Nokia E6 (Unlocked)

The Nokia E6 is an unlocked cell phone?that will appeal primarily to business users overseas, as well as diehard Symbian fans that want one last device before Nokia switches out the lights and moves over to Windows Phone 7. The E6 is a good end note with a few key OS improvements, but they'll only impress the Symbian faithful. It's a quality phone, albeit one that few U.S. customers will need.

Design, Call Quality, and Apps
More than just about any other Nokia phone, the E6 looks like a BlackBerry Bold that someone installed the wrong OS on. The E6 measures 4.5 by 2.3 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.7 ounces. It's made of quality-feeling black plastic, with a pronounced chrome accent band around the front panel edge; silver and white versions are listed on Nokia's Web site, but I couldn't find them available anywhere in the U.S. The 2.5-inch, capacitive touch screen is a small wonder, as it features an ultra-sharp 640-by-480-pixel resolution and subtle haptic feedback; it looks really good in person. You also get an accelerometer, compass, proximity sensor, and ambient light sensor; the first two are common on touch screen phones, but not usually in this form factor. Typing on the QWERTY keyboard is as easy as with any BlackBerry, if slightly cramped, and the screen is unusually responsive for a Symbian-based device.

The E6 is a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and quintuple-band HSDPA 10.2 (850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz) device with 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. That gives you plenty of options for data connectivity no matter where in the world you are. You can also use it as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot depending on your carrier and plan, which is an unusual and welcome feature for a Symbian phone.

Call quality in my tests was good overall. Callers sounded clear and full in the earpiece, and everyone said I sounded fine. Reception was solid; the only flaw was that it took several minutes after each boot-up for it to re-register the AT&T SIM card I was using; until then, the automatic Ovi Store login failed each time, and I could only make emergency calls. Symbian's Bluetooth pairing process is complex, and the phone absolutely refused to pair with my?Aliph Jawbone Era ($129, 4 stars) or?Samsung Modus HM6450 ($99, 4 stars) Bluetooth headsets, even after a reboot. Battery life was unremarkable at 4 hours and 52 minutes of talk time.

The Nokia E6 features a 680MHz, single-core ARM11 processor; not fast by Android standards, but plenty for a Symbian phone. That said, the OS still looks overly complex, still has too many submenus, and still pops up way too many dialog boxes for common tasks. It's a bit easier to get around given the screen's ultra-sharp resolution, which leaves more room around icons and allows for smaller fonts.

As far as third-party apps go, Nokia's Ovi Store is mostly a bust?and on its way out anyway. But Nokia compensates by loading up the E6 with plenty of apps, including Shazam, YouTube, Psiloc World Traveler, Vlingo, and a photo editor. You also get the free Nokia Maps for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS navigation. The WebKit browser is a little clunky but does a nice job rendering desktop HTML pages. Nokia phones have always excelled at email, with plenty of hooks for Webmail, Microsoft Exchange Server, and other POP and IMAP accounts, but if you're a heavy user of Google services, you should stick with an Android device.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
You get 8GB of internal storage, plus a microSD card slot. There's a standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack that includes TV-out support, and there's an FM radio for those that still listen to it. Standalone MP3 and AAC music tracks sounded clear through Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones; at least A2DP seemed to work correctly. The music app is a lot of fun, with smoothly scrolling album covers that look sharp and vibrant. Standalone video files played smoothly in full screen mode, but given the 4:3 aspect ratio and small LCD, this really isn't a phone for watching movies.

Nokia phones are known for their quality cameras; the E6 continues the tradition, with an 8-megapixel sensor, double-LED flash, and geotagging support. There's no auto-focus, but it didn't matter in my tests; sample photos looked excellent both indoors and out, with detail levels that were virtually indistinguishable from a standalone point-and-shoot camera. Only a slightly muted color spectrum and excess grain with the flash in a dark room gave the cell phone game away. Recorded, high-definition 1280-by-720-pixel videos looked a little dark, but played smoothly at 25 frames per second and exhibited a high 12Mbps data rate. A secondary VGA camera lives on the front of the phone for video chats.

Nokia closed its online store in the U.S. as of June 30th, after shuttering its physical retail locations earlier in the year. Click on a Buy Now link and you'll end up on Amazon.com. Nokia also just announced it would cease selling these phones in the U.S. altogether soon, so if you want one, you should buy it relatively quickly. At this point, customers for unlocked Nokia smartphones know who they are. If you're a Symbian fan with an older E series device and want to feel like you've upgraded, the E6 will make you happy. If you're not sure you want this handset, you probably don't, and will be better off with one of the many more powerful Android phones that feature hardware QWERTY keyboards. Our current Editors' Choice for unlocked smartphones is the blazingly fast Samsung Galaxy S II ($799, 4 stars), with its dual-core processor, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, and 4G data speeds. Otherwise, take a look at our list of the?10 Best Phones with Keyboards to start; every handset there is a good alternative to the E6.

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 4 hours 52 minutes

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