After having to send back the Nokia E71 that I was trialing, WOMWorld was kind enough to also send me an E66 to try out. I’ve been using this handset for about a week now, and I feel like I’ve used it enough to start offering some opinions and details.

Here we go.

This is the first “slider” phone that I’ve ever used (I’ve always had “candy bar” devices before), and I have to say that I didn’t like the slider design much at all. While the ability to simply slide the phone open/closed to unlock/answer calls and lock/end calls was kind of fun, the layers created on the keypad (different heights of keys depending on if they’re “outside” or “inside”) and the requirement to slide the phone before I can really do anything useful outweighed any coolness provided by the slide. In addition to be a slider, this is the first phone I’ve used in over 2 years that had a normal numeric keypad, rather than a full QWERTY keyboard, and apparently I’ve lost all patience of T9. I want my QWERTY. Combined with the slide vs. candy bar issue, this was almost enough to make me stop using the phone altogether.

Once I got over those issues (or rather, ignoring them for now, because I still haven’t gotten over them), I found the OS to be very similar to the E71, although I did notice a snazzy fade effect. When you transition between apps or menus, a neat fading effect is applied to make it less jarring. I don’t remember seeing that on the E71. Other than that the OS seems to be the same, with all the same updates over my E61.

There were 2 more big disappointments for me on this device when compared to the E71 in particular:

1. The camera was completely buggy. It takes about 11 seconds to load the camera and have it start showing you an image, and when it does, it’s UPSIDE DOWN! I have no idea what’s going on here, I can only assume that this is a genuine bug either in the software or the hardware (camera installed upside down?). Videos and still images are all upside down, rendering the camera feature completely unusable. I looked everywhere for an option that might have been causing this to no avail.
2. The A-GPS seemed far inferior to that of the E71. I found that it usually gave me a weak level of accuracy (under Google Maps) and that it took longer to update than the E71 did. This is a let-down because the GPS on the E71 was a specific feature that I liked.

OK — I’m not done bashing on this phone yet 🙂 I also didn’t like the external (top) keypad, the one with the main function keys. The keys are flat and there’s hardly any distinction between each key. They are also made from a slick plastic that causes you to slide around when your fingers are slightly sweaty or moist in any way. The E71’s center navigation button was made of a nicer, almost gripping rubber/plastic, as opposed to the button on this E66, which was again the slick plastic. This made it more difficult to navigate around (pressing up/down/center/etc), which is what you spend a lot of time doing on these phones.

There is a simple accelerometer in this handset that’s intended to do something akin to what the iPhone does when you turn it on its side. The problem is that it’s apparently not a very good one, because the handset sometimes takes some convincing to really turn, and even when it does, it’s often a bit of a mess. Not all applications (e.g. Google Mail) seem to support it properly, so you end up with your screen sideways, but your soft-keys still thinking things are in portrait. Basically I think this is a wasted feature as the phone is pretty awkward when held sideways anyway, so there’s not much motivation to use it in that mode.

Obviously, overall, I was much less satisfied with the E66 than I was with the E71. I didn’t even bother setting up synchronization with my laptop because I have no desire to “move in” on this phone properly. I’ll be sending it back as soon as it’s requested. Here’s a few things that using this handset taught me:

1. I won’t be getting another handset without a QWERTY keyboard (or at least an on-screen keyboard a la iPhone),
2. I’m not a fan of slider-style handsets,
3. I’d rather have no GPS at all than have it, and have it be inaccurate (I’ll just get by on cell-tower triangulation thanks),
4. Little things (like the material used to make keys) make a big difference to your experience with a handset

Verdict: E66, no thanks. E71, yes please.