Nokia E6 Review

[Flaviano Bada]

Asyou may know, my Moto G6 phone has died. It's no more. On its own, thisisn't a big deal, because the G6 served mostly as a secondary device, primarily used for testing andexploration and such. However, I still felt I should replace the dead phone, and went on a relativelyshort search for a worthy successor.

Indeed, within less than an hour of reading, I decided to go for a Nokia X10 device. It fits withinthe modest low-mid-range budget requirements for secondary use, it seems to have a decent spec, it hasa 3.5mm audio jack, which is a must for me, and having been pleased with Nokia 5.3, I felt there shouldn't be any nasty twists in thisunorthodox, quick selection process. A couple of days later, the X10 arrived, and thus this review wasborn.

This is a bigass phone. Large and heavy. It's a good cm taller than my Moto Zoom, and it weighs 210grams. My specific mode came with a dual-SIM tray (both nano), for which you get a warning! If you useboth SIMs, you might not have 5G connectivity. Ha. We shall put that to test, soon.

The IPS LCD screen comes with 1080x2400px resolution and 395ppi density, and it's protected byCorning Gorilla Glass 3. Not enough? Then, on top of that, you also get a very thin, 0.3mm protectorfilm, which annoys me a lot, both on the aesthetic and haptic fronts. I don't like it, and I wonder whyit's needed if the actual glass itself is supposed to be quite strong.

The Qualcomm SM4350 Snapdragon 480 chipset comes with Adreno 619 graphics and octa-core CPU, withtwo "fast" cores at 2 GHz and six "somewhat slower" cores clocked at 1.8 GHz. If I look at the Nokia5.3, the specs are beefier in every aspect, including 50% more screen resolution and pixel density, aswell as more powerful GPU and CPU. But how this translates into actual use, we shall yet see.

I think the most notable "everyday" difference is in the camera unit, with fancy Zeiss optics. Now,I've always really liked Nokia phone cameras, and they used to be truly awesome. However, with budget phones, or at least devicesthat don't cost an arm and a kidney to finance, you know that some small corners will inevitably be cutsomewhere in the overall process. Where, though, is the big question. Here? Perhaps. On paper, you geta quad-sensor 48MP pack, which includes a 5MP mega-pixel unit, a 2MP macro unit, and a 2MP depth unit.The camera is also capable of HDR, panorama shots, and comes with a dedicated low light level (LLL)mode. I foresee some fun testing ahead.

On the sensors front, there's the mandatory 3.5mm audio jack, yes, because otherwise, I wouldn'teven bother, Wi-Fi 802.11/a/b/g/n/ac dual-band, Bluetooth, NFC, and USB Type-C charger. The batterycannot be removed, and it comes with massive 4470 mAh of stored chemical potential. All of this costsabout 300 dollars, which puts the X10 slightly above the typical budget range phone into whateverbracket comes above.

Now, this should be interesting. For a first time ever, I decided to import my Google account fromthe old device to the new one. Normally, I just create a brand new account every time, but I figured,why not try and see what gives. However, since the G6 would not boot, I had to rely on whatever Googlehas backed up to the big cloud.

On its own, the process went quickly and smoothly. First, there was a system update - a solid 2.2 GBworth of data. You start with Android 11, and there ought to be updates and hopefully upgrades for atleast three years, the brochure says. Then, the phone asked me if and how I wanted to bring in the olddata onto the new phone. The restore process started in the background, and I continued the phoneconfiguration, as I'd normally do. So what happened?

Even though I was importing my user configuration, not all of my settings were preserved. Feels likea Windows 10 feature upgrade that randomly changes things. Yes, a lot of my privacy settings werecorrectly set, but like I said earlier, not all. For instance, I had to tell the phone not to uselocation. I had to turn Bluetooth off again (but not NFC, that one was off). The permissions for someof the applications were reset. This meant that I couldn't rely on whatever Google had done during theimport, and had to go through every single setting.

The Google application was also active - I normally have it disabled - plus it had all thepermissions that I didn't give it. So I had to deny all of its permissions once again, and then turnedit off. On the Nokia phones (also seen on the 5.3), this results in an annoying side effect. The searchbox, which is located at the bottom of the Home Screen and cannot be moved or removed, becomesinactive, so you have a block of dead, unusable pixels just sitting there. Very ugly. As if the wholething is designed to make you want or have to use that box. Hm. Gestures. Off, of course.

The account import was incomplete. Most of the Google-specific stuff was done correctly, but not allof it. However, on the application side, the things were pretty bad. Android did reinstall my apps, butit did not import their configurations or data, so I had to start from scratch. For instance, theFirefox profile was totally empty. My CNBC watchlists were gone. VLC had no playlists or songs.WhatsApps conversations weren't there. I was logged out of Telegram. And so on.

What's the point of having one supposedly centric source of information (your Google account) if itdoesn't give you everything? If I need to create separate accounts and backups and profile syncs forevery single of these apps, then why bother? It just means you need to keep widening your online dataprofile, you need to share more and more data with more and more companies. I don't blame just Google,I blame everyone. Because everyone wants data, so they build systems that are purposefully siloed, andpurposefully designed not to cooperate easily with other tools. It's the exact opposite of how cloudshould work. Web 3.0 whatever, right.

Now, let's compare this to the iPhone 11 setup, which I went through recently. The process there was far,far smoother. Now, I have to say that with the iPhone, I did a phone-to-phone import, so I'm notcomparing the exact same things. Indeed, I do intend to go through another Android setup, and do a fulldevice copy. But for the time being, this from-cloud import feels very rudimentary. And pointless.

Of course, it wasn't the end of it. Every single time, I find myself dumbfounded by the sheerfragmentation of the Android ecosystem. And each phone, even different models made by the exact samevendor, behaves differently. Here are a few more snags I encountered.

All right. So I completed the setup, went through all the security and privacy settings TWICE, and Ifinally felt ready to embark on the usage journey. There are two sides to this coin. The physical side,and the software side. The latter will take more time to fully analyze, but I can already complainabout the former.

The phone is absolutely huge. Yes, it is my fault for buying a combat-ready brick, but then, it isvery hard to buy a new, modern phone that is small, isn't total crap and does not cost a fortune. Ifyou want a budget phone, it will be huge and heavy, and among the devices in my arsenal, this one winsby a huge margin. It's more than 1 cm taller than my not-so-small One Zoom. Worse than that, it's alsoquite wide. My hands aren't small, but even Andre the Giant would find the dimensions uncomfortable.Your tendons aren't going to thank you for it. Any extended usage feels awkward.

The power button is recessed, which is kind of nice. If you don't use Google Assistant, then youwill find the dedicated button on the left side pointless. The screen comes with a protector film,designed to prevent damage to the glass underneath. However, I find it annoying, both aesthetically andconceptually. While it's only 0.3mm thick, you can still feel it. It doesn't look pretty, it feels likea cheap afterthought, and I prefer to have my own choice whether and how to protect the touch panelfrom scratches. The protector film could have been offered as part of the package, and then, if anyonewants to use it, they can. I can already see a buildup of dirt and finger snags on the edges of thefilm close to the front camera (which isn't covered). This feels like there will be some wear quitesoon, and will make an otherwise sleek phone look cheap and used all too quickly. Meh. I need to figureout how to get the film off.

The display has vibrant colors but ... when you use the likes of Settings, the clarity and contrastaren't the best. Increasing the font size helps. Now, this would be the first time ever that I did thison a smartphone. I feel no such need on any other device, even those with higher resolutions andseemingly smaller elements drawn on the screen. Anyway.

On the software side, so far so good. My privacy-tweaked Android does not annoy me too much. I'm notusing any of the pointless default apps, and in fact, I've removed a whole bunch, including TikTok(social media has no place on me devices, any, ever). Why would this be part of the default arsenalbeats me. Also, I don't understand how it aligns with the whole Android One vanilla manifesto.

Firefox with UBlock Origin is my default browser, allowing for sane Internet usage, minus all thelow-IQ nonsense that is the modern Web. VLC plays songs (which I copied over the USB, as they were notpreserved, nor were any of my documents). Yay. And then, there's a whole bunch of other apps that Ioccasionally use, not out of any real, dire, practical needs, more to stay in touch with whatever theDystopian future holds. I want to know how complex and pointless the computer usage will be in the nextdecade or so, which means trying an app or three, to figure out how the illiterate masses interact withthe world.

I did try the Play Store, looking for a weather app (as there is no default one). The brief dallywas horrible. Flashy, crayony. You search for apps, you get a few entries of ads first, followed byapps that include ads, and then some. There is no smart search filter to remove apps with in-apppurchases or ads. All in all, a pointless experience for people who value peace and quiet. Nothing todo here, really. I can barely count four or five decent apps that don't bombard me with nonsense, andactually offer a good experience.

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