Nokia E6 (E6-00)

Available now
12th April 2011

The Nokia E6 is a business oriented messaging phone that follows on from the popular E71 and E72 smartphones seen in recent years, and it is one notch up from the inexpensive Nokia E5 announced last year.

The main innovation is the display - the compact 2.46" panel is actually a very sharp touchscreen display with 640 x 480 pixels in resolution. This is very small for a touchscreen, but some other manufacturers are trying similarly sized touch panels in their messaging devices, so Nokia isn't completely alone here.

Under the hood, the Nokia E6 integrates closely with Microsoft's corporate collaboration tools such as Exchange and Sharepoint, plus VPN support and a variety of enterprise connectivity tools. The E6 also has hardware device encryption, which is becoming essential these days. In addition, the E6 runs the latest version of Symbian with the peculiar name of "Anna" which includes revised software and a smarter user interface.

On the back is an 8 megapixel camera with 720p video capture capabilities, there's also a multimedia player, FM radio, microSD expandable memory, a 3.5mm audio socket and GPS plus a new version of Ovi Maps.

This is a 3.5G device supporting downloads of up to 10.2 Mbps and uploads of up to 2.0 Mbps over most major UMTS bands plus quad-band GSM and 802.11 b, g and n WiFi connections. Inside is a great big 1500 mAh battery which gives up to 7.5 hours talktime on 3G and 31 days standby time, which is enough for almost all business users.

Nokia seem to have set out to make a better BlackBerry than BlackBerry, and it looks like they might have succeeded. The improved Microsoft support and dinky little touchscreen set the E6 apart from most of the competition and certainly make this attractive.

Ironically, the E6 shows the sort of thing that the Symbian OS is good at, right at the point where Nokia is moving away from the platform in favour of Windows Phone. But Windows Phone 7 doesn't run on this type of device, leaving Nokia in a bit of a sticky situation when it comes to whatever will eventually replace the E6.

Nokia say that the E6 should be available during Q2 2011 (Q3 in North America) for a price of €340 before tax and subsidy in black, silver and white colours.