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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.

13 COMMENTS

  1. Meh… with the greatest of respect is it a good idea having a teenager reviewing what is essentially a business phone? Obviously some points of yours are valid either way, but .. hmmm

  2. I understand that, but as I said, I looked at it from my own point of view, using the tools, applications and settings as how I would use a mobile for general purpose. And even things such as music playback, and the camera didn't come to par.

    It doesn't matter who you are when these things arn't good.

    Thanks for reading though,
    Samantha.

  3. I understand that too 🙂 BUT you have to look at the market this handset is aimed at – business people, for emailing, browsing, contacts, and diary stuff (all of which got a fleeting mention!) 🙂 . It does have a camera, and a music player, but these are more sorta 'add-ons', if you want a great camera, and great music player, try an N95, you'll find it is much better for this, and IMO its pretty fecking sweet for the 'business' side too. I dunno, whilst I think your writing is great, the phone isn't really for your market.

    K

  4. Agreed.
    Well, I was sent it, so I thought I would give it a try. At least now I know that Business phones are totally useless for me!

    I'm getting an N95 this week, so I'll see how it compares!

    Samantha.

  5. Ignoring for a moment that this review was done by a teen; it says a lot about a company whose user interface is challenging for those familiar with mobile devices.

    Nice review, and thanks for spitting in plain language what many of us have said about mobiles since features became more important than it just working.

  6. Hi Awright,

    Thanks for the comment, and for reading.

    I'm a firm believer that there is no point in having a feature if it is useless. The music playback is useless therefore it shouldn't be there. And if Nokia insist on having a camera, at least make it work at night!

    Thanks again,
    Samantha.

  7. samantha, having said that, it is indeed sad that there are hundreds of cell phones with useless features.

  8. Very true. But many of these features could be made “useful”, had they been put together in the correct manner. As for all the others, the brands should listen to their customers more.

    A little market research has never done anyone any harm!

    Samantha.

  9. I think that the problem is that you bought the wrong phone for you, N95 will be a better option for you.

  10. Hi to all.Firstly, thanks a lot samantha for writing such an excellent review, though i wish i has read it 2 days back before i bought the phone. I agree with Kip that the phone is not meant for the Teen market, but i bought it for its business purpose only and if nothin else in the world, then the battery life which mokia seemed to be promising to be 7.5 hrs of talk..(Soooooo not true). My old nokia could hold the charge for a day with the same usage(which was 2 yrs old by the way). and the E66 , with the bluetooth off,wireless off and all naughty stuff being off cannot hold a simple talking usage for more than a day(comparing the same usage with my Nokia 3250. I have always used nokia for itys commendable battery life but am tooooo disappointed this time. Would agree with every single thing samantha has written. For all business users, try something better.Thanks

  11. I got this phone, I'm a soletrader and needed something on the business edge. I must say I am thouroughly dissapointed with the software, not the hardware!

    The battery indeed isn't great (but you need to format it first, when you charge it leave it on as well – in my case it went up from 1-1,5day to 3 days so far, and I think it's going to improve).

    So about the software… Calendar – why isn't the calendar, allowing for setting up meetings with a “place” spot, making it possible to just select the place and be taken directly to nokia maps?

    Why cannot I use the light as a torch in default software?

    Why cannot I use T9 completion for my contact list when adding SMS reciepents?

    Finally, where's the *@#$y timer? ffs, we had that in 5110!

    So, to sum up, not a bad phone, but software-wise – not even half stable imo – it's more like release candidate stage or Beta2.

    To be honest, it's a real downside from my K750i + Palm Zire31 duo combo, sure, I have all-in-one now, and GPS, but the gps takes ages to load and locate, and it's not even free to use (Nokia Maps costs money to use as guidance – I wonder who's gonna buy theirs if you can get Garmin for mobile or so for less money afaik).

    Summing up, it's maybe worth half it's price, but not as much as I paid for it. You can easily get a HTC phone with QWERTY keyboard which superseedes this one greatly – and is told to be tried with Android, so thumbs up as well.

  12. I got this phone, I'm a soletrader and needed something on the business edge. I must say I am thouroughly dissapointed with the software, not the hardware!

    The battery indeed isn't great (but you need to format it first, when you charge it leave it on as well – in my case it went up from 1-1,5day to 3 days so far, and I think it's going to improve).

    So about the software… Calendar – why isn't the calendar, allowing for setting up meetings with a “place” spot, making it possible to just select the place and be taken directly to nokia maps?

    Why cannot I use the light as a torch in default software?

    Why cannot I use T9 completion for my contact list when adding SMS reciepents?

    Finally, where's the *@#$y timer? ffs, we had that in 5110!

    So, to sum up, not a bad phone, but software-wise – not even half stable imo – it's more like release candidate stage or Beta2.

    To be honest, it's a real downside from my K750i + Palm Zire31 duo combo, sure, I have all-in-one now, and GPS, but the gps takes ages to load and locate, and it's not even free to use (Nokia Maps costs money to use as guidance – I wonder who's gonna buy theirs if you can get Garmin for mobile or so for less money afaik).

    Summing up, it's maybe worth half it's price, but not as much as I paid for it. You can easily get a HTC phone with QWERTY keyboard which superseedes this one greatly – and is told to be tried with Android, so thumbs up as well.

  13. I got this phone, I'm a soletrader and needed something on the business edge. I must say I am thouroughly dissapointed with the software, not the hardware!

    The battery indeed isn't great (but you need to format it first, when you charge it leave it on as well – in my case it went up from 1-1,5day to 3 days so far, and I think it's going to improve).

    So about the software… Calendar – why isn't the calendar, allowing for setting up meetings with a “place” spot, making it possible to just select the place and be taken directly to nokia maps?

    Why cannot I use the light as a torch in default software?

    Why cannot I use T9 completion for my contact list when adding SMS reciepents?

    Finally, where's the *@#$y timer? ffs, we had that in 5110!

    So, to sum up, not a bad phone, but software-wise – not even half stable imo – it's more like release candidate stage or Beta2.

    To be honest, it's a real downside from my K750i + Palm Zire31 duo combo, sure, I have all-in-one now, and GPS, but the gps takes ages to load and locate, and it's not even free to use (Nokia Maps costs money to use as guidance – I wonder who's gonna buy theirs if you can get Garmin for mobile or so for less money afaik).

    Summing up, it's maybe worth half it's price, but not as much as I paid for it. You can easily get a HTC phone with QWERTY keyboard which superseedes this one greatly – and is told to be tried with Android, so thumbs up as well.

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