The form factor here, as you can see, is 'portrait qwerty', or 'qwerty candybar' (or 'slab' or 'front facing qwerty', depending on who you talk to), plus touch. This last bit is what primarily distinguishes the E6 from its predecessors and what distinguishes the Bold 9900 from its Blackberry predecessors.
As usual, I've approached the head to head comparison by breaking each device's attributes and functionality down and, as usual, I've tinted with green the cells in each row that indicate an obvious 'winner' for that attribute, for purely academic interest, and if appropriate. Some rows also have no clear winner, as you will hopefully agree.
| Nokia E6 | Blackberry Bold 9900 | |
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| Price in the UK, inc VAT | £300 SIM-free | £470 SIM-free |
| Latest firmware | Symbian Anna, firmware v21.014 | Blackberry OS 7.0 |
| Form factor, materials | Premium materials, steel battery cover and chassis, solid plastic body sections, Gorilla glass capacitive touchscreen, 133g | Premium materials, steel outer band, tough plastic with rubberised back/surround, toughened glass capacitive touchscreen, 130g |
| Dimensions | 115 x 59 x 11 mm | 115 x 66 x 11 mm |
| Connectivity | Pentaband 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, 'USB on the go' (to USB disks/accessories, though cable not supplied), DLNA via Nokia utility | Quad band 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, Near Field Communications |
| Input mechanisms | Four row QWERTY keyboard, with d-pad and touch cursor positioning if needed | Four row QWERTY keyboard, with optical trackpad and touch cursor positioning if needed |
| Durability | 'Gorilla glass' display plus rigid construction means that the E6 should be very robust and long-lived | The glass is merely toughened, but overall construction is excellent, the 9900 should survive as well as the E6 overall |
| Display | Small 2.46" TFT (640 x 480 pixels) high brightness display with anti-reflective properties, gorgeous indoors, still quite readable in sunlight, though not as good as the CBD screen on the E7 | Larger 2.8" TFT (640 x 480 pixels), high brightness, similar to the E6's in overall readability in all light conditions |
| Interface | Symbian Anna, kinetic scrolling everywhere, multi-touch where needed, five homescreens of live widgets. Application menus generally standardised, but often centred around an on-screen 'Options' button | BB OS 7 introduces swipeable homescreen shortcut panels and tappable status and notification bars but stops short of a widget-ised, content-filled experience. Applications are traditional, based around an Options menu, but have been prettied up significantly for this version of the OS |
| Speed, RAM | Very good, 256MB total RAM, with well over 100MB free after booting and a Broadcom graphics processor to help out with effects, transitions and multimedia. Video playback is enabled with a wide range of codecs supported. | Very good across UI and applications, 768MB total RAM and a 1.2GHz processor power things along for quick response. Video playback is good, but with smaller codec compatibility than Symbian. |
| Memory capacity (storage) | 450MB of (C:) system disk, plus 8GB mass memory and microSD expansion. Apps can be installed on any disk. | 512MB system disk, 8GB of internal storage plus microSD expansion. Apps have to be installed in the system disk. |
| Camera (stills) |
Excellent 8 megapixel stills, with EDoF, though lack of macro photography will be a problem to some. Dual LED flash |
Passable 5 megapixel stills, with EDoF, same issue with macro photography. Single LED flash |
| Camera (video) | HD (1280 by 720) video is superlative, EDoF produces a huge effective depth of field, from 40cm to infinity, CD-quality 48kHz audio capture. | Similar superlative 720p EDoF capture with high depth of field. Also excellent audio quality, I can't split the E6 and 9900 here either. |
| GPS and navigation | Good GPS, backed up by Nokia Wi-fi location, with Nokia Maps 3.6 worldwide free voice-guided sat-nav. Multi-touch maps can be pre-loaded by continent, country or area or loaded over the air. Includes digital compass and many POI guides and services. | Good GPS but Blackberry Maps is last generation and very 'flat'. Google Maps is available and more capable, but neither hold a candle to Nokia Maps and its navigation functionality. |
| Audio out | Single loudspeaker, reasonable quality and volume, 3.5mm jack, A2DP | Single loudspeaker, reasonable quality and volume, 3.5mm jack, A2DP |
| Web browsing | Symbian Web (webkit-based), revamped for Anna, faster and more responsive but still constrained to a degree by the relatively slow processor and by the limited physical screen size on this device. There's Flash support (including video) and multi-touch for zooming. Time to render AAS front page: 10s ; time to render (very heavy) Engadget front page: 34s | Decent web browser, revamped for BB OS 7.0, with multitouch and good response. There's no Flash support though. Time to render AAS front page: 13s ; time to render (very heavy) Engadget front page: 24s |
| All purpose Mail client provides 'push' facilities for Mail for Exchange, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! mail and many others - works well on the whole and slightly faster now under Symbian Anna | Good all purpose email handling and integration, tied in with Blackberry servers in the same manner as Nokia Email and with the same reliance on 'up time' (ha - see current news, Oct 2011 etc) | |
| Social networking | A Web Runtime-based, extensible social tool, currently working for Facebook and Twitter. Still a little slow and clunky, even in v1.3 form (supplied here in the E6's Sw_update tool). Decent integration with Contacts. | Decent Facebook and Twitter clients are supplied out of the box, and there's contact sync with Facebook. Social messages also get added to the homescreen notifications bar. |
| Other application highlights out of the box | A comprehensive package: Quickoffice file editors, Adobe Reader, Dictionary, Zip manager, Microsoft Communicator, Joikuspot, Shazam, Photo editor, Video editor, CNN Video, Nokia Search (v2.39), Psiloc Traveler | Another fairly full s/w package: Documents To Go editing suite, Blackberry Protect, Password Keeper, Word Mole, BrickBreaker |
| Application store and ecosystem | Hot off the press is a new Qt-based Nokia Store client which works fairly smoothly though is not formally supported yet - an E6-compliant version is expected shortly. Hundreds of native Symbian (and Qt) applications are compatible with the E6, but less than for the nHD devices like the X7 and N8, due to the non-standard screen size. There is now automatic update notification and multi-app updates. | Blackberry App World is similarly stocked to the Nokia/Ovi Store, with application updating and notification where needed. As with Symbian, some mainstream '2011' applications are conspicuous by their absence but there are less holes - for example, Evernote and Kindle are available. |
| Battery and expected life | 1500mAh Li-Poly battery (BP-4L), microUSB and 2mm charging, charging every two days for most people | 1230mAh, microUSB charging, battery life isn't great and most users are out of power by the end of the day - some resort to using 2G only to save power |
| Ongoing firmware support and OS updates | Prospects OK but not dazzling, Nokia has already shown off screens from Symbian Belle, though it's not due for another six months or so and there's no guarantee the E6 will get it. Minor updates are expected in the meantime, although Symbian OS itself will have updates wound down after 2012, by latest reckoning. Many OS modules and components can be upgraded as-and-when using the 'Sw update tool' in the device. | As with the E6, prospects aren't clear. Blackberry OS itself is almost as old as Symbian and, despite this latest update, things are clearly starting to creak under the hood. There's talk of QNX replacing Blackberry OS next year, though bug fixes and security updates will doubtless continue for the 9900. |
Compiling the table above, the one thing that kept striking me was how amazingly well matched the Nokia E6 and Blackberry Bold 9900 are - for some functions and attributes there really was no clear winner. The E6's main wins are in its price, its camera and its battery life, while the 9900 scores with its bigger screen and great messaging/email/social experience (server uptime notwithstanding!).
The smartphone world is (reportedly) a "battle of ecosystems", so I'd be tempted to say that a user would choose between these two devices based on OS/ecosystem preference. However, neither Symbian or Blackberry OS (apparently) are in the running at all, in this battle if you believe the tech press. At which point I'd say the choice boils down to large screen and poor battery life versus smaller screen and better battery life....
The larger question is whether this form factor can compete in the world of 2011 smartphones. I say an unequivocal yes - despite the modern fad for huge touchscreen slabs, everything within me cries out that there's going to be a backlash, a swing in the other direction, and this monoblock qwerty form factor is perennially popular.
Now if only Nokia could match the 9900's 2.8" or RIM could match the E6's battery life... Oh for the best of both devices in one!!
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 13 October 2011
PS. See also our Nokia E6 review parts: part 1 (hardware), part 2 (software), part 3 (enterprise) and part 4 (multimedia).