Nokia E6-00 gets turned on in spy shots showing new Symbian UI

The Nokia E6-00 may struggle to get people excited, given Nokia's decision to start making Windows Phones in the not-too-distant future. Still, it's exciting enough to get its own spy-shot on a blog in Northern Cyprus -- not a sentence we find ourselves writing often -- which shows off its touchscreen and Qwerty keyboard combo.

The E6-00 appears to be a successor to Nokia's E72, with a focus on messaging thanks to that physical keyboard. Previously leaked specs suggest it will have a 640x480-pixel VGA display, HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity and an 8-megapixel camera.

Mobilesguruji has the new spy shot, which shows the E6-00 running the latest version of Symbian, with four dots at the bottom of the screen indicating the ability to swipe between homescreens.

Although it's impossible to tell from just one shot, the phone looks pretty final, which could mean an announcement soon. Previous leaked photos have shown the E6-00, but the latest shot is the first to actually have it turned on.

Nokia didn't unveil any new phones at Mobile World Congress this year, to keep the attention on that Microsoft deal. Several other companies have shown off Qwerty candybar phones in the last month though, including the HTC ChaCha, INQ Cloud Q and Samsung Galaxy Pro.

You might wonder whether buying a new Symbian phone is a good idea, if Nokia is winding the OS down ready for its first Windows Phones later this year (or early next, if some rumours are to be believed).

It's a fair question, but at MWC Nokia was keen to stress that it's not abandoning Symbian. At the Microsoft announcement, Nokia's statement talked about Symbian becoming "a franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value" -- yes, dreadful corporatespeak -- while promising to sell 150 million more devices before the OS is laid to rest.