The Nokia N8 and Nokia E6 are strikingly different devices, the Nokia N8 is a high-end multimedia smartphone with 3.5-inch touchscreen while the Nokia E6 packs in a full QWERTY keyboard for business users and heavy messengers alike. We put both to the test to find out which is faster?
One of the strengths of every Nokia is that it's designed with the user in mind. Nokia don't do a one-size-fits all approach, which means you'll always find a smartphone to suit your primary needs. Take the Nokia E6, for example, it's all about messaging which is why it has the best QWERTY keyboard out there.
Check out our Nokia E6 hardware review
Meanwhile, the Nokia N8 is all about high-end photography and video, so it packs in a 12-Megapixel camera with 720p video capture. If you want to fire off a text or email, then you'll need to use the virtual keyboard. It's a decent way of working but is it as fast as a dedicated keyboard?
That's the question we asked ourselves so we've pitched the two devices head to head in a speed test. The trick was to type out as quickly as possible, taking into account typos and clumsy thumbs, the sentence 'Which is faster, the Nokia E6 QWERTY or the Nokia N8 virtual keyboard?' and the results were quite astonishing.
To make things a little more fair, we ran the test three times on each device and took an average. We managed to write the sentence using the Nokia N8 virtual keyboard in 57.8 seconds, which isn't too shabby. However, the Nokia E6 pretty much steamrolled over this with a score of 46.1 seconds, more than 10 seconds quicker!
We didn't want to leave this as a one-off test, so we then passed both devices over to my daughter, who uses a Nokia 5230 out of interest, who hasn't used either the Nokia N8 or Nokia E6 before. The challenge here was to see if she could just pick up either device and simply start typing!
This time around the Nokia N8 took longer to get going, taking 1 minute 40 seconds, while the Nokia E6 was a clear favourite coming in at just 56.7 seconds. While a virtual keyboard is good enough for every day use, it's clear that if you're serious about getting the message out then you need to be a Nokia smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard!
Have you tested out a dedicated QWERTY keyboard, such as the one found on the Nokia E6, Nokia C3 or Nokia E5 against a virtual keyboard? Let us know how you got on in the Comments below.