Youth Review: Nokia E66 – A Disappointment.

When I received the Nokia E66 a little over a week-ago I was really excited; my first mobile to test, and a mobile I had never used before! Plus, it’s a Nokia right? It should be good, not it has to be good. Nokia phones have always treated me well.

Wrong.

Now I know this is a business phone, and I’m sixteen years old, so the business use of it to me is somewhat useless. I really don’t require my e-mails on the move, and I don’t even really need the internet. And I quickly found looking at this phone from its business menu, and a point of view of a “business type person”, was quickly getting me nowhere.

So I’ve looked and felt this phone from my own perspective, and I’ve decided it’s not for me.

Firstly its looks; not the most engaging design known to man-kind, but at the same time it doesn’t scream “I’m a business phone, steal me!” which I quite like. It has a nice screen, although not that bright. As a plus the screen doesn’t get terribly dirty through fingerprints that much, which is always nice touch.

The buttons I found slightly annoying. This is particularly on the top of the phone where it is very easy to hit another button when you’re trying to do something else. Otherwise, the main keypad was brilliant; they weren’t too small, and were easy to text with. The side buttons are well placed too, which is always a plus.

The E66 itself is relatively heavy, and I tried carrying it in my pocket for sometime, but it aggravated me a lot, so it ended up going in a bag instead. I like to be able to keep mobiles where I want, and to be able to carry it in my pocket without that feeling of it weighing down on me; sadly the E66 doesn’t do this.

I really loved the landscape screen mode, which automatically flips when you turn the phone. I actually much prefer it, and find the phone a lot easier to use, and hold when it’s held that way. Although, as my Mum and friends pointed out – what about left handed people? The phone only flips so that the keypad is on the right, which is utterly useless for the left-handed population out there; Nokia, please fix that.

The 3.2 megapixel camera is a little disappointing, and I tested it against my Sony W810i 2 megapixel camera, and I found it didn’t look that much better. You can see a picture test I did by clicking “here” and “here“. The picture quality is below par, and at night there isn’t an option to have the light on whilst aiming, so you have to hope for the best.

The general navigation of the mobile is a little complicated even my Nokia’s standards. There are way too many menus, and I found some of the options menus were a little scattered. I also found myself navigating through it quite a lot to find what I wanted, which was a little annoying. I don’t want my mobile phone to be a treasure hunt; I want it to be organised, and quick to navigate.
The connectivity of the phone is brilliant, and I enjoyed being able to wirelessly tap into open connections around my local high street; this was particularly useful when I was sitting outside the Library, and I was looking up train times. Although the sites weren’t useful, the fact I could look up such information was handy.

The music quality on the phone is a little poor, although this may be due to the terrible enclosed headphones. My friends and I all collectively agreed that the headphones are too big for ears, and they don’t sit properly. I found this particularly annoying whilst walking around listening to music and they kept popping/falling out. The quality of the music was poor to say the least, and it was somewhat lacking in every department. There wasn’t any recuperation when I changed or manually edited the equalizer settings. I couldn’t use it for listening to music to at all.

I also had major issues with the placement of the headphone jack; it’s a serious downfall for pockets, and wastes a lot of space. I would have much preferred it to be at the top or bottom of the phone.

The single thing that has annoyed me the most though is the battery life. It’s utterly useless! On Friday morning it was fully charged, and I used it a little during the day, I listened to some music, and browsed the internet for about ten minutes. The battery life had gone down a quarter. Since Friday night it hasn’t been in use, sitting in my bedroom doing nothing, and the battery is nearly dead. The Bluetooth is on (I always have it on), and WLAN scanning is off; today I awoke to find it had two bars left. Since writing this it has gone down to one. Similarly, my W810i, same amount of charging, used on Friday for music and phone calls, all day Saturday for music, the camera, and texting, and Sunday for more texting, and this morning it had still over half of its battery, and this also had Bluetooth on.

I’ve barely used the Nokia in terms of battery power, and for someone of the likes of Ewan, or anyone else for that matter who had more serious uses for their mobiles, I’m sure that they would quickly find themselves phoneless.

I have a slight issue with the “leather case” that comes with mobile too. It’s not leather, and it’s horrible, cheap plastic, “plastic bin” material. For a phone of this price I would have expected Nokia to provide a real leather case, not a cheap replica.

I can’t say I hate the phone, because I don’t. Although I haven’t been able to test its durability, the metal casing definitely makes it feel like it could withstand a more than a couple of drops, and minor spillages – always good for someone like me. The ability to download Podcasts was really good too, and iTunes users would certainly appreciate it more than me (although it doesn’t sync with iTunes which isn’t good). The downloadable radio guides are brilliant too. I was able to find all the radio stations I love really quickly, without having to input them all manually.

I also can’t say I would buy the Nokia E66, for me, it isn’t practical, it’s far too expensive, and it has way too many flaws to make it financially worthwhile. It has some good points as I’ve mentioned above, but they are not enough to win me over.
It’s a shame; I’ve always loved Nokia’s too.

Feel free to browse more pictures of, and from the Nokia E66 at my Flickr account.