Nokia E66 | Lifestyle Modern Phone
A straightforward replacement for the Nokia E65, the new Nokia E66 is a 3.5G, WiFi enabled Symbian slider with built-in GPS.
The Nokia E66, as with the E65, is really aimed at business users. But the old E65 was a surprise hit with consumers too.. so can the Nokia E66 follow suit?
This is not the only GPS-enabled slider phone in Nokia's range, and the E66 is very similar in specification to the Nokia 6210 Navigator that was announced a couple of months ago. More of this later.
Nokia E66 open A quick run-down of the features show that the E66 is a pretty capable device. There's a 2.4" QVGA display, 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, video calling, HSDPA data (with download speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps), WiFi, microSD expandable memory, it comes with an FM radio, Bluetooth, USB and infra-red connectivity and on top of that it runs the Symbian S60 operating system which gives the E66 a number of useful applications.
The main differences between the Nokia E66 and the 6210 Navigator are that the E66 has WiFi and the 6210 does not, but the 6210 is a little lighter and more colourful. The software on the E66 is more business oriented, and it has a longer battery life. Both handsets are roughly the same price. So.. it seems that the E66 competes very well with the 6210 and it might well out-compete it in the consumer market.
The usual E-series applications are on the E66: push email support (including with Microsoft Exchange), a capable web browser and a set of personal information management functions. The E66 doesn't appear to have a document viewer as standard, although there is a large amount of S60 software available for download. As with the old E65, it is possible to integrate the E66 into a corporate PABX system.
Internal memory is 110 MB, expandable up to 8GB with microSD cards. Maximum talktime is 3.5 hours on 3G, 7.5 hours on GSM. The E66 has Bluetooth 2.0, USB and infra-red connectivity. It's nice to see some handsets still have infra-red!
There are only a few drawbacks that we can see with the E66 - one of them is that any kind of GPS / SatNav system is pretty miserable if you don't have a touchscreen. Talktime is a little short for a business phone, and it's not all that cheap at around €350 (£280 / $550) before tax and subsidy.
There will be three UMTS variants depending on region, in two colours (Grey Steel and White Steel). Nokia indicate that the E66 should be available from July 2008 onwards.