On paper at least, Nokia’s E6 smartphone could have been designed just for me.
It keeps most of the design cues and form-factor first seen on the E71 and its successor the E72 – easy one handed operation, great physical QWERTY keyboard, rock solid build (well, the E71 at least), superb call quality, free turn-by-turn navigation, amazing battery life and sleek design – while introducing a high resolution touch screen, 8 megapixel camera, HD video recording and playback and the latest version of Symbian, somewhat redesigned for touch.
In fact, the E6 is the type of smartphone that I’ve been waiting for: a touch screen phone that doesn’t generally force me to use touch so that I can still operate the device one-handed and swap between direct manipulation and click and scroll when either is more efficient or convenient. Of course, attempting to combine the best of both worlds could mean the E6 falls horribly between the two. I’m glad to say, however, that for the most part this isn’t the case.
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