If you watched this week’s Driving With The Guru, you must know that I attended the “Convergence of Mobility and Nokia Internet Strategy” press conference in Lebanon, where the N78 was finally unleashed on the local market, and the new E66 and E71 were officially announced. During the event, I was able to handle all 3 handsets for a while and test them out. Today, I will talk a little bit about my first impressions with the E66, but stay tuned for the 2 next days because I will also tackle the N78 as well as the E71.
Recently, my friend bought an E65 and simply comparing the slider to my N95 made me realize how poor the N95 is built compared to Eseries, and even swear hatred to Nseries sliders. The E66 builds upon that, with a Solid Slider, probably better than the E65, but adds a 3rd S to the equation with a very Sexy look and feel. It is also very compact and thin, but with decent sized screen and keys. Of course, these aren’t the only conveniences that the E66 brings to the table: in fact it is improved in every single aspect in comparison with the E65.
The reason why I am talking about the E65 here is because it was a surprising device for me, as I believe it was one of the success stories for the Eseries line and was carried by many ordinary consumers, and not only by business people. It might have been due to the red and brown color schemes, to the solid slider feel, to the slimness factor, to the “ordinary look” compared to the E61i or the E90, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it had the potential to reach average consumers, and bring S60’s power to them in a very elegant and capable design.
The E66, in my own opinion, will build upon that success story, and probably even surpass the E65 because of one fact: it kinda looks like a Samsung, and that is the 4th S in the equation. There, I said it, sue me. I don’t mean this in a bad way, oh far from that, this might be by far one of the best things that could happen to the E66. Why? Because Samsung is known for building awesome sliders, because consumers already associate Samsung with the shiny metallic slider form factor, and because it might appeal to Samsung users as well as make it easy for them to feel right at home and therefore simplify the switching process to S60.
Picture taken by Antoine Naaman, T3 Middle East editor.
Let’s not forget that the E66 sports a decent 3.2 MP camera with Autofocus, GPS, A2DP, a new improved Standby, WiFi and HSDPA, a built-in dictionary, full Office license, Share Online, Nokia Music Store, … and one of the best surprises for this handset: an accelerometer with two built-in functions. The first one is autorotation which works everywhere on the phone (even the standby screen which doesn’t seem to be supported on the N82), and the second is the flip-to-silence feature. By emphasizing on this huge set of features, Nokia will easily rock the E66 to the market.
