The Nokia E6 has been in da house for quite some time but I’ve just not been able to give it time or use it. It has been lying all packed up for a week in our office. With all the devices gone, I’ve finally taken the pure white E6 out for a stroll.

The device has been under usage for about 48 hours now and it’s fair to put a first impressions. here’s the unboxing for you first -

If you are aware I had the opportunity to get my hands on the device at an exclusive preview in Bengaluru and again a few weeks back. The E6 really looked appealing and different at the same time. The latter more so because of the touchscreen phones I’ve been straddling and using, I’d completely forgotten the experience of a QWERTY device. The E6 as you know is the first device to ship with Symbian Anna. It’s a much more powerful device than its predecessor – the E72. Powered by the same hardware (processor and RAM) as the E7, the E6 is pretty much the fastest Eseries device out there. In fact it’s apt to say that this is the E7 for people on a budget and/or want a compact device and not a large communicator.

The E6 also does away with the whole slim profile to an extent, at 10mm it’s not thick, but it certainly has bulked up when compared to the E71 or the E72. The white colour is very nice, though a little disappointing is to have a silver backside. I am sure others will also wish that the white E6 was ‘completely white’. The screen was quite sharp and it felt odd to be peering at a 2.5inch screen since I’ve grown accustomed to larger ones. I’ve got admit, the pixel density on a screen like that is startling. I got dizzy in a few seconds after trying hard to peer at the screen, desperately trying to find the jagged edges of a pixel. The device is heavier than the E72, at least it feels like a heavy device, which is reassuring to me. The keys, at first seemed like capacitive keys, running my fingers didn’t do anything, that’s when I realized they had to be pressed. The keys were soft and I did find the overall experience very good. I do believe that an E72 now would feel like a crude texting object after the E6.

Having configured everything, which was quite quick, though I still wish Symbian would be as efficient as Google in the whole sign up process. I did feel a bit handicapped when I had to get my contacts, I thought and wished they would sync automatically from my Google account. The Emails seem to be syncing pretty well, HTML loads pretty well and everything. In fact the sync is just marginally, marginally slower than the Gmail app on the Android. I think this time they’ve actually fixed the email client because it actually works pretty well. I’ve been syncing 4 email account of my EDGE connection. Typing on the physical QWERTY was a joy and it felt great. I’ve always been a physical QWERTY person and it feels good to be back on a QWERTY phone. Symbian Anna seems to be holding up pretty good. I’ve not had device freezes or any weird behaviour from it till now, and I have been doing a lot of things simultaneously in the background. RAM management is much better. With about 110MB free after running Nokia Email, Chat and Social, I’d have to say that the days of cribbing about RAM might be behind us.

The memory card slot is on the top (an unlikely place), though with the phone having 8GB of onboard storage, you might feel like holding out on inserting that memory card, the other reason being that you need long nails unless you are a girl. I found it to be a task to open the card slot so there definitely a minor issue there (increasing the cut out area for it would solve it). The backside is finished in a soft satin finish, gone are the indented designs on the back panel. I really miss that, since it looked nice and would have added a cool look to it. The lower front lip is bigger now, almost twice as big as the E72′s lip, this gives a lot ease in using the bottom keys.

Personally for me as a user, it feels different to see Symbian ^3 on a small screen, seeing as it was being promoted at the large screen devices like the N8, E7, etc. But at the same time it feels like Symbian is best suited in this form factor. The strengths of Symbian have always lay in small screen devices and it still continues to be, as is evident by the E6.

I think it’s best for me to close with my first impressions so that I have something to write in the review. Do stay tuned as well will have the full review of the E6 out soon.