The Nokia E6 has been officially announced and we were at the launch this morning so managed to get our hands on the new business QWERTY and even managed to compare it to the Nokia E72. Read on to find out more with our Nokia E6 hands-in first impressions review.

The Nokia E6 is here to take the business community by storm. Designed as the natural successor to the Nokia E72 (or even the Nokia E71 if you’ve been waiting that long to make an upgrade), this stainless steel and glass smartphone delivers everything we’ve come to expect from this class of device, and more besides.

So, we get the full QWERTY keyboard in a compact design. Then there is access to all your business apps, as well as email and messaging. However, the big difference with the Nokia E6 is that it comes with a Touch and Type approach (like the Nokia C3-01), so you can purely use the QWERTY keyboard or access stuff via the screen.

The Nokia E6 has a 2.46-inch with a 640 x 480-pixel resolution and images on the screen look amazing. It’s the first Full VGA resolution on this class of device and websites look sharp, messages crisp and the sample video we got to watch looked pin sharp.

Compared to the Nokia E72, the Nokia E6 is more compact, especially when you consider that it has a larger display. Ignore the camera housing and it’s pretty much the thinnest model in the E Series yet.

The keyboard on the Nokia E6 looks and feels great. The keys are larger, as the design allows for less waste around the keys and the dead space to the edge of the device. You’ll notice that a navi-key is still in place, which may seem a little superfluous when you have a touchscreen at your disposal. However, it means you can fine tune you movements in a document, for example, for pic the exact from in a video, something you have less control over when using a touchscreen.

We love the layout of the Nokia E6. Nokia has gone back to the 37-key layout, so the Spacebar is larger. Sure, you lose function keys but these are neatly arranged as secondary function keys. Then there are the little flourishes, such as the red LED mute button, so if you’re making a conference call you’ll know when it’s free to speak to others offline.

Summing up, the Nokia E6 is an amazing leap forward. The screen is drop-dead amazing and the little flourishes to the design push this QWERTY messenger clearly ahead of the pack.

Check out our Nokia X7 Hands-on First Impressions photo gallery: