Nokia E66 Review

Introduction:

When it comes to business phones, gizmos are nice but functionality is what matters above all. That’s why products aimed the suitspack a lot of features that are often unnecessary for the general customer, and place a premium on battery life.    These consumers are on and off the phone all day long and expect their device to keep up.

Design:

Nowadays, however, users are starting to assume  connectivity and battery endurance, and are starting to pay close attention to appearance. They are interested in what impression their phone gives, or whether it matches their clothes, their car; or what it “says” to the people around them. Nokia has taken note of this with their E-series phones, which break the boring mold and offer both performance and beauty.

Today we’re going to look at the E66,  a slider that builds on the E65. The quality is again top notch and the design has been refreshed to give a more modern appearance.  As you hold it in your hand, the combination of cold stainless steel and high-quality plastic gives the impression of something firm and classy. It’s almost the same about the slider – it has a little clearance and is very stable. However, we encountered an issue when opening and closing it, and it’s related to a strange rattling sound from within the phone, as if something has been broken or come out of place. We have to note that we were given a review unit that isn’t brand new, so the problem may be isolated to our unit.



You can compare the Nokia E66 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The 2.4” TFT display with QVGA resolution supports 16 million colors. When indoors the colors are realistic looking and nice, and when exposed to direct sunlight  the display is still plenty readable although everything becomes pale, almost as if it’s black and white.

The navigation keys are designed in a new way and together they form a flat surface, but when touched, they are easily distinguished one from another. These keys, as well as the 5-way D-pad are easy to press. As you open the slider you gain access to the numeric keypad. We didn’t like the lowest row of keys, since our fingers were somehow pressing against the edge and the feeling wasn’t pleasant. The volume rocker, the voice command button and the camera shutter are on the right side and we don’t have any remarks towards their handling. We are just a bit confused, because when we tried to hold the camera shutter, nothing happened… Isn’t it supposed to bring the camera interface up?


Actually, there are three more buttons on the body. Two of them are situated respectively on the left and right side and their purpose is for locking/unlocking the back metal lid; and if you take a look at the top side, you’ll most probably see the power button on the instant, since it’s in red color, differing from the other elements of the device.

Interface:

All models of the E-series use the Symbian OS and the E66 is not an exception. Here you’ll find the 3rd Edition of the S60 interface with Feature Pack 1. The standby screen can look completely simple, or show the Home screen application. We definitely prefer the second mode because it gives you the option to personalize it. Moreover, you gain quick access to the most used features and important information (unread SMS messages, e-mails, upcoming events, etc.) which saves time, and everyone knows in business time is money!

The news here is that you can not only change the shown apps and info, but also switch between two modes. This is possible from the Home screen app, as well as from the settings. By default, their names are Business and Personal, but they can be changed and totally personalized in order to suit your taste. Both of them can use a different ringtone, different on-screen apps, theme and wallpaper. In our view, this improvement is really handy; imagine that you have just left your workplace (Business), you switch to Personal, and your device transforms from a business phone to a beautiful slider, suitable for listening to music via the FM radio.



There are many other fresh improvements in the interface. Let’s begin with the phonebook, which has gone through some cosmetic changes.  When you select a contact from the list, pressing the D-pad to the right will bring up the possible ways for communication (email, SMS, etc.), which is quite a nice solution. Also, the caller groups aren’t shown in the upper part of the screen anymore but rather act as separate contacts, which allows you to send an SMS to chunks of your contact list with just a few clicks. Again, these little changes make a big difference in usability.


The “improvement wave” has passed through the organizer as well, but has affected only the calendar. It no longer takes up the whole screen, when showing all the days of the month. Below the dates you’ll see the upcoming events. In fact, you see only three of them in the beginning, but if you have assigned more, after 2 seconds the list begins to scroll down automatically. The rest of the view types also look a bit different. When you’re in “Day” view, the events are listed in a vertical sequence, divided into hours. There’s also the well-known To-Do view, but now a brand new type is available – Agenda. If you choose this mode, you’ll see all the events for a certain day, sequenced vertically in hours.


OK, the calendar has gone through plastic surgery and the end result is really nice. All the improvements will surely help the business customers quickly and easily organize their time, but let’s put that aside and take a look at the rest of the organizer functions. As we mentioned a few moments ago, they have not been changed and are all well-known from the previous models, running the same OS. The calculator, units converter, file manager, dictionary… it’s all as it used to be and even the novice users will be able to use them without problems.



Software:

And how do you open Office documents, PDF files and presentations? For the Word, Excel and PowerPoint files you use Quickoffice, which opens and edits Office 2003 files flawlessly, but when it comes to Office 2007, the situation is not that simple. If you need to open and edit such files, you’ll have to buy an additional license that costs €54.64 (about $75 USD). In order to view PDFs, the phone is equipped with Adobe Lite 1.5, which handles small and large files as well.

Multimedia:

The E66’s media capabilities aren’t vast. It features the standard Symbian music player and FM radio, so using them should not be a problem. The headphones will do a good job, if you want to listen to the news on the radio for example, but you won’t be able to fully enjoy your favorite music – they are not powerful enough and the sound quality is about the average level, far away from the one, offered by the music-oriented phones.


In addition to playing songs and listening to the radio, you’ll be also able to watch H.263 and H.264 encoded videos, but their resolution should not be higher than that of the display. If you want to record videos, on the back is a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and a small LED flash. It has a familiar interface, average quality when shooting outdoors, and a terrible one in artificial lighting conditions. You can use it as a barcode reader, which is an interesting feature that you can use when you’re shopping, in order to identify the product. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on our device and we couldn’t check a single barcode no matter the lighting. Sometimes, the function happened to turn off by itself. All in all, the multimedia qualities of E66 aren’t at all comparable with those of the Samsung INNOV8 for example, but are okay for a business phone.




Connectivity:

The E66 offers a few ways for connection to the global net. It’s up to you to choose whether to connect to the available wireless networks (Wi-Fi) or use fast HSDPA connection. You can use the Symbian browser no matter the connection type. As in previous Symbian S60 models from Nokia, we didn’t experience any trouble with it.  We managed to open all kinds of pages, they rendered properly, and navigating was quick and easy.


Besides connecting to the web you’ll eventually need to establish a local connection with other devices, for example with a laptop. This may happen also in several ways – via cable, in this case there are different modes; via Bluetooth 2.0; via Infrared – there aren’t many phones today that support this feature. In this aspect even the most pretentious users cannot complain.

GPS:

Nokia’s E66 offers a built-in A-GPS, which should help you navigate through cities or states that you’re unfamiliar with while either driving or using your feet. It worked flawlessly and even when it was cloudy the warm start was almost immediate (about 3-4 seconds). It uses Nokia Maps, which we’ve seen and discussed many times, so we’ll be brief with this one. Its interface is easy to get accustomed to, and the maps can be downloaded via a computer or directly from the phone. Moreover, it comes with a 3 month free license for turn-by-turn navigation, as in all latest models from Nokia, featuring a built-in GPS.

Performance:

In this day and age technology is progressing every time you turn around, and user’s expectations are doing the same. Today, the touchscreen phones are in vogue, but tomorrow, mobile devices may be implanted in your neck or some of your teeth. As we said in the beginning, it’s no longer just about the functions of a phone, it’s also about its appearance. This tendency has made its way to the business users, and Nokia is trying to stay the course. They have really done a great job with the E66, combining a good-looking and solidly built design, rich functionality and a good PIM. Its operating speed is okay, compared to other Symbian phones, although there is a short transition between the menus that can create the illusion of a slowdown. The battery is also said to pack a lot of punch and according to the official specs (7.5 hours of talk time/264 hours of standby) you should not worry about whether it’s going to last through the whole busy day.
 
As a phone however, the E66 disappointed us a bit.  The sound is too loud on both sides of the line, being accompanied by some crackling as well. The voices also become very sharp at some moments. The problem can be resolved easily however by turning the volume down 2-3 steps, and that’s why we give it an average mark – 7.5, but as a whole we expected something more from a high-end business phone.

Conclusion:

In the end, we’re pleased by the Nokia E66 and we like it, but we think that ladies would value it more than men would. To be honest, we prefer the E71, since it features a full QWERTY keyboard, which makes communication easier. Besides, it follows the same design philosophy and offers almost the same functionality. But this is, of course, our opinion and don’t forget that every person has different needs and taste.