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Music
The Nokia E6 includes all of the media functionality available on other Symbian^3 devices other than the removal of the FM transmitter available on the Nokia N8.
The means that the user is presented with an FM radio and a Music player supporting AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, MP3, MIDI, MIDI Tones (poly 64), SP-MIDI, WMA EFR, FR, Mobile XMF, True tones and WAV audio formats.
In comparison, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and BlackBerry Bold 9900 only support AMR-NB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, MP3, MIDI and WMA audio formats, although this is enough for most people - so isn't going to make a difference to Nokia's target business audience.
The sound quality of music playback on the Nokia E6 is on a par with the Apple iPhone 4, although the functionality provided by the Music app falls extremely short. This is a long-standing issue with Nokia phones, with no compilation album identifier, no support for gapless playback and tracks played in alphabetical rather than album order, if artists are selected rather than albums.
An FM radio is pre-installed on the Nokia E6 and, if other members of the Symbian^3 family are anything to go by, a DAB radio download will become available via the Software Update app.
The FM radio is simplistic in its form, with an auto-search facility and the ability to save the stations found.
Although this is all you really need, it would be nice to listen to the radio without needing headphones to work as the aerial. Along with this app comes an associated home screen radio widget, enabling the user to turn the radio on and off and navigate between the channels found by the auto-search.
Video
A Nokia YouTube app acts as a web shortcut to the site. This has disappointed us, as there's an official YouTube app available that provides a much improved interface than the mobile website.
The Video Player supports 3GPP formats (H.263), Flash, H.264/AVC, WMV 9, MPEG-4, RealVideo 10, Sorenson Spark, VC-1 and VP6 video formats at a frame rate of 30fps.
The high resolution screen means that image quality is excellent, with the only drawback being the limited size of the screen.
This is where larger touchscreen devices such as the Nokia E7, HTC Sensation, iPhone 4 and many others win out, as the Nokia E6 screen is far too small to watch videos for any substantial period of time.
Another important factor when it comes to media is the amount of memory in the Nokia E6. It has 350MB of internal memory and 8GB of internal mass memory, with an external card slot enabling you to add a further 32GB of memory.
With a spec like this, the Nokia C6 beats both the BlackBerry Bold 9780 – which has 512 MB internal memory and up to 32GB via an external card – and the BlackBerry Bold 9900 – which has 8GB internal and up to 32GB via an external card - which means it's better for downloading more applications to the phone, although still not excellent.
