Nokia E6 Part 3: Symbian Anna and Software Review

We have posted a few articles in reviews of Nokia E6 covering different aspects. This is the final review of Nokia E6 that will cover the device from inside. That is; we’ll talk about the software Nokia E6 came with as well as the third party applications support for Nokia E6. However “the final review” doesn’t mean we’ll end talking about the device or the software. We have arranged to show off a few applications supporting Nokia E6 as well as some accessories. Whenever we got some update regarding Nokia E6, you will hear from us.

The Software – Symbian^3 or Symbian Anna

Nokia E6 is one of the two devices (2nd is Nokia X7) which came with Symbian Anna, the upgraded version of Symbian^3. Symbian Anna is the major upgrade after Symbian^3 was evolved and is yet to be shipped to earlier Symbian^3 devices which have already been in use since last year 2010 e.g. Nokia N8, C7 and E7. Before upgrading earlier Symbian^3 devices, Nokia released these two smart phones E6 and X7 with having power of Symbian Anna from factory.

First of all one thing to be noted that Symbian Anna is an upgraded version to Symbian^3, and not a fully/partially evolved OS like it was Symbian^3 from S60v5. Overall there is not much changed in Look and Feel and most of the interfaces are same as found in Symbian^3, however a few changes in interfaces are to be mentioned that we’ll note down below. But I’ll call Nokia E6 a Symbian^3 device with Symbian Anna upgrade. Most of it the Symbian Anna is a tweaked version of Symbian^3 with enhanced features.

Symbian^3 Inherited

Well as said, the Symbian Anna is the upgraded version of Symbian^3, hence there is a lot things you will see that are same as in Symbian^3. But specifically in Nokia E6 the things are arranged in different manner due to the portrait QWERTY interface and landscaped resolution. The orientation of the screen on E6 is landscaped.

Music App is pretty same as came with Symbian^3 software. The album wall with 3D effect, Now Playing interface, Main menu to switch views between albums, artists, songs, genres, and playlists. But the version of the app is bit newer (as v16.10.18.) than the one in Symbian^3 PR1.2 (with v16.10.11.)

Photos and Photo Editor apps are also same in most places with a few changes here and there like in Photos the one is obvious, that is; the big check boxes on the thumbnails to select the photo and perform operation.

Videos and Video Editor apps: As well you can see that have the same interface. Video playback supports also the same codecs and video formats as following. (3GPP formats (H.263), WMV 9, Flash Video,H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, RealVideo 10, Sorenson Spark, VC-1, VP6, Frame Rate at 30fps)

Following picture is showing a video playback on Nokia E6.

Power Saver Screen and Lock Screen don’t have any thing different in Symbian Anna as well but in addition to locking the screen, Nokia E6 gives the facility via Lock Switch to turn on the LED flash light when holding the switch down

Popup/Context Menu in Symbian^3 will always be appreciated. It’s present in Symbian Anna but with no change from Symbian^3. The menu is available on most of the interfaces in Symbian^3 and not only on home screen. e.g. in Contacts, the File Manager, Photos and Videos, Application Manager, App Launcher, Connectivity, etc…

Symbian Anna

There are some major upgrades in Symbian Anna along with some minor and few important changes in the user interface throughout the system. Following are those major upgrades.

The 5 home screens instead of 3 on Symbian^3.
Stick to finger swipe able home screen.
Quick management of Icons in the App Launcher.
Split Input + Portrait QWERTY keyboard layout (E6, having a physical fixed keyboard, won’t have this feature as not required – This feature will be available in other devices e.g. N8, C7 after having Symbian Anna update as well E7 will use this feature only when the slide-out physical keyboard is closed. Being Symbian Anna devices, X7 and Nokia Oro do have this feature by birth)

Five home screens in E6 could have the same number of customisable widgets 3 x 5 = 15 => 5 x 3 = 15 in other Symbian^3 or Symbian Anna devices. The reason being, layout orientation on E6 is already in landscape mode and having a huge resolution could have afforded to bring two widgets in a row like other Symbian^3 or Anna devices (landscape mode) but in a tiny screen size of E6, your eyes couldn’t have afford to see or use those widgets properly as they wouldn’t have been that big to for your fingers. So all of the 5 home screens on E6 brings 1 sticky column on remaining space on left covering with time date and time widget, profile widget and a widget space for notifications. These sticky widgets get swiped along with the screen but present the same content on each screen. Neither you can remove or customize these widgets.

the UX/UI on the home screens of Symbian Anna has got major upgrade which was really missing in Symbian^3 and people bashed about it. In Nokia E6, and in other Symbian Anna devices, you get the home screen swiped while sticking to your finger unlike Symbian^3 when the home screen will move after you have done swiping your finger through the screen.

(Following picture is showing the swipe gesture on the home screen)

The first and very obvious addition in Symbian Anna and so in E6 is the new style of icons set replacing to old Nokia icons. These new icons are now rounded squares. The good thing is that now third party developers are also updating their apps with the Symbian Anna style icons.

Like iOS or Android now in Symbian Anna, of course in E6 as well (Using Symbian Anna where the feature is available to all Anna devices), you can re-arrange the icons in App Launcher by long tapping on an icon within the App Launcher. Long tapping on an icon will change the App Launcher to editable mode and and you can move the icons likewise. Once in editable mode you can again long tap on an icon to get a popup/context menu with options to delete the app, move it to folder or rename a folder. “Long tapping to editable” feature wasn’t available previously in Symbian^3 and you had to go through Options > Organise.

Two of the upgrades in Symbian Anna were available which I remember, I asked @ovibynokia after feeling them a missing or poorly managed in Nokia N8 or other Symbian^3 devices. Seriously I am not telling you that I was the only one who requested or suggested these changes, there may be many others having them missed in there Symbian^3 devices or even Nokia would have been working on it already. Whatever but these two upgrades or changes were really needed. These are following.

The Calender App in Symbian^3 was very poorly designed as the month view was covering the whole big screen on my N8 and no preview pane for the entries were available. You have to tap on a date and the page has to switch to go to the entries page. In Symbian Anna the main month view has been shrunk and space for entries preview has made available. The space depends on the orientation of the device. The adding or editing an entry UI has also been changed with a better look and color coding of selected calender.

Nokia N8 (Left) – Nokia E6 (Center) – Nokia X7(Right)

X7 screenshots credits gsmarena

And second is the switching of WLAN connection from one to another. In Symbian^3 you couldn’t connect to a WLAN connection when another WLAN connection is already active. Doing so the system will prompt you with an error saying that another WLAN connection is already active. To connect to other profile you have to manually disconnect the already connected WLAN profile and connect to the other one. Now in Symbian Anna the system will automatically disconnect from already connected WLAN profile if you try to connect to another WLAN profile.

Switching to “bells01” while the device is currently connected to “Wi-Bells” profile
Error WLAN connection active – (The Symbian^3-N8 way)

Switching to “Wi-Bells” while device is currently connected to “bells01” profile
Switched – No Error – (The Symbian Anna-E6 way)

Messaging and Email

Of course we aren’t leaving the most important aspect of E6. The “E” in Nokia E6. Talking about a smartphone from E-Series and no-talk about Messaging? No-Way.

If we were asked to comment on messaging in E6 in one simple and straight answer. The answer would be “Just Brilliant”.

Messaging

Well the user interface of Messaging in E6 is just same as it was in Symbian^3 devices along with a Conversation module for threaded view of messages, you must be familiar with that. It’s the chat-like messaging. There is not such a thing in the interface which I really need to praise. But?

But E6 itself with its posture of QWERTY keyboard did really a better job for messaging. As said earlier in E6’s design review about the keyboard layout with pretty well shaped keys were actually supportive in typing. Bringing the best of the designs from E71 and E72 and combined into E6 is what I’ll appreciate.

Short keys like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V works the same way as before but touch screen has added a good set of features in this messaging device. e.g. Long Tap to to do things quickly.

Email

I must say that the Email client interface has been much improved from the previous one in Symbian^3. I am not talking about the delivery of emails and functionality yet but talking about the user interface which is pretty much same as it was in Symbian^3 PR1.2 but improved in a sense of usability.

I still don’t like the email client performance in my N8 which lags a lot and opens an email, which I didn’t intend to, while scrolling. This is what I am saying, is not the case in E6. Scrolling of the list in Email client is much better with no-complaint. Hope the Symbian Anna would deliver the same results in my N8 once rolled-out.

Setting up email account is just that simple as you need to choose the provider and give your username(email) and password. If you have used a Symbian^3 device, then it’s just like that with no other settings.

High resolution of E6 makes the email browser even more impressive covering full detail of the email within the view.

Having a physical QWERTY keyboard, E6 also provides the shortcuts in the Email Client to quickly access the functions of the app e.g. to send new mail the short key is “C”, “S” for Search, etc.

Search function is performed within your mail account on server.

The E6 Browser – In detail

Actually the browser is also a major upgrade in Symbian Anna. In fact it has to be covered in detail, hence a dedicated section for the browser is here out of the Symbian Anna section.

The Symbian browser in touch screen devices has always faced depreciation after the iOS had taken the top place in smartphones line up. And then Android came into the market which had got even more attraction of smartphone consumers. Both the iOS and Android have got full fledged internet browser supporting most of the new gen functions and features of a desktop browser but Symbian was still there with a browser from the days of non-touchscreen devices. Symbian^3 did a bit well in performance of the browser but the user interface was still the same as of older days.

Symbian Anna is the first upgrade to Symbian^3 devices which enabled the internet browser for most of the desired and major functions of a browser which can facilitate a user in real sense. The features like multi-webpage and a limited support of HTML5 is added to the browser and being a Web Kit based browser which it already was but now with new features and support it now can open most of the sites designed for a desktop computer. User Interface has got major changes as the removal of traditional option buttons and big tool bar buttons and has provided a bigger open space for the web page with an address bar on top and two buttons on the bottom overlaying the webpage without wasting space

Tapping the bottom-left button with back arrow takes you to previous page visited from history.

Tapping the double arrows button on bottom-right corner brings a cool pallet containing a set of quick options overlaying the webpage and toggles the direction of the arrows button. Options on the pallet are ones which normally are used frequently e.g. Home, Save as Bookmark, Bookmarks list, Switch windows, History, Find a word on current page, Settings shortcut which brings the same settings options as were there in previous versions and an Exit button is provided on the pallet.

One of the most appreciated feature in this new browser is the multi-page browsing. Now you can open more than one page manually by going through Options > Windows. This will brings a completely new interface in the browser with the windows currently open along with giving you an option to start a new windows right from there. You can use swipe gesture to move the windows wall from right to left and vice versa.

Symbian browser now supports most of the HTML5 features (not all though, not still comparable to the ones in Androids or iOS.) But most of the websites are rendered at its best as well as the mobile version of the sites works very well with high resolution.

Following is the very latest development by Google, the Google Plus. The desktop web version of Google Plus normally won’t work in Symbian^3 browsers and if you try to access it, you will be prompted with an error saying that the browser is not supported. Well this is not the case when you open http://plus.google.com/ on E6’s browser. You can see following the Google Plus webpage’s been rendered well on the E6’s browser but fitting the full page in browser distorted the text in most cases. But it depends on the font size the webpage used and the width of the webpage. Fitting more wide content in the browser of course will increase the limit 640 pixels which E6’s browser currently supports.

Desktop version of Google Plus. (Click image to open and enlarge)

Mobile version of Google+, Notifications and Gmail. (Click image to open and enlarge)

Desktop version of Facebook. (Click image to open and enlarge)

Mobile and Touchscreen versions of Facebook.

Well this is what the browser can do and I guess most of the websites and blogs have mentioned the new capabilities of the browser in Symbian Anna. For normal/regular internet browsing, I believe this Symbian browser has got a lot to serve you as I really liked surfing and browsing on this new browser instead of the one in my N8, for as along as E6 lived me.

When tested for HTML5 capabilities Nokia E6 could make up to the score of 130 which is still lower than the browsers in Android 2.3 (score 184) or iOS 4.3 (score 217). Nokia N9 (MeeGo 1.2) is currently the highest score gainer in all smart phones.

Following are the screens of all of the HTML5 capabilities detected in Nokia E6’s browser when tested on http://html5test.com/

What I missed most of the things in this browser is the “Geo Location” API. I seriously didn’t like that I just couldn’t present any Nokia phone to one of our clients who actually was requiring a web application supporting “My Location” feature for smart phones and I only could present the application on Androids and iOS devices.

Geo Location API is one of the capabilities of HTML5 in modern browsers which is required to use the most common feature “Check-In” in today’s popular social networking platforms. That said; in Nokia E6 you still can’t use this browser for sharing your locations on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or any other web application which requires Geo Location capability in the browser to detect your location with the help of built-in GPS chip in the device.

Another bad thing I found while using E6’s browser for 2 weeks and it was annoying sometimes. It’s the design layout of the browser which looks really cool and simple with a title panel at top and two buttons at bottom-right and left corners. The bad thing is that the bottom buttons overlay on the actual webpage with no extra space given below the page. The problem occurs when a link on the page is provided on bottom left or bottom right corner which gets covered by the overlaying browser buttons and you can not click the link on the page. For that you have to zoom into that level where the link gets larger and visible from the sides of the browser buttons so that you could click the link.

Check the following scenario where a links/buttons on the webpage are covered by the browser buttons and I just can’t click any of them easily.

Voice and Contacts

Contacts management is also same as it was in Symbain^3 and so is the Call handling. Pretty quick in searching through contacts and calling it instantly with one click. The quick call can only be made to a contact which is set with only a single number or at least one default number amongst a few. Where a contact has more than one number you get one more step to choose from one of those numbers to call if you haven’t set a default number from them.

A contact entry with more than one number or email can be configured with a default number or email from those multiple numbers/emails in that contact. This makes it easy for you to set a primary number or email for that contact where you believe the contact mostly can be reached on and you can call, text or email that contact in a single tap.

You can set default number and/or email by going through a Contact Detail page. Check out the following screens in order.

Connectivity

Connectivity options for Nokia E6 are quite similar to those for Nokia C7. I don’t think that those all have to be described again as they still work the same way in E6. But I really shall want to demo them below specially the USB-OTG and Bluetooth Stereo Audio.

WiFi Connectivity – WLAN 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 3.0 with Stereo Audio
USB On-The-Go
Audio/Video Out via 3.5mm jack

One thing which was brought to Symbian Anna (or you can rather say a bug fix perhaps?) is the WLAN profile switching as explained above. Plus the features like USB-OTG work just great with Nokia E6 as they did in earlier Symbian^3 devices. Checkout out the following shots showing E6 connected with a Flash Drive and playing video from that external drive.

USB On-The-Go in E6 supports everything which earlier Symbian^3 devices did. e.g. connecting USB Flash Drive as above, attaching USB mouse and keyboard just like we did earlier with Nokia N8. It can charge any Nokia phones (which have USB-Charging feature but are not USB-OTG featured devices) as well as connecting the phone as Mass Storage drive just like USB Flash Drive.

We also did a demo of Nokia E6 connecting it with Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-905i.

We have a video demo for it which we’ll try to publish sooner or later some time. Until then take a review of Nokia BH-905i demoing with Nokia E6 and Nokia N8.

Other connectivity options are just same and self descriptive like what I’ll need to explain about WLAN?

But you can take a tour of our TV-Out video demo with Nokia C7. Nokia E6 works the same way with its capabilities of a bundle of playback formats.

Applications and Utilities

Being one of the E-series devices Nokia E6 also has got a bunch of premium/paid apps pre-installed with the firmware, that you don’t loose licenses for them even after hard resetting and restoring to factory settings. That said, these apps are just within the firmware rather than installed later before shipping.

Quickoffice for Symbain^3

A full version of Quickoffice with editing capabilities is bundled with Nokia E6. This version is pretty same as came with the later firmware upgrade PR1.1 to Nokia N8. Specially designed version for Symbian^3 devices to support features like multi-touch and pinch-to-zoom.

This version however wasn’t released as standalone app from Quickoffice officially but recently Quickoffice has released Quickoffice Pro (a paid app) for Symbian^3 devices which even can do a lot more functions like storing the documents on the cloud featuring Google Docs and Dropbox like services.

JoikuSpot Premium

JoikuSpot is a utility app serving the Symbian smartphones for quite a long ago. JoikuSpot Premium makes it possible to connect your laptop or iPad to the Internet using your mobile phone as a 3G/GPRS/EDGE WiFi Router. JoikuSpot turns your phone into a WiFi HotSpot. User Interface is as simple as 1-Click WiFi Tethering from home page.

Well this premium app is absolutely fee of cost for E6 and is already bundled with the firmware.

Font Magnifier

Font Magnifier is also a paid app at Ovi Store developed by Psiloc. This utility app magnifies the font size overall in the system. Means increasing the font or decreasing it will effect it over the device in every application which used system font settings.

When you try to acquire a license from within the app on start up, as shown in first screen shot of E6 you get only one option that is “Lifetime license for free”. Normally, if the device is out of the free offers, you get different options like below on an N8

F-Secure Mobile Security

F-Secure Mobility Security is set of mobile protection modules including, Anti-Theft, Anti-Virus, Firewall, Browsing Protection. All these modules need to be activated with a paid license. But in Nokia E6 these all are pre-licensed for 3 months. You don’t need to pay for them for as long as 3 months.

Applications from Ovi Store and Games support

This is area where many technical things involved. Nokia E6, however, is a Symbian^3 device with Symbian Anna upgrades and capabilities but this should not be considered that it would deal with all the apps and games which were developed for Symbian^3 devices. And the reason is only the resolution difference. Nokia E6 serves you on a different resolution than other Symbian^3 devices. But still many apps are available in Ovi Store which can be compatible on Nokia E6 including some games as well.

Ok first we take two of the most popular games available on Symbian^3 platform. Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja.

Well both of the games can be installed on Nokia E6 but as both have been developed by two different developers hence possibilities of both games can of course be different on a device. In our tests Angry Birds performed on E6 as good as it did on other Symbian^3 devices e.g. N8, C7 and E7. But on a tiny screen of E6 with huge resolution you end up with having very small objects/characters (birds and pigs) on screen to play with. Touch input on the game was exactly accurate on the objects.

But when tested Fruit Ninja, the results were not that good as expected. The menu selections with swiping buttons were not that accurate on positions. e.g. a swipe on a button was not performed right on the button but a bit away from it. There could be a positioning issue of touch interfaces of Fruit Ninja. But the strange thing was that only the menu selection was behaving awkward. The game play itself was at its full accuracy of touch input positioning.

We have recorded both game plays. you can see below.

Angry Birds on Nokia E6

There was nothing to be noted as an issue on the functioning of Angry Birds on E6

Fruit Ninja on Nokia E6

Fruit Ninja as said above does have some issues with swiping interface on menus but the game play was good with it.

Just concentrate on the swipe gestures on the menu screens whiling noticing the blade effect appears away from the the position where I swiped through.

The main factor of Nokia E6 is not that it’s on high resolution but it’s the difference in ratios of pixels in width and height from other Symbian^3 devices. The landscape resolution on Nokia E6 is 640×480, that is 4:3 but in other Symbian^3 devices the landscape resolution is 640×360, that is 16:9. This is the reason that many apps that were created in Qt/QML or any app specifically designed/developed keeping the resolution of Symbian^3 devices in mind will probably not work in Nokia E6 or will work with some issues. Like we selected an app which actually is not compatible with Nokia E6 according to its specifications, but we did install it manually and see the results below. It’s Nokia Trailers.

Did you see the black strips on top and bottom of the screens above? These are the blank spaces which were considered as an out of the workplace area when the app was developed. Means the app was specifically designed for the devices with resolution of nHD (16:9) or 640×360. So when we run the application on E6, Nokia Trailers worked just well but it’s fully unaware of the black strips around on its top and bottom.

The thing to tell about third party apps for Nokia E6 is, that you will find not that many apps in Ovi Store as you could find for other Symbian^3 devices even if the apps could work on E6 as well. This is because the publishing criteria on Ovi Store restricts devices on the base of many different things relating to the devices e.g. the resolution specific apps, or in fact device specific apps. For example Nokia Trailers was not listed in Ovi Store for Nokia E6 but we did install it on E6 and it worked very well except of those black strips on top and bottom. And it keeps changing may be later an app gets listed for E6 after being passed from tests.

Power Management

Straight forward statement about Nokia E6’s power performance is that no other Symbian^3 device beats E6. With 1500mAh Nokia E6 is the only Symbian^3 device with bigger capacity battery. E6 also performed better than Nokia N8 or E7. But of course if we compare E6 with its earlier form factors like E72 or E71, E6 is no where near to beat them. This is obvious that E6 is bundled with better and faster hardware than the E72 or E71. E6 also owns a dedicated GPU for graphics processing. To achieve something there is always another thing to sacrifice.

But in my personal opinion, in today’s age with one full charge a smartphone at least should last a day with average use. It’s fine to charge at night and pick it up when you awake in morning.

Our Opinion

You, now, might be looking for an opinion for Nokia E6. whether to buy it or not to buy ir?

Well it all depends which type of phones you have used and what are the purposes you are looking for a smartphone. On the top of that the brand matters as well. So just consider the following points.

Nokia E6, as already said in another post, is a good move from Nokia E72 or E71. If you want to upgrade from E72 or E71 or any other its form factor, E6 should be the choice for you.
Nokia E6, although does own a dedicated graphics processor, should not be categorized as a gaming device. You won’t enjoy playing games on it as you would on other Symbian^3 devices with big screens. However you can play games with no jerks if the game is available and gets installed.
For a better camera requirement along with a productive and messaging machine, Nokia E6 should be your choice if you are not very keen to have a big touch screen device. Of course the “better camera in E6” meant to be compared with C7, E7 and X7 but not with N8. Read a full review of Nokia E6’s Camera.

Ok for now that’s all. Do post your feedback below or ask questions if you have any. We’ll try our best to answer your queries.