Being the fan of both Symbian QWERTY phone and BlackBerry QWERTY phone, I would like to share my point of view about the Nokia E6 and BlackBerry phone this time.

The 1st QWERTY phone that I started to use was actually a Nokia because the BlackBerry was not very popular in Malaysia at that time. After about one and a half years using my Nokia E71 (my second QWERTY phone after Nokia E61), I had this question. “Which one is better, a BlackBerry or Nokia?”.

Now, after using both phones for quite some time, I am very confident to say that both are unique and great in their own way. So it is just a matter of which suits you.

The strength of Nokia E6  – Whenever I do a comparison search for Nokia E6, the rival will always be BlackBerry Bold 9900 which is yet to arrive in Malaysian market. When people do a comparison between Nokia E6 and BlackBerry Bold 9900, I find it a little weird because when I do a comparison, one of the factor that I look at is price. Yes, the price will determine whether both phones should be compared in the 1st place or not. Can I compare a touch screen phone which is worth RM700 with Apple iPhone? Of course not.

Just because both phones have a touch screen + QWERTY keyboard, it will not be right to make a comparison out of them. Before that, what is the price of BlackBerry Bold 9900 once it is launched in Malaysia? The official price has not been announced yet but I have a feel that it will be RM2199 which is the same RRP set for its predecessor, the Bold 9000.

Alright, so that is why I have chosen the BlackBerry Curve 3G (9300) to compare with the Nokia E6. The price of this BlackBerry is currently about RM970 in the market and Nokia E6 is about RM1070. The Curve 3G is the most basic phone that RIM has in market. When I say basic, it means that the phone is targeted for beginners or those who are willing to sacrifice the quality and additional features for the sake of price. Well, I am not saying that the Curve 3G’s build quality is bad. All I am saying is, the phone is less solid compared to other models from RIM.

Now, what is the difference between Nokia E6 and BlackBerry Curve 3G? In terms of packaging, the Nokia comes with leather pouch and a USB On The Go cable which you can’t find in Curve 3G’s package. If we look at functionality, obviously the Nokia E6 is the winner because of the camera capability and availability of extra features such as  touch screen, better display resolution, better build quality, front camera, radio and many more.

At this moment, I strongly have a feel that I will be called UNFAIR by the BlackBerry fans. Usually when I discuss this matter with my friends, the common answer that I get is, “Curve 3G is a basic phone but the Nokia E6 is not”. So shall I compare the E6 with Bold 9780 instead? Remember, the Bold 9780′s current price is about RM1300 which is RM200 ++ higher. Never mind, we will still do a comparison now.

In terms of functionality, the Bold 9780 is better than Nokia E6 if we compare the camera (auto focus) and battery life. The display resolution is the same but overall in terms of features, the E6 is more feature packed compared to Bold 9780.

Please do not mistaken me. I am not saying that the E6 is better than BlackBerry. All I am saying is, the E6 has more functionality compared to BlackBerry 9780 and it is also cheaper than the latter.

If we look at the email, the BlackBerry’s email feature is definitely better than Nokia E6′s email but you can still be happy with what Nokia’s email is offering you in terms of reliability. Yes, I’ve missed some of my emails when I used the E6 because it doesn’t indicate me via light notification if I couldn’t hear the ring tone but still, the emails were pushed fairly well. My office emails (MS Exchange) were ‘pushed’ immediately on my Nokia E6 when the BlackBerry took 15 minutes maximum to push them. My Google email were the other way round where the push were instant on the BlackBerry but on the E6, I have to wait for maximum 5 minutes (which is still not a big deal).

Having in mind that I can’t access my other folders e.g. outbox, sent, draft etc on a BlackBerry, I still prefer Nokia in this matter. Not only that, the Nokia’s email also allows you to zoom in (pinch to zoom) and that is much better when I receive HTML emails with tiny texts on the images.

There are a lot of things which made me like the E6 more than the BlackBerry. Some of them are as below :

1) navigation – when I travelled to outstation with my BlackBerry Curve 3G,  the navigation feature was almost useless when it comes to showing me the correct path. I’ve tried both Google maps and BlackBerry maps but because the maps were downloaded from the internet, I suffered at places where I can hardly get any signal. This was not an issue with the Nokia.

2) Other functions  such as torch light, full version of Microsoft Documents which allows you to create documents, front camera for video calls, Skype and so on. I wonder why was Skype not made for all BlackBerry users.

3) One thing that I don’t like in BlackBerry is, I don’t have access to my folders and my previous emails (before the email account was set up). I’ve already mentioned this above but I just want to make sure that you don’t misunderstand this point. I don’t entirely dislike BlackBerry email system. I love the reliability. Yes, I have made several tests (even with Android phones) and in long term, I can really see a significant difference where the BlackBerry is least problematic device or most reliable device when it comes to receiving emails.

As for Nokia’s email, I can find some bugs here and there as usual. One of the bug is, when I delete an email from my phone, the email will not be deleted in the server. At first, I thought that it was due to the 5 minutes interval (which is partially true) but there were quite a number of emails which were not deleted at all even after 2 days. I only realised that after I checked my emails via my computer. Although this is not a big issue for me, I am sure that many of you (especially those who look at the email feature seriously e.g. business people) may not be able to tolerate this bug. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next software update.

[to be continued HERE]