also an optional auto-completion mode, which offers an additional speed boost. As with other correction systems, a certain amount of trust is required, but in fast and furious text entry (e.g. replying to anemail) it can significantly improve accuracy and therefore speed. The system learns as it goes; for example, you should only need to type a proper name once (e.g. “Rafe”), subsequently the system should recognise it and not try to correct it. There are two different correction modes to choose from; ‘show suggestion’ and ‘show entered word’. The first shows in-line text as corrected, the second shows in-line text as entered; in both modes, the alternative word is shown in a floating box above the in-line text, with the two words switched by pressing up on the D-pad.  The first mode is useful if you make lots of mistakes, the second is useful if you’re less prone to mistakes or use a lot of words not in the dictionary.

The addition of a touchscreen to the E6 makes an important difference to text entry; editing existing text becomes quicker because it is easier to jump to one place (e.g. to correct a spelling mistake) with a single tap on the screen, rather than multiple taps on the D-pad. Selecting text is also much easier with a touchscreen; when you highlight text, a pop-up menu appears offering Copy/Cut/Paste functionality.

The keyboard can be used one handed, which is fine for a few words, but for faster text entry it is more efficient to use two hands, wrapping both hands around the back of the device and using two thumbs to type.

There is a degree of subjectivity when assessing keyboard entry (e.g. Blackberry users may miss the ‘double space to full stop’ shortcut) and different keyboards will suit different people. Most people should be able to achieve speeds of between 20 and 40 words per minute with the E6’s keyboard, pushing the upper boundaries of what’s possible on a mobile device with a physical keyboard. In my own testing I found that I was about as fast on the E6 (30 words per minute) as I was on the much larger E7, but this may reflect my own personal device history, with a long period of E71 and E72 usage.

In summary, I would say that the E6 is comfortably the best keyboard Nokia have created for a slab QWERTY device and it’s close to being the best on any Nokia device. The E7’s keyboard still takes top spot – just – but it is worth noting that the E7 has a lot more space to work with. Making a comparison with other manufacturers’ QWERTY slabs is more difficult, as different design priorities and software components lead to a wider range of characteristics and personal preference has an important role to play. Even so, in my own opinion, the E6 is going to be among the top performers in any keyboard comparison.

 

Screen

The E6 has a 2.46″ transmissive LCD capacitive touchscreen with a VGA (640 x 480) resolution, which gives a density of 326 pixels per inch, amongst the highest you’ll find on any mobile device. The screen does not quite match the brightness of the AMOLED found on Nokia’s other Symbian^3 and Anna devices, but it is surprisingly close, offers great viewing angles and, thanks to the pixel density, gives pin sharp detail. The screen does get washed out in very bright sunlight, but in all other conditions it’s much clearer than those on the transflective LCD-screened E71 and E72.

Only in this macro shot can you see the pixels on the E6’s ‘retina’ display

The addition of touch brings substantial benefits, saving many hundreds of buttons presses a day. Any selection based operation (e.g. the app launcher) is quicker with the direct interaction of the touchscreen. Similarly, moving through large amounts of content, such as when browsing through a long list (contacts, music albums, tweets) or a web page is much quicker with the kinetic scrolling of a touchscreen.

The screen is physically small enough that everything can be reached with a thumb, which makes for great one handed use, something that other touch devices can struggle with. Some on-screen targets do initially seem rather small, but a combination of intelligent UX and a greater than expected degree of touch accuracy means this is not an issue.

While touch is a great addition, the heart of the device remains the keyboard. Despite the touch focus of Symbian^3, the vast majority of the E6’s functionality can still be accessed using only the on-screen softkeys and the D-pad. Touch is always an option, but only rarely is it mandatory. What impresses most about the E6 is that Nokia has managed to seamlessly add touch interaction to the QWERTY slab form factor without compromising on the majority of its traditional strengths.

This is, I feel, because Symbian^3’s heritage as a non-touchscreen platform (S60 3rd Edition) is showing through. Ironically, this legacy element, represented by a preponderance of menus and selection lists, usually faces heavy criticism and is deemed to be a bad thing because it takes away from the fluidity of the direct touch approach. In the case of the E6, however, this same legacy becomes a benefit, making for a better hybrid device, with near equal usability in both touch and non touch modes.

Getting the most efficient use out of the E6 means using both modes of use. Some operations work better via the D-pad, while others work better via touch interaction. For me, the most appealing characteristic of the E6 is that it goes a long way towards offering the best of both worlds.

The E6’s VGA screen resolution is a first for Nokia; all of its other recent Symbian touch devices have used the slightly lower ‘nHD’ (360 x 640) resolution. Consequently it is the E6’s screen resolution, rather than its hybrid nature, that has resulted in the greater number of UI tweaks. We’ll discuss this in more detail in the Symbian^3 software section later in this review, but, in general, the changes are about optimising the UI screen layout around the VGA screen resolution, the smaller physical size of the screen, and its landscape orientation.

Full-resolution E6 screenshot

Sitting just above the screen, on the right hand side, are the front facing VGA camera (video calling), proximity (switches off touch when phone held to head) and light sensor (controls screen brightness).

 

Around the phone

Looking around the rest of the device, you’ll find, on the left hand side, the standard microUSB port, which is used for PC connectivity, USB OTG and charging. Just above the microUSB port is an LED charging indicator. This LED will blink at low battery levels (before the screen turns off), illuminates during standard charging and switches off when the battery is full. It means the ‘is my battery fully charged?’ question can be answered with a single glance, with no need to unlock the phone and check the on screen battery indicator.

The right hand side of the device houses the volume keys, which surround the voice/mute key and keylock slider. The three keys have decent tactile feedback and stand out about a millimeter from the side of the device, making them easy to find by touch alone.

The voice key, when pressed for a second or so, activates the voice recognition functionality, allowing you to start an application, find a contact or make a call. During calls, the voice key becomes the a mute key, allowing you to silence your end of a call, a useful function if you make lots of conference calls. When a call is muted, a red LED lights up the ring in the centre of the key, acting as a handy reminder as to the current mute status. It is such little touches like this that really underline the attention to detail that goes into the creation of Nokia hardware.

The keylock slider is a welcome addition to this form factor, saving the need for a fiddly key combination to lock and unlock the device. As with Nokia’s other Symbian^3/Anna devices, it also doubles as the activator for ‘torch mode’. When the homescreen is showing, holding down the slider for 2 seconds makes the camera LEDs switch on.

The bottom of the device has a standard 2mm Nokia charger port; it’s good to see Nokia continuing the policy of including both charging options. At the top end of the E6 you’ll find the power button, 3.5mm AV port (headset, headphone and TV-Out) and the microSD card slot. The E6 has 8GB of internal flash memory, plus 250MB of free space on the C drive out of the box, so does not ship with a microSD card, which means that with the addition of a 32GB card you can boost the memory to up to 40GB.

On the back, there’s a raised portion towards the upper end, housing the 8 megapixel EDoF camera and accompanying dual LED flashes. Next to the LEDs is a speaker grille for the mono speaker. At the opposite end, just to left of the battery cover release catch is a secondary microphone, which is used for upstream noise cancelling during calls. The battery cover fits snugly against the rest of the device; the release mechanism is at a single point, but has two catches, ensuring a solid and durable fit.

Taking the battery cover off reveals a BP-4L battery, which takes up the majority of the internal space. This is the same 1500mAh capacity Li-Poly battery that was used in the E71 and E72 and, together with the energy frugal Symbian^3, gives the E6 possibly the best power performance of any modern smartphone. It’ll outlast all of its Symbian^3 relations and comfortably best similarly specified competitor devices. In testing, the E6 happily cruised through two days of moderate usage with room to spare and even the most demanding smartphone user will find that the E6 easily lasts all day on a single charge. The SIM card slot is located in the upper right hand corner, sliding in just to the right of the camera module, a good example of just how tight space is inside the modern smartphone.

Buried in the internals of the device is the same Broadcom BCM2727 processor (ARM 11 at 680MHz, with accompanying graphics co-processor) and 256MB of RAM as its Symbian^3 sister devices. Also common between all the devices are the comprehensive connectivity options:  pentaband 3G radio (still under appreciated, in my view), quad-band GSM, WiFi b/g/n, and Bluetooth 3.0. There’s also accelerometer, magnetometer and GPS sensors along with an FM radio; sadly, there’s no FM transmitter or NFC technology, a necessary design constraint compromise, according to Nokia.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13058_Nokia_E6_part_1-hardware.php

Nokia X7 (4)

That all said, let’s get going with our day of review, and it’s straight to the web browser over breakfast. While there’s no morning delivery of newspapers, I can go online and grab the headlines (BBC News), some special interest sports (MLB and Formula 1), and check any emails that have arrived overnight in the mail application.

So this new web browser. It’s pretty nice. You’ve got the pinch to zoom that people expect on a mobile browser, and the page is re-rendered pretty quickly, although there is enough of a delay to spot the work going on in the background. Double tapping will zoom to that column making it easier to read in the hand, and when I tilt the device the switch between portrait and landscape is smooth, albeit without a nice twisting effect.

 

Congratulations Nokia, you’ve got yourself a competent mobile browser on a mobile device! Does it have any extra features that can be used as selling points on the device? Probably not in the current environment, but it does what is needed and expected. That seems to be half the battle for the OS – the main goal of Anna so far seems to be get everything to a competent and equal level so that Belle (the next major Symbian OS update) can drive forward and do some innovative stuff. I can live with that.

Would I pick up the X7 rather than another mobile device because of the browser? That’s a trickier question, and one that I can’t answer for a few weeks of use. Right now I’d reach for another device, but that feels to be more down to familiarity than function.

Email looks… nicer than the E7 (which has been my most recent Symbian^3 device before the X7). It might be confusing to have Messaging in the top level of icons on the app launcher, but Mail as the first icon in the applications folder. Yes, even though it’s linked from the home screen, this relegation might be down to the X7 being an X/media device rather than an E/enterprise device. But anyway, the colours and fonts are a little bit more muted on the X7, making it feel a bit more professional and less toy-town than the last iteration of the mail client.

I’m currently getting a huge number of press releases from acts appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe (thanks to my daily Fringe chat show and it feels like everyone wants to appear on it), and in no way are they formatted as if someone is going to read them on a mobile device. There is hideous HTML formatting, the occasional in-line image of five stars, press pictures attached, three versions of the press release (text format, PDF and MS-Word) all attached at the end of the mail… this is not a friendly environment to be reading email in. But the X7 rises to the challenge – tapping the attachment list and going for the PDF shows a progress box downloading the file before passing me over to the PDF reading application (which works). Same story for the MS-Word documents, which use the Quickoffice viewer – if you need to edit Office docs then you can purchase the licence from inside the application. Right now, viewing only is fine for me.

I’m not sure that you could get any more hostile in terms of formatting and attachments. The X7 does give me the confidence that if a file arrives, it will be opened and viewable on the smartphone. That means a lot.

Of course, I did do the sneaky trick of saying “no” to the Nokia Ovi Mail terms and conditions, thus my Gmail inbox on the X7 is an IMAP connection direct to Google, rather than a syncing email box on the Ovi server. Yes I losemanaged push-email, but the pseudo-push of IMAP plus a timed “check every 15 minutes” will do me nicely, and also cuts down on the battery power used for connectivity and checking. It would also be nice to have threaded email conversations – maybe that’s something Nokia could consider adding in Belle?

 

It’s not even 9 am yet! Right, kids to school. Luckily I know where the school is(!), otherwise a quick call to Ovi Maps would see me right. Well, almost right. The driving instructions are spot on, but Ovi Maps misses a path that cuts the route down significantly. To be fair, Google Maps misses it as well, but this is the real world, so that raises a black flag. Wi-fi positioning gives a quick lock onto my position which is then firmed up by the GPS, and this is fast. I’ve also not cached the map data, so it’s being pulled over the air as well.

I can also check into Foursquare from inside Ovi Maps if I want – signing in with my Ovi account name to find that the services set up on a previous device are already available makes it easier to check in. Such a shame that the bookmarks for Maps can be easily synced, but not those for the web browser (Opera still has an advantage there with ‘My Opera’).

All of which activity leads me to talking about the input choices on the X7 (over a nice coffee at 10 o’clock), and the new portrait Qwerty keyboard. But first up, one of the things I find different about the X7 is the “double vibrate” employed when using the virtual keyboards. It also seems very loud to my ears. I’m all for haptic feedback, but that’s getting turned down as soon as I find out how – from experience, I know it’s ‘settings / profile / current profile / personalise / touch screen vibrations / choose level’. Six steps that are incredibly clear [sarcasm alert – Ed] to new users of the device.

Still, you do have a portrait Qwerty keyboard now, and the good news is that it’s about as accurate as the one in Android. It’s not as good as the one in iPhone, nor is it as polished as the one in Windows Phone, but it does the job. My first few goes have me thinking that the close location of the space bar and the cursor left/right (and delete ‘n’ enter) are a bit too close to each other. This may get a bit better over time, but the X7 screen is a nicely sized four inches. What will it be like on the 3.2 inch C6-01? I worry for that device….

That’s a discussion for another time. Because with this review, I’ve stuck with Qwerty, although my natural tendency is to go back to T9 as soon as possible. But I shall continue, just for you. [You’re so dedicated, Ewan – Ed]

The X7 is providing me with the music to write to this morning, and I think that the last part of the X7 review took care of most of the issues with the Music Player, so just read it again to remind yourself how wonderfully average the whole thing is. While I’m busy with the last 1300 words, here’s another writer in action to keep you amused.

If it helps, I can watch this YouTube clip on the X7 as well, and tap it to watch full screen. Okay, it’s a bit blocky compared to a DVD-ripped video file on the X7, but isn’t the whole point of Youtube to watch videos in a mosaic effect?! In which case, success! [Don’t forget the third party YouTube Downloader, which uses higher quality streams/files – Ed]

Lunchtime is going to be my Facebook time, and I’ve a few choices. I could grab a third party application from the Ovi Store, but I’m going to keep discussion of the App Economy for the next part of the review, so I’ll look at the two options I think most people will employ – the web browser or Nokia’s “Social” application.

I’m going with the latter, given it’s one of the icons on the first app launcher screen and much more likely to be used. We’ve spent a lot of time on this on All About Symbian, and my personal opinion hasn’t changed much – it’s not suitable for the power users that really work Facebook or Twitter (the two options that are currently available). But it’s fine for those who aren’t as dedicated to a network and just need a glance in to see what’s going on throughout the day. The options are all nice and clear, with the alerts (the red numbers) making it clear what needs done. My gut feel is that about 80% of users of the X7 would find Social to be pitched at the right level for them.

 

The other option is to use the built in web browser and the mobile version of Facebook. Sneaky tip here, go for touch.facebook.com and not m.facebook.com and you’ll have a far more functional site, that’s a touch faster that the Social client, and has one other advantage which for me is a killer feature – you can switch the news feed in the web browser to show just the “Top Stories” that Facebook thinks you will like, instead of “All Stories” from your friends. When you are following a lot of people (more than about 40) this is vital to stay on top of things. Yes, you miss stuff, but Facebook’s algorithm is pretty good at showing you stuff you’ll like, and that’s what you need in a mobile client.

And there goes my next alarm, which is a “go get the girls from school.” And if you think I’m going to get any time to play around with a new phone before they get to bed – think again!

Time passes. Thorin sits down and sings of gold.

So, late evening, and time to look back on the X7 in a regular day of use. And the word of the day is this. Clumsy. The X7 is not a small phone, and while the screen is the same size as that on the Nokia E7, the X7 is geared more towards operation in the hand (being a pure touchscreen phone). And the styling makes this a little bit awkward. It’s just too big to be one handed, and when you bring in your other hand to start touching the screen, the thin aspect of the X7, coupled with the curved back, makes for a phone that just feels a bit weird.

The X7 feels a bit like Bambi on ice. It looks great, you can sense what it is trying to do, but it doesn’t quite manage it.  The X7 works on screen, but the external controls seem to have lost a bit of usefulness in the race for style. Take the power key, which you can tap to put the screen to standby and, by implication, kick on the key lock (because there is no keylock slider switch on this phone). Reach for this and press just a bit too hard, and the X7 threatens to shoot out of my hand and onto the floor.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13060_Nokia_X7-Part_3_A_Day_in_the_L.php

Nokia X7 (3)

This is the next phone in a long line of Nokia entertainment devices, but I think most people who consider purchasing this phone will be new to Symbian, and they will be taking a close look at the sticker price. This is where the networks are going to have an impact on device sales. As Steve has pointed out in the first part of this review, the unsubsidised price of the X7 is out of sync not only with the rest of the Nokia Symbian^3 range, but it’s not matching up with similar smartphones in stores. Once the networks decide what the subsidised price will be, it will be interesting to see where the X7 slots in with those prices – it is going to need to be aimed very competitively to have an impact on the marketplace.

I do want to touch on the styling choices made by Nokia – but rather than engage in a smartphone version of the ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch and note down every single missing milliamp, keylock switch and front facing camera (that personally I think I’ve used three times in over eight years of phones), I want to look at the X7 with the fresh eyes of a consumer. Take the price out of consideration and put the X7 next to the top fashionable phones of each OS… I think you would have a fair catwalk fight. At first glance I loved the styling out the box, and while I have some issues with it after using it, it’s still stunning when it catches my eye. There is no doubt that the X7 has the mainstream looks, more than any other recent Nokia device.

But what about when you start using the phone and the new variant of Symbian: Anna?

Let’s find out… first up, the multimedia angle.

Even without understanding what the ‘X’ designation represents, you get the feeling that this is a device not for creating, but watching and listening to. Yes it still has a 8 megapixel camera, although it’s EDoF and only a twin-LED flash (compared to the Carl Zeiss-equipped 12 megapixel focusing camera with Xenon on the N8).

You’ll experience my photography attempts later in this multi-part review. For now, let’s look and listen to what the X7 can give out. For all the whizz bang features and bullet points, there are some applications that people will always turn to first. For me it’s Music player. Given my long term love/hate with the Nokia music player, I always wonder if they’ve picked up on some of the bugs.

And they have! Music player now recognises a much larger range of ID3 data (that names each track) – specifically, it now also picks up the album artists and my compilation albums now say “Various Artists” on the screens, as opposed to the name of the first artist on the album. That means a lot to me, as I have a thing about wanting album art and data to show up correctly, but it’s also a subtle thing when it comes to users. This is how it should be, it should just work.

 

I’m less convinced about Nokia continuing with the combination of Artists and Albums into one view, and not two separate views. First up is the most obvious one – I think it is what people expect to find in a music player, and by not meeting expectations, you create a distrust around a phone. You need that trust before you can say that there is a ‘better’ way of carrying out a task. You don’t have time to explain that in a store or at the point of sale. The simple conclusion will be “Nokia didn’t put it in” and you’ve lost a sale.

The alternative, of course, is to use the search function built into the X7. Using this is very fast, and I’d say that the results came up in real time as I was typing M-O-N to get to The Moniker (a Swedish band who didn’t qualify for Eurovision, sitting on one of my own compilation albums of songs that didn’t qualify for the Song Contest). Here’s the problem though. The search function isn’t linked from inside the music application, and there’s no indication that you can use it for music. Old hands coming to the phone will be able to work that out, but new users are going to have to hit a folder icon (that looks like an application), then choose Search, before they can hunt for the musical track. Anyone want to explain how this isn’t marked up as a #fail?

I can rationalise why Nokia has made the design decisions they have in Anna for Music player – it keeps the furniture and menu options to the app at a minimum, and if you’re album-focussed then there are very few clicks needed to get to the music as fast as possible. The problem is that the second you step outside of this remit you find you have to be (a) doing a lot of clicks and manual searching through alphabetised lists or (b) have to use obscure parts of the operating system that aren’t linked from the application. Put simply, the excuse of “that’s what we had before” doesn’t wash here. The X7’s Music player will not match consumer expectation.

Oh, and I bet a lot of people will ask what the “podcast” menu option does. It takes you to a blank screen with no explanation of what to do (press Help and you get some nice info about listening to the built in FM radio). Again, old hands know you need to get a third party podcast application, or copy over podcasts from your computer that have the genre field marked “Podcast” to make this work, but again, someone coming cold to the X7 is going to go “this is broken”. Again, you can’t mark this down as anything but a fail. Even a simple line of code along the lines of (if there are no podcasts, do not show the podcast menu) would make this a far better implementation in the UI.

 

Audio quality is rarely a problem on Nokia handsets, especially if you use your own headphones. The fact I can spot the compression artefacts and the warblings of a small MP3 is not a fault of the audio processing used, it shows that it’s replicating the contents of the file as well as can be expected.

Where I do have an issue is that the X7 still does not do gapless playback – where one music file plays seamlessly into a second track. It’s an important issue if you listen to a lot of live music or classical music. It’s an even bigger problem if you love concept albums (guilty as charged, but everyone should listen to Amarok at least once). This should be a matter of professional pride to whoever is leading the music playback team, and it’s a shame Nokia still hasn’t figured out how to do this.

And then there are the “fake” speaker grills on the outside of the handset. I do feel cheated that only two speakers are employed, and they’re at the base (when in portrait orientation) of the device (so easily covered by your hand when holding the device). On first glance, the media phone X7 has four speakers – could this be a little pocket Dolby system? In fact, the truth is much more horrible. It is, effectively, a mono device.

Yes, there are two speakers on the circuit board, but there is no effective stereo coming from the device when you use the loudspeakers (as opposed to headphones, which are stereo). My first clue was Carrie Anne by The Hollies, one of those delightful 60’s “fake stereo” songs with the vocals in one ear and the instrument in the left. It sounded mixed together when I really focused on the sound. One quick edit later of a test MP3 with 95% of the audio on the left and none on the right and… there’s no difference, the output from each ‘speaker’ (grille) sounds the same.

I tested the same file on the X6 by the way, and the obvious stereo split in this magical mono track was obvious. So forget the tech specs, forget what you were hoping for and trust my ears. The X7 is as mono as an original pressing of “Please Please Me” (just not worth as much).

Nokia have updated the Music player application for Anna, but they seem to have taken out a few bugs and quirks, while leaving the vast majority of code in place. Is an OS’s music player as vital as its web browser? That’s a good question, because I know that the online community will push that the web browser is key. But a music player has a very well defined set of parameters and only a handful of UI use cases. It should be an easier target to hit. Nokia haven’t managed a clean kill – they’ve wounded, they’ve maimed, but they’ve not landed a clean blow. Music player in Symbian Anna works, but it’s not a simple and easy ride for the user.

On to video and the big bugbear in the past on S60 has been the limited codec support – the chances are that just because a video file played on your computer did not mean that it would play on your phone. Thankfully those days are long past – and both Steve and I have thrown a number of different video files with different codecs and compressions onto the X7, and they’ve all played smoothly, with no stutter. And that’s right up to the 1280×720 resolution of ‘HD’ video.

I’m also happy with the on-screen controls. Tap in an empty space to bring ’em up, tap again in an empty space and they go away. Given the nature of the X7, almost everything is done on screen, apart from changing the volume which can additionally be done with the buttons on the edge… errr on the back of the machine. Actually, the funky styling of the X7 does cause a bit of an issue with video playback. Most of the time you’re going to have the smartphone in your hand, and the acute angle on the edges around the screen mean that while I’ve found the X7 comfortable to hold in portrait mode, it feels really unstable when being held in landscape to watch a video. The curved back also means that balancing the X7 on a table is a lot harder than an N8. So usability has improved with the larger screen giving larger controls and a more accurate slider for skipping through the video, but is taken away in the physical world.

You can decide yourself if that’s an improvement or not. For me it’s debatable, but shading to not.

I’m also going to return to the issues of the speakers. When I was five, we had a portable TV at home, with one speaker. It sat to the right of the screen, and I just accepted that this was where sound came from. Not in or around the picture, but beside the picture.

Since then, technology has moved on. But the X7 has pulled that memory right back. Thanks to the weird speaker arrangement, the sound obviously comes out of the right hand side of the smartphone (in landscape video-watching mode), and while my younger self might be forgiving, right now it sounds wrong and uncomfortable. Sure, I could put headphones on, but as the 3.5mm stereo jack plug is slap bang in the middle of the other side, it’s in the crook of my hand as I hold the phone.

In other words, there will always be a physical compromise when watching any video on the X7. To be fair, this is true of most handheld devices (I’ll put the Sony PSP up as an exception on speaker placement, with one either side of the 16:9 screen, but that gaming device also falls down on 3.5mm positioning).

Strangely, I can forgive a lot of the issues around the video player because of one reason – the screen. It’s nice and big, there’s little strain when watching video for long periods of time on the screen, and being a 16:9 ratio screen, most modern TV series will fit, and motion pictures are close enough that the eye can sort out any slight squishing (Cinemascope, such as West Side Story above, still needs black bars top and bottom, but you can zoom in to fill the screen and ignore the picture at the side if you so wish, by tapping the icon on the top left).

Video on a mobile device is still high frontier stuff, even though conversion is now no longer an issue – finding the content is still not mature (especially if you stay with legal sources).

Workmanlike.

That’s how I’d class the X7’s multimedia capability. Yes it does all you would expect for a smartphone focused on listening and watching media. But it doesn’t do it with any style, any panache. it doesn’t make it exciting to navigate your music, to find out what’s coming up next. Take that and put it on top of the niggling issues above and you have a phone that fulfils its remit, but no more. It’s as if the product designer sat with a checklist, made sure everything was ticked, put the piece of paper in the out tray and clocked off promptly at 5pm.

That gets everything out the door, but it doesn’t give it any lust. And with the X7’s styling starting that process, it’s the job of the software to keep that going. Unfortunately, the first elements that I turn to in a smartphone don’t do that. So it’s on to the connectivity and internet solutions to see if there’s any improvement in part three of our X7 review.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13050_Nokia_X7-Part_2_Music_and_Vide.php

Nokia X7 (2)

Nokia X7-00 review: The stealth xpress

Introduction

Dressed to kill and with a fresh coat of paint on the interface, the Nokia X7 is keen to show there’s still fight left in Symbian. The screen is a definite high point and the stainless steel body is fashioned like a stealth jet fighter. Symbian Anna adds in features that have been lacking in the OS, closing the gap on the competition.

  
Nokia X7 official photos

The Nokia X7 combines stainless steel and Gorilla glass into one seriously attractive package. It boasts stereo speakers (just two, rather than four as you might think looking at it) to justify its Xseries spot and an 8MP camera with 720p video recording.

The screen impressed us quite a bit as you’ll see in our hardware chapter but that’s not all we liked about the hardware. The software changes are not as far-reaching as we would have liked, but there are some key developments that that give Symbian a usability boost.

Here’s the short version of what the Nokia X7 is about and what didn’t work out very well.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Penta-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA support
• Stainless steel body
• 4″ 16M-color AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution; Impressive brightness and Gorilla glass protection
• 8 megapixel fixed-focus camera with dual-LED flash and 720p video @ 25fps recording; geotagging, face detection, smart zoom in video
• Symbian Anna OS
• 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 256 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
• Digital compass
• microSD card slot (8GB card pre-installed)
• DivX and XviD video support
• Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port
• Flash and Java support for the web browser
• Stereo Bluetooth 3.0
• Excellent audio quality
• Smart dialing and voice commands
• Social networking integration

Main disadvantages

• Symbian Anna is still catching up with Android and iOS
• Uncomfortable volume rocker, SIM tray and microSD card slot
• Camera lacks auto focus, oversharpens images
• Relatively limited 3rd party software availability
• No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
• Battery life is not on par with the best in business

Despite our complaints, this is the best that Symbian has ever looked and Nokia has picked excellent devices to carry it. While the other one, the Nokia E6, is a business phone through and through, the X7 focuses on the fun stuff. From taking photos and videos, through deeper social networking integration, to watching HD videos and browsing the web on the large 4″ screen.

The Nokia X7 is something you’ll want to show off to your friends. The Nokia designers have done a good job of breaking the touchscreen mould that makes so many phones look uniformly similar.

   
Nokia X7 in our office

The Nokia X7 comes more as a successor to the C7 than a stand-alone version. But the C7 itself will be getting Symbian Anna soon, so the X7 needs to bring more to the battlefield than just the (admittedly great) bigger screen.

First we’ll check on the arsenal in the box and then we’re off to inspect the phone’s angular charms. Join us on the next page to feast your eyes on the cool screen and discover the Nokia X7.

Basic retail package

The Nokia X7 comes packaged with the basics but not much in terms on value-added goodies, except for an 8GB microSD card. The package includes a compact charger, a microUSB cable and a one-piece headset with Play/Pause, and Skip controls.

 
The box is rather empty

The SIM tray is originally ejected and placed under the phone in a specially formed recess. You just put your SIM in the tray and slide it into the phone. The 8GB card is pre-installed so you don’t need to worry about that.

Nokia X7 360-degree spin

The Nokia X7 measures 119.7 x 62.8 x 11.9 mm, well within the norm of 4″ screens.. It’s not that much bigger actually than the C7, which only has a 3.5″ screen. The X7 weighs 146g.

http://st.gsmarena.com/vv/spin/nokia-x7-00.swf

Design and construction

The Nokia X7 is a gorgeous phone – it has a bold, futuristic design that gives it broad appeal but geeks will look at the angular shapes and instantly think F-117 Nighthawk. We’ve handled both the Dark steel and Silver steel versions and both of them look extra sharp.

The shape of the phone is rectangular with the four corners beveled. Each corner shows a grill although only two of them (the bottom ones) house actual loudspeakers. The grills look cool anyway. The mostly metallic back is rounded making the phone more comfortable to hold than an angular back would have been.

 
The Nokia X7 looks like a stealth jet fighter

The front of the Nokia X7 is dominated by an amazing 4″ nHD AMOLED screen. The lower pixel count is the only thing holding this display back – 360 x 640 is a bit of a stretch for a 4″ diagonal. Still, the 4″ SuperAMOLED of the Samsung Galaxy S only has about 10% more subpixels than the X7’s AMOLED screen. The difference is by no means huge.

The screen on the X7 is also the brightest AMOLED we’ve tested. It’s actually one of the brightest displays we’ve ever tested, LCDs included. The only brighter display we’ve seen is LG’c NOVA display, which is some 20% ahead. Still, AMOLEDs are traditionally darker than LCDs so the Nokia X7 screen blew us away. Contrast is infinite technically but that’s the usual.

The Nokia X7 and N8 displays compared

Here’s the table with our brightness measurements. You can learn more about the test here.

Display test	50% brightness			100% brightness
	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio
LG Optimus Black P970	0.27	332	1228	0.65	749	1161
Nokia X7	0	365	∞	0	630	∞
Motorola Atrix 4G	0.48	314	652	0.60	598	991
Apple iPhone 4	0.14	189	1341	0.39	483	1242
HTC Sensation	0.21	173	809	0.61	438	720
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S	0	263	∞	0	395	∞
Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc	0.03	34	1078	0.33	394	1207
Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II	0	231	∞	0	362	∞
LG Optimus 2X	0.23	228	982	0.35	347	1001
HTC Incredible S	0.18	162	908	0.31	275	880

Viewing angles of the screen are great and colors are lovely and vivid. Sunlight legibility is not perfect but it holds up slightly better than, say, the Samsung Galaxy S II.

The X7 screen sensitivity is as good as we’ve come to expect from capacitive units and touch feedback is very impressive.

Symmetrically placed on either side of the screen are the earpiece and the lone menu key. There are proximity and ambient light sensors hiding near the earpiece. There’s no video-call camera here or call buttons. The menu key is relatively big, though it’s a bit stiff.

 
The earpiece and sensors on top • The menu key is the only button on the front

On top of the Nokia X7 is the uniquely shaped Power/Lock key, which also handles screen lock and the ringing profiles (upon a long press). The two wired connectivity ports are here too – the microUSB that can be used for charging and the 3.5mm audio jack.

At the bottom, there’s just the mic pinhole and some labels.

   
The two wired connectivity ports and the power key

The sides of the Nokia X7 are quite interesting. The left houses the two trays: one for the microSD card (top) and one for the SIM card (bottom). The right side is home to the volume rocker and the shutter key.

Let’s start with the keys. They have a very low profile and both are frustratingly hard to use. Because they sit on the sloping edge of the back, every time you press one of them, your finger slides down pushing the phone up. We kept getting the feeling that sooner or later the phone was going to slip.

   
microSD and SIM card slots on the left • the uncomfortable volume rocker and shutter key on the right

The trays for the SIM and microSD cards are not our favorite design decisions either. Both work the same way – you press on the dot, which cause the other end to tilt up. Then you try to pry and pull it out. That’s rather annoying but the microSD slot still counts as “hot-swappable” we guess.

 
The trays for the SIM and microSD cards

When you’re done, you have to push the tray back in and we question the life expectancy of a slot that will see quite a bit of metal rubbing against metal. That’s the price of beauty (or rather the metal body in this case).

The four corners of the Nokia X7 are fashioned into loudspeaker grills but that’s just for show – only the bottom ones actually hide loudspeakers. Having four speakers would have been impressive (and we imagine quite loud) but two work well enough.

The bottom two are loudspeakers the other two are impostors

On the back we find the camera lens, dual-LED flash banded together on a black strip. The camera doesn’t protrude but when you put the phone down it rests on it, making it prone to scratches (there’s no lens cover).

 
The 8MP camera and its dual-LED flash

Most of the back is a solid piece of brushed-finish stainless steel, with plastic elements capping the top and bottom ends of the phone (just like on the Nokia N8). The metal gives the X7 a very sturdy feel, which users like us prefer over plastic.

One downside to this is that the battery isn’t user accessible – you can’t carry a backup piece to extend the battery life of the X7.

Speaking of battery life, the Nokia X7’s battery is quoted at up to 450 hours of stand-by (in both 2G and 3G modes) or up to six and a half hours of talk time (and only four and a half hours in 3G). Nokia also claim 6 hours of video playback (with 720p videos) and 50 hours of music playback (in offline mode).

The battery performance of the X7 isn’t overly impressive. As a reference, the Nokia C7 claims to squeeze 550 hours of standby and 9 h 30 min of talk time (that’s in 2G) out of the same 1200mAh BL-5K battery.

The curved metal back of the Nokia X7

The build quality of the Nokia X7 is impressive though we don’t agree with some of the design decisions (the buttons on the rounded edge of the phone and the card trays). The finish of the X7 proved delicate and quickly acquired a few scratches so you have to be careful with it (a carrying pouch in the box would have been great).

Still, there’s no denying that the X7 is a beauty to look at and it’s quite slim and compact. The curved back makes the phone very comfortable to hold despite the angular looks.

 
The Nokia X7 held in hand

Wading into Symbian Anna

The Nokia X7 is one of the first devices that sport the latest and greatest from the Symbian world – the update called Anna. It’s technically a Symbian^3 edition descendant but that doesn’t quite roll of the tongue as Anna does.

Despite the big change in naming convention (going for names rather than numbers similar to Android, Ubuntu etc.), the changes to the OS itself are incremental. Nokia finally fixed text entry (though they didn’t do a perfect job of it), the browser is updated and so are other core Symbian apps. But there are still issues.

Before we go into details, have a look at this video to get a quick idea of what Anna is like.

Starting with the homescreen, we can already see what Anna is going to be like – much of the same but with more polish and a new feature here or there. The homescreen still consists of three panes. You are free to fill it up with widgets and reshuffle them as you see fit. If three panes are too much for you, you can delete the ones you don’t need but you still can’t add more than three.

  
Symbian Anna comes with an improved homescreen • homescreen in landscape mode

The homescreens panes are now instantaneously scrollable – it used to be that you swipe sideways and only when you are done with the gesture the screen would actually start sliding. Scrolling is mostly smooth though, the graphics are not as fluent as in high-powered Androids. Tapping the three dots at the bottom of the screen moves you one pane to the right.

You can turn the phone sideways and the widgets will automatically re-order to fit the landscape mode.

   
The widget catalogue

Symbian Anna brings with it a new style for the icons in the main menu – they are now very rounded squares. It’s an aesthetic change mostly, as they are just as easy to hit with your thumb as the old ones (though the 4″ screen does make it easier than it was on the C7).

The main menu structure is unchanged, retaining the hierarchical folder structure. This dates back from much earlier Symbian versions and we were hoping that it would change – to get to your apps, you have to hit the menu key and go into Applications. Modern day smartphones have dozens of apps installed, so easier access to them would have been nice.

You are free to rearrange icons as you see fit so you might go for placing them all in the main folder and get a flat-ish menu system, but you have to do that manually, there’s no bulk move option.

You can create custom folders too, which can help you organize your apps. All custom folders look the same however, giving no clue of what’s inside like some other OSes do. A list view mode is also available but that involves much more scrolling and that’s why we preferred to leave things in grid.

  
Not much has changed in the main menu

The task manager is identical to the Symbian^3 one – it shows screenshots of the running apps, up to three at a time (regardless of screen orientation). You can swipe sideways to browse between the apps and you can kill them with a single click too.

 
The task manager fits only three apps at a time

A neat feature is the popup available by tapping the top right corner of the screen. It gives you a bigger clock, a shortcut to the connectivity menu, a button for battery info (charge in % and “Activate power saving” shortcut) plus notifications – e.g. missed calls, new messages and others. It just shows the number of events, it won’t show you the beginning of a new text message like Android’s notification area will.

You can also toggle Wi-Fi and USB connectivity settings from here.

The popup gives quick info on events and some handy shortcuts

Performance-wise the Nokia X7 is virtually identical to the Symbian^3 models that came before it. Hardly a surprise, since it uses the same hardware and Anna is more of a feature, rather than performance update.

And even though heavy multi-taskers will frown at the 256MB of RAM we didn’t get any “Out of memory” errors even when the camera and the web browser with two active tabs were running in background.

Symbian Anna is definitely a step in the right direction, but we’re afraid the competition has zoomed far ahead. While Apple and Google are trying to outdo each other with all sorts of user interface innovation, Symbian has just caught up with a few years ago.

One positive change is that there’s always a Back virtual key visible, which makes navigating apps simpler.

On the other hand, the Options menu still relies on the menu/submenu structure, which is a relic of the non-touch days of Symbian and is begging to be changed to an Android-like solution (menu key that shows a panel with 6-8 buttons for the most common options, maybe a More button if you really want to dig into the settings).

There’s more changes (with some more criticism) to come, but we’ll discuss those in their respective sections.

Phonebook is pretty good

The Nokia X7 comes with a fully functional phonebook, which can easily be synced with your exchange account. Symbian has been offering users virtually unlimited phonebook capacity and excellent contact management for quite some time and now the Anna update also improves the SNS integration to bring it more up to date.

  
The renovated phonebook for X7

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name. You can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

Selecting some of your contacts as favorites moves them to the top of the displayed list. This saves you quite a lot of scrolling.

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like.

  
Editing Dexter’s details

You can assign personal ringtones and videos to individual contacts. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

A really nice touch when editing a contact’s details is the option to enter their address by locating it on a map.

The social network integration includes Facebook and Twitter, which should be fine for the vast majority of users. You can see the latest status update right from the contact info – or at least the first two lines of it. Tap on it to read the full message or send a reply. That takes a few seconds though as the Social app needs to load first.

 
Checking out Dexter’s Facebook profile through the phonebook

Excellent telephony

We didn’t experience any call-related issues with the Nokia X7. Reception is solid, voice quality good on both ends of a call. The earpiece is loud enough and there were no interferences whatsoever.

Voice dialing is available on the X7 and gets activated by pressing and holding the call key on the home screen. It is fully speaker-independent and as far as we can tell performs greatly, recognizing all the names we threw at it.

 
You can also use smart dialing • The X7 comes with pretty well tuned voice dialing

In noisier environments though, its effectiveness might suffer. Bear in mind too, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, the system will dial either the default number or the first in the list.

Smart dialing is also here – you just punch in a few letters from the desired contact’s name and select it from the list that comes up to initiate a call. Searching by portions of the contact’s phone number doesn’t work though.

The X7 has the usual accelerometer-based feature that lets you mute the ringer by turning the phone face down is present. That same turn-to-mute trick also works for snoozing your alarm.

Thanks to the proximity sensor the screen turns off automatically when you hold the phone next to your cheek during a call.

The Nokia X7 however lacks the Active Noise cancellation feature that the Nokia C7 had.

The Nokia X7 sat our traditional loudspeaker test. The phone did well there and the Good mark it snatched means it should be loud enough for nearly every situation. More info on the test, as well as other results can be found here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S	66.6	65.9	66.6	Below Average
LG Optimus 2X	65.7	60.0	67.7	Below Average
Google Nexus S	68.1	66.3	69.3	Average
HTC Sensation	66.5	66.6	78.3	Good
Nokia X7	66.7	61.8	80.7	Good
Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc	66.1	66.3	78.0	Good
HTC Incredible S	66.5	66.1	76.7	Good
Nokia N8	75.8	66.2	82.7	Very Good
HTC Gratia	73.2	73.6	83.5	Excellent

Messaging wiz

The Nokia X7 can easily cater for all your messaging needs. All your incoming messages arrive in a common inbox. If you like, you can also get them sorted as conversations, in threaded view.

The Nokia X7 messaging app

The Nokia X7 relies on a shared editor for all the types of messages. Stuff like a character counter in SMS goes without saying.

   
Sending Dexter a message

Insert some multimedia content the message is automatically transformed into an MMS. In that case, the character counter turns into a data counter showing kilobytes.

The Nokia X7 email client allowed us to setup our Gmail account quite easily, including syncing the account as an Exchange Active Sync one so that we’d get all our contacts. Usually, all you need is to enter a username and a password and you will be good to go in no time. The Active Sync setup required a few manual settings though and we believe Nokia should do something about it.

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia X7.

Messages can be filtered by various criteria such as date, sender, subject, priority or even by attachments, searching is available as well.

   
The email client

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. This can save you some data charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.

There is also support for attachments, signatures and basically everything you would normally need on a mobile device.

Proper portrait QWERTY at long last

The keyboard is perhaps the change in touch-enabled Symbian that we’ve been waiting for the longest. Portrait QWERTY is finally a viable option and more importantly it works in split screen, that is the top half of the screen is left for the app, while the bottom part is for the QWERTY.

The keys on the portrait QWERTY are a bit small, despite the available screen estate. Still, you can activate word prediction, which will fix guess the word you’re trying to type and show a small popup with the word you actually typed, in case you’re trying to enter something like a user name (which doesn’t have to be a valid word, in fact word prediction in this case gets in the way).

This eliminates the annoying situation of taking you out of the app and into a text edit screen and then back to the app (entering URLs in the browser and using the URL autocomplete was the most painful example). Also, you don’t have to change orientations just to use the QWERTY keyboard, which was mightily annoying.

Still, it’s not perfect – several apps would popup the old text edit screen, obscuring the app even though we were using the portrait QWERTY. The Ovi store app is an example of where that happens, which was a little disappointing.

  
The portrait QWERTY is one of the best parts in Symbian Anna

Solid file management

Unlike some competing platforms, Symbian handsets have always enjoyed a proper file manager. The File manager on board the X7 is a capable app that can basically do anything you can think of with your files – moving, copying renaming, sorting or sending – you name it. You can also password-protect your memory card if you see fit.

You can also search for a specific file or directory. All you need to remember is a part of the desired name and where it was located (phone memory or memory card), the Nokia X7 will find it in no time.

   
The file manager

With USB On-The-Go (OTG) enabled on the Nokia X7, you can also use the file manger to access USB flash drives and even other phones connected over the optional USB cable.

X7 connected to a variety of Symbian phones, an S40 phone and a whole pack of Androids. Card readers worked too, but we had issues with none SD or microSD cards (we tried CF and Memory Stick Micro, which didn’t work).

There’s no USB OTG cable included in the box, so you’ll have to find one on your own.

Redesigned image gallery

The image gallery app in Nokia X7 is quite the looker. It’s the updated gallery from Symbian^3 PR1.2, so it’s not exactly new but we’re still glad to see the change. Photos are displayed in a grid (3 columns) and you can scroll up and down (with kinetic scrolling no less).

   
The X7 image gallery

Once you’ve zoomed on an image, kinetic scrolling is still there but it’s hard to trigger some times and that’s sure to cost the X7 a few points. On the positive side, opting between portrait and landscape mode is automatic, thanks to the built-in accelerometer.

In addition to the familiar pinch gesture you can also zoom in by double taping, the volume rocker or even the on-screen slider.

 
Zooming in on a single photo

Selection of multiple photos for deleting or sharing is available straight in the gallery. Unfortunately, sharing is only available via MMS, email or Bluetooth with no image sharing service integration. We guess that can be easily fixed by installing the necessary uploading profiles for the services you’re interested in. At least that’s how it works on non-touch Symbian smartphones.

The other features of the image gallery include the image tagging system for easier image sorting, the slide show and the albums system (again helping you sort your image database).

Overall, picture browsing is relatively fast even with 8MP pics, but zooming is somewhat slow. You need to wait for a second or two every time you start zooming in on a photo.

 
The gallery does basic image editing too

Symbian^3 music player on board Anna

Symbian never had trouble with the music player features but its looks were far from impressive. With Symbian^3 however Nokia introduced a new Cover Flow-like interface, which adds the much needed eye-candy. They haven’t changed anything since.

There’s automatic sorting by artist, album, genre and the option to create custom playlists straight on the phone. With the huge number of supported formats, equalizer presets and effects the feature set is complete.

  
The music player is unchanged since Symbian^3

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case you can control it through the music player widget on the homescreen, which also displays the currently running track.

  
Functionality is pretty solid • Cover-flow like interface in landscape mode

Audio quality worthy of the name

The Nokia X7 is an excellent performer as far as its audio output is concerned. We wouldn’t have been happy with anything less considering that this is meant to be a multimedia smartphone. But the great news is that not only is the X7 one of louder handsets out there, its output is pretty clean too.

When attached to an active external amplifier (i.e. your car stereo or your home audio system) the Nokia X7 does marvelously with no weak points whatsoever.

There wasn’t much quality deterioration when we plugged in headphones either. Sure, the stereo crosstalk got a bit worse and we recorded some intermodulation distortion but both of those readings are still better than average.

And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia X7	+0.06 -0.34	-88.9	88.4	0.0058	0.016	-89.1
Nokia X7 (headphones attached)	+0.51 -0.18	-88.6	88.5	0.022	0.370	-60.2
Nokia N8	+0.07 -0.33	-89.9	90.0	0.0059	0.015	-90.9
Nokia N8 (headphones attached)	+0.50 -0.18	-89.9	89.9	0.016	0.300	-55.6
Nokia C7	+0.06 -0.33	-88.1	88.0	0.0069	0.017	-88.9
Nokia C7 (headphones attached)	+0.46 -0.21	-88.1	88.1	0.017	0.362	-66.2
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S	+0.03 -0.04	-90.7	90.6	0.014	0.019	-90.6
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (headphones attached)	+0.40 -0.12	-90.7	90.6	0.018	0.329	-43.3
Apple iPhone 4	+0.01, -0.07	-90.1	90.0	0.0068	0.012	-89.6
Apple iPhone 4 (headphones attached)	+0.01, -0.07	-90.4	90.4	0.0036	0.092	-68.4

Nokia X7 frequency rnespose  

   

Video player does 720p but not subtitles

The Nokia X7 comes with a capable video player – it handled all formats we threw at it (MP4, AVI, WMV, even MKV) and 720p videos were silky smooth up to and including 720p resolution.

 
Nokia X7 video player

The media player app itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode but, since anything else would have made the widescreen display useless, this is understandable. In fullscreen mode, a tap on the screen shows the controls, which are otherwise hidden. The amply sized high-contrast screen with native 16:9 aspect is also more than welcome for truly enjoying your videos.

 
 
Watching a video on the X7

Previous Symbians used to have problems with files larger than 1.5GB or so, but the Nokia X7 handled full movies with 2GB+ size without problems.

The video player lacks subtitle support however, which is something we thought Nokia fixed (they did for the Nokia N8 with an update http://blog.gsmarena.com/nokia-n8-update-brings-subtitles-to-the-video-player-doesnt-fix-all-its-problems/). You might want to look to third party apps for that or hard code the subtitles into the video if you’re re-encoding the file.

The Videos section also includes several handy apps. One is a video editor that lets you create videos and video slideshows. The otherapps here include YouTube, CNN Video, E!, National Geographic, and Paramount Pictures’ Movie Teasers applications. Of course, each of them requires internet connection (over 3G/3.5G or Wi-Fi) and note that not all content is free.

FM radio comes with RDS

The FM radio on Nokia X7 has the same neat and simple interface like on its Symbian^1 and ^3 predecessors. You can search skip preset and new stations alike with sweep gestures or you can use the virtual buttons.

  
The FM radio app is nice to look at and easy to use

The X7 has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency. This means that if you travel, the X7 should hopefully be able to auto-tune to your selected radio station.

RDS is the best part of X7 radio app. The radio station name gets displayed with cool effects across the whole screen, while the rest of the readings are printed in nicely legible font at the bottom.

8 megapixels of fixed-focus

The Nokia X7 is equipped with an 8 megapixel camera for a maximum image resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels. Unfortunately the lack of autofocus continues an unfortunate trend from most other Symbians we’ve seen recently.

You get a dual-LED flash to go with the camera and a workable though not really the most user friendly interface.

There are only three shortcuts available in the viewfinder plus a slider for the digital zoom. The three shortcuts allow you to allow you to toggle camcorder and still camera, set the flash and access the rest of the customizable settings.

 
 
The X7 camera user interface

We would have preferred a few more shortcuts to be available right on the viewfinder. Also, changing a setting harkens back to the days of tap to select, tap again to activate, which should have been long forgotten by now. For example, it takes you four taps to change the ISO – the first to open the settings menu, one to go into the ISO menu, one to select an ISO setting and one to activate it. Can you pick which step is one too many?

On the other hand, the functionality is mostly there. On the X7 you’re in charge of white balance, color tone, exposure, ISO, contrast and sharpness. You can also go for one of the preset scene modes and there is an option for creating a custom scene.

Face detection is also available on the Nokia X7. As for geotagging, it lets you record your current location in the EXIF information of the photos, using the built-in GPS.

The Nokia X7 is no champ when it comes to image quality, certainly not if you’re going to enter it into the 8MP category. The very aggressive noise reduction smudges away most of the fine detail in the picture.

The subsequent sharpening stage introduces a lot of jaggies, which spoil the image quality further. You can reduce the Sharpness setting to low, which helped on previous models somewhat, and the jaggies will be less prominent – but still there.

Another issue we spotted is that the edges of the image are rather soft. Overall, we’re seeing much of the same problems we saw on the C7, C6-01 and E7 trio – the photos are certainly usable, especially if you just want to share them on the Internet, but if you’re looking to replace a point-and-shoot camera, the Nokia X7 isn’t the best option.

  
  
Nokia X7 camera samples (normal sharpness)

 
Nokia X7 camera samples (sharpness set to ‘soft’)

However the major missing feature – autofocus – becomes apparent when you try taking a closeup shot. Anything closer than 50cm is a no-go. This can make shooting a page of text very hard – a photo of an A4 page can be made readable after some adjustments (mainly raising the contrast), but still, the text is quite smudgy. We should note that we mean human readable – OCR engines misread a large portion of the words.

Nokia X7 is not really good at closeups

Photo quality comparison

The Nokia X7 enters our Photo Compare Tool to join the other 8MP shooters. The tool’s page will give you enough info on how to use it and what to look for.

The results in the synthetic benchmarks turned out surprisingly good – but that just shows that the post-processing algorithm does well in high-contrast areas (like the black lines on white background).

The white background also shows disturbing amounts of color tinting – the whole upper part of the image has a reddish tint, while the bottom is greenish. Still, the camera offers good contrast. Check out the black squares in the second chart – the top and right borders are slightly brighter or darker than the rest of the square. Some phones show those as solid color squares.

  
Nokia X7 in our Photo Compare Tool

Good 720p video capture

The Nokia X7 shoots in 720p resolution at 25 fps and offers digital image stabilization. Clips are stored as MP4 files. Unlike the still camera, the video camera actually fares pretty well.

The videos are shot in pretty high bitrate – about 12Mbps. The amount of resolved detail is good enough, colors look nice and noise levels are kept reasonably low. Videos hit the 25fps target right on the mark and there are no repeated frames either.

Finally you get a smart digital zoom in video mode just like on the Nokia N8. It means that you can zoom in to about 2.5x without losing detail. It’s pretty impressive if you think about it and the fact that the X7 is one of the very few handsets to have it earns it an extra point.

The video-recording capabilities of the X7 make up big time for the poor still imaging.

 
 
Video recorder interface

Here’s a video sample from the Nokia X7 – 720p@25fps (10s, 15.6MB). That may seem a bit big for a 10 second video, but that’s the price you pay for the higher bitrate.

Also, you can check out this longer sample we’ve uploaded to YouTube. There’s one more sample – we shot our res chart and zoomed in to show you the effect.

Video quality comparison

We entered the Nokia X7 in our Video Compare Tool database too and put it head to head with other 720p mobile camcorders.

The X7 performed very well in our synthetic video quality tests. It handled the switch from light to dark very quickly and the quality remained good even in the poorly lit scene. The resolution chart also points to good resolution for a 720p video, but there’s a noticeable pink spot in the middle.

  
Nokia X7 in the Video Compare Tool

Good connectivity but lacks video output

The Nokia X7 is a true globe trotter. All kinds of network connectivity options are at your disposal – quad-band GPRS and EDGE along with penta-band 3G with HSPA. You can go pretty much anywhere in the world where there’s GSM or UMTS signal and connect. The 3G is pretty fast too with 10.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink.

USB is version 2.0, with the standard microUSB port capable of charging the phones besides transferring data. We already covered the USB On-The-Go functionality, but just for the record, we had very little trouble connecting to USB mass storage devices – phones (including Andoids), card readers and thumb drives. Unpopular cards were a problem though but how often would you need to connect a CF card anyway.

Bluetooth connectivity is version 3.0 with stereo support and there’s a WirelessN-enabled Wi-Fi radio.

The microSD card slot can be used for transferring data to and from your X7. The tray system used to house the card is quite a nuisance though.

The one disappointing side of the otherwise excellent connectivity on the Nokia X7 is the lack of microHDMI port found on the N8 and surprisingly even SD TV-Out via the 3.5mm audio jack.

Much improved web browser

The web browser has been a sore weak spot in touch-enabled Symbians so you’ll be pleased to hear that Symbian Anna fixes a lot of the issues. Also, the 4″ screen of the Nokia X7 makes it a great candidate to show off the best of the changes that Anna brought.

   
The browser in Symbian Anna has received much needed polish

The Nokia X7 browser has good page rendering and offers some nice features such as different font sizes (5 options), auto fill-in of web forms and a password manager. Panning is relatively smooth but zooming can be a little slow at times, taking a second to redraw the page content after you zoom out.

Some of the nagging issues in the browser were fixed too – you can now open a new tab easily (why it took Nokia this long to implement this we’ll never know) and it takes you only one tap to get to the popup menu with the most useful browser options (it used to take two taps, which is one too many).

Along with the popup menu’s shortcut on the right of the screen, there’s also an always-visible back button on the left. They are quite small and don’t cover much of the screen. It used to be that you needed two taps to go back a page too – once to make the back button visible and once to press it.

Back still uses the 3D stack of page thumbnails to let you choose how many steps back you want to go (it’s an option that you can turn off if you prefer to go back one step directly).

  
Going landscape • the popup menu • opening new tabs is now possible

Another thing we’re really pleased to see is how the QWERTY keyboard integrates with the browser. You can use the portrait QWERTY to start entering an URL and the list suggested sites pops up immediately. The previous screen required going back and forth between screens, which was pretty much unusable.

The Find-on-page feature enables keyword search. The visual history is a nice bonus that can help you find a page you’ve visited more easily. There’s also a popup blocker.

Double tapping on a chunk of text zooms it in on screen, but again, the text doesn’t auto fit to the smaller viewport and you still need to scroll sideways.

The Flash Lite 4.0 support is enough for playing Flash, but it’s not as impressive a performer as the desktop-grade Adobe Flash 10.3 for Android 2.2 and up. YouTube videos played inline in the browser but they used the mobile version (240p) of the video, which is heavily compressed. Flash games wouldn’t work.

You can also choose to switch Flash off to cut down on loading times and save some data traffic.

YouTube plays inline but only the mobile version of the video stream

Overall, Symbian Anna pushes the web browser very far ahead of what it used to be. Symbian^3 users can’t get the update fast enough, the difference really is night and day. Still, the browser is not quite as good as Mobile Safari or the Android 2.2+ browser.

Organizer is great

Symbian has good traditions in the Organized department and the Nokia X7 with Symbian Anna is no exception. Nokia has just tweaked a thing or two.

The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and a to-do list, which allows you to check all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are three types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has some specific fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

   
The calendar has seen some further touch optimization

The Nokia X7 also allows you to browse office documents thanks to the preinstalled Quickoffice application. The Adobe PDF reader is also here to take care of those .PDF files, while the ZIP manager allows you to deal with digital archives on the go.

   
Quickoffice is here but editing costs extra

Unfortunately, the preinstalled Quickoffice version doesn’t support editing, but we doubt much of the X7 target audience will need it anyway. If you insist, you can get the paid upgrade and enable editing.

  
There’s also a PDF reader and a ZIP manager on board

The calculator application is very familiar but it lacks the functionality of some of its competitors. The square root is the most advanced function it handles and this is hardly an achievement. If all you do with it is split the bill at the bar though, you’re more than good to go.

The calculator is hardly the most functional around

The organizer package also includes a dictionary, voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. The good unit converter we’ve come to know from Symbian^1 is strangely gone but you can grab one yourselves from the Ovi store for free.

  
The dictionary, the voice recorder and the notes app continue the organizer marathon

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, set-off day and repeat pattern. As we already mentioned, thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone over.

 
You can set an unlimited number of alarms on the X7

Social networking integration

The Nokia X7 comes with social networking integration, part of which we saw in the phone book. The Social app however is the nexus for al things social – it supports the two most popular networks, Facebook and Twitter. You can have multiple accounts on each network but only one of each can be active at a time.

The Facebook section offers extensive options with an easy to use, touch-optimized user interface. Posting a status update is simple as is attaching a photo or video (or shooting new ones on the spot) as well as adding geo-tagging information.

   
Facebook integration is pretty extensive

Twitter is accessed through a similarly easy interface. There’s a handy button to shorten links and you can attach photos and videos to your tweets as well.

   
Twitter integration is great too

The text input field for status updates for both Facebook and Twitter covers only the top half of the screen and the portrait QWERTY fits snugly on the bottom half of the screen, which is pretty clever positioning.

A cool feature is the All Activity section that becomes available when you add both Facebook and Twitter accounts. It pools status updates from both networks into a single list. You can also post a status update on both networks simultaneously from here. Unfortunately, there’s no option to post only to one of the networks – you have to go to the networks specific section to do that.

  
The Social app pools all status updates into the All Activity section

Friend search also becomes available on both networks – it searches both accounts for a given name.

Ovi Store could use more apps on its shelves

Symbian is still one of the most popular smartphone OSes in the world but its application store is pretty barren compared to the two juggernauts, the iOS App Store and Android’s Market.

The company has refreshed their Ovi store interface to make it more user-friendly for Symbian^3 and it’s what you get on Anna too. And while the UI is indeed very handy to use, the number of apps is somewhat of a problem.

   
Symbian Anna borrows the Ovi store from Symbian^3

The default screen shows a list of featured apps or you can browse the apps available in the Ovi Store by categories – Applications, Games, Audio and Video content, Personalization; or by collections – Summer Gift of Games, Chat Collection, Apps Start Kit, Travel, Tools for Professionals and Apps for Kids are the collections available at the time of this writing.

   
The number of apps is increasing too

Your account profile keeps record of all the apps you have installed under My stuff. You can now also select where games and apps should be installed and where audio and video should go. That’s nice – we wish Android had that right from the start.

Ovi Maps comes with free lifetime navigation

The Nokia X7 comes with a built-in GPS receiver, which managed to get a satellite lock from a cold start (A-GPS turned off) in about two minutes. Keeping the lock from then on was not an issue for the X7 even in a dense urban environment.

  
Ovi Maps gives you free lifetime voice-guided navigation over the excellent Navteq maps

As you probably know since the start of last year Nokia made their Ovi Maps navigation free for all their smartphones, which naturally includes the X7. The voice guidance is currently available in over 70 countries and over 40 different languages, with even traffic information for more than 10 of those.

In addition, Nokia did a pretty decent job of the Ovi Maps application itself, blessing it with a cool, touch-friendly interface, as well as nice features such as the Lonely planet city guide, HRS hotels and the Michelin restaurant guide.

   
Lonely planet and Michelin guides

There’s also 5-day weather information for cities available along with Map Reporter, which can be used to report inaccuracies you find on the map. You can choose which of those are visible in the menu, which helps avoid clutter.

With Ovi Maps 3.06 you get three different view modes including satellite and terrain maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand and can be used with preloaded maps. Starting with v3.06 can download maps directly from the phone, no computer needed anymore.

The route planning algorithm is also rather easy to customize to best suit your preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Routes can be set to either fastest or shortest.

Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map. Ovi Maps 3.06 also joins in on the location check-in craze and supports a long list of networks (but not Foursquare, understandably).

Final words

We’re not exaggerating by calling the Nokia X7 one of the best Symbian-powered devices currently on the market. This used to be the biggest compliment you can pay a smartphone but the times have changed.

And in the ongoing struggle to have the best features, the X7 holds its own. The great screen and inspired design are its two biggest assets. Maybe it’s time for Nokia to move on from nHD though, the resolution is a bit of a stretch on a 4″ screen. Sharpness aside however, the screen on the X7 is a joy to behold.

The bold design too – people are in and out of court these days over two phones looking “rectangular with a big touchscreen in the middle”. The Nokia X7 runs no risk of being mistaken – it’s unique and attractive.

Symbian Anna offers only some improvements instead of a complete overhaul, but it’s still enough to bring a big, perceptible change to the user experience. It’s not quite on par with Android or iOS but Symbian-philes will eat it up.

All things considered however, it’s hard to deny that the Nokia X7 is a reworked C7 with a better screen. When the C7 gets upgraded to Anna, the gap will really close, in terms of specs though probably less so in terms of price.

Anyway, the X7 has more than its kin to worry about – there’s a whole army of big bad droids out there.

Nokia C7

From the golden oldie Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (which has been updated to gingerbread and has seen its price reduced quite a bit), to affordable dual-cores like the LG Optimus 2X (which can do FullHD videos), there’s a lot to choose from.

How about the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, which is quite thin but packs an eye-pleasing Reality display, or maybe the HTC Incredible S with its trademark HTC charm?

   
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S • LG Optimus 2X • Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc • HTC Incredible S

If you want you can go higher – the Samsung 9100 Galaxy S II has a brilliant 4.3″ SuperAMOLED Plus screen, an 8MP camera with 1080p video and a pair of the fastest CPUs we’ve tested yet. The HTC Sensation has a 4.3″ screen and 1.2GHz dual-core CPU to offer as well, with 1080p videos on top.

If you like Nokia and you like experimenting, then we’ll suggest the Nokia N9. We loved its screen, its unibody, and the first taste of MeeGo made our mouths water. It’s not on the market yet but if you’re not in a hurry, you really should consider waiting a while.

  
Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II • HTC Sensation • Nokia N9

If the Nokia X7 came out around 2009, when the whole touchscreen thing was beginning to heat up, it would have made a killing. It still has the potential to sell but the competition will eat into its profits. We suggest you have another look at the competing phones listed here. Hard to choose, we know. The good thing is, if you believe the X7 is the one for you, you probably won’t regret going for it.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_x7_00-review-613p8.php