Noknok

The Nokia E6 is the new top-of-the-class QWERTY smartphone and the first Nokia smartphone to launch with the Symbian Anna operating system. It’ll be joined by the likes of the Nokia N8 and Nokia E7 in the coming weeks but what can you look forward to? Here we give the Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna our hands-on treatment.

Symbian Anna is the latest update to Symbian^3 operating system, and underlines Nokia’s continued commitment to keep the platform growing and evolving. Symbian remains the largest handheld platform in the world.

Read our Nokia E6 hardware review

The Nokia E6 is a QWERTY smartphone that also packs in a 2.46-inch touchscreen display. While it uses the same Symbian platform as all other touchscreen Symbian^3 devices it’s rather unique in that Nokia has tweaked the Symbian Anna update to deal with a more condensed screen size. For example, the much called for Portrait QWERTY keyboard is something you won’t find supported here, after all you don’t need it!

However, you will find that what it brings is more than just a new line in icons and font, as Symbian Anna brings with it a host of updates and fundamental changes. Nokia has done a pretty neat job and making sure everything looks smoother and slicker on the Nokia E6 with Symbian Anna.

The biggest change we’ve found is speed, as Anna simply flies compared to previous versions of the OS. The new Homescreen design means you can preview the screen before or after the present one, something you couldn’t do before. This is a nice touch but has taken a little getting accustomed to, the pages change so quick it’s easy to lose where you are!

The new web browser (version 7.3) is slick and easy to use, even first time users will feel at home as the new layout is intuitive, and bets of all fast!

We really like what Symbian Anna has brought to the Nokia E6 and can’t wait until it’s rolled out across the full line of devices.

Have you checked out Symbian Ann yet? Let us know what you think in the Comments below.