Nokia E6 review

The new phone benefits from touchscreen and Symbian Anna, but is it the business?

Nokia E6
The E6 comes in black, white and silver

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Nokia e6

The Nokia E6 is enhanced by the contacts and calling functionality provided by the Symbian^3 operating system. The Contacts app saves a friend's name, address (which gets linked to, and shows up on, Ovi Maps), phone numbers, Facebook and Twitter profiles (via a Social app add-in), Ovi Chat, Google Talk, Yahoo Chat, MSN and ICQ usernames (which get linked to Chat, if you install and set it up).

Within the Contacts app, two additional tabs provide contact grouping and integration with Microsoft Communicator mobile. The Communicator tab automatically sets up a contact's details once the connection has been made between the phone and the relevant Microsoft Office communications server, which can be located behind a corporate firewall.

Nokia e6

One disappointment on the Nokia E6 is that IM usernames entered in the Contacts app don't pull through to Ovi Chat, and vice versa. The Chat app also doesn't remember user details when setting up or changing services, requiring you to enter username and password details for all IM services separately. It seems disjointed that this information isn't added to the global Nokia/Ovi username system.

Contacts can be accessed through the Contacts app or on the home screen by typing a phone number, contact's name or company name, which will show an updating list of contacts with that number/letter combination in their details.

Nokia e6

A third way of bringing up contact details is via the Search home screen widget, although this doesn't give results until after you've entered your search query and selected My Content. The speed on this was also surprisingly slow.

You can also use the integrated voice dialling and voice command system to speak to contacts, which works out of the box thanks to Nokia's voice recognition algorithms.

Once you have decided which method of making the call you prefer, we finally get to the call itself.

All Nokia Symbian^3 devices come with High Definition call quality, providing a clear sound quality at both ends as long as the network signal strength supports.

During testing no issues were experienced with call quality, with reduced signal strength limited to known poor signal strength locations.