David.R.Gilson

Review of Nokia E51 smartphone

Dec 8

Reviews David 27 Comments
battery, e51, music, nokia, office, pdf, s60, series60, smartphone, symbian, usb, video, wifi

Approximate reading time is 7 minutes

I have been using my Nokia E51 since April. During my first few days with it, I wrote a review on my LiveJournal. Seven months later, I thought it would be a good idea to update and complete my early review.

I ordered the phone from mobilefun.co.uk, I was very impressed with the delivery and packing. I ordered it at noon and it was with me by 7:45am the next morning. As you can see, it was protected in the box by air bags, which hopefully hadn’t inflated due to impact!

Taking everything out, the E51 box is a very small compact thing, really reflecting the diminutive nature of the contents. With it, I also ordered: a retractable USB charger, a Krussel case and a 2GB Micro SD card. (I have since upgraded the 2GB microSD to an 8GB microSDCH).

Let’s talk a little about the physical design:

The screen is 240×320 and 2″ corner to corner. It is based on “transflective” technology to make it easier to read in bright daylight, which I find to work very well.

The E51 has three ports, USB, charging and headphone/hands-free. I ordered a USB cable to charge from my laptop’s USB ports. Even now after 6 months, I have had no need to use the mains charger. Nokia use, as standard, mini USB ports on their smartphones for data connectivity. This could easily be used as a charging port too, but no, Nokia have stuck to their venerable 2mm DC jack. So, you need two cables when you could use one. The E51 has a 2.5mm headphone & hands free jack. To be fair on this point, the phone is so slim it is hard to imagine a 3.5mm jack in the same place.

Here’s how I charge mine:

Here’s a size comparison of the E51 against my old phone, the Sony Ericsson K700i.

On the back of the phone, just below the 2 megapixel camera, is a loud speaker which can be used for having speakerphone calls. I can report it can reach as high a volume as you’ll need. Your multimedia audio comes through this as well, and you can certainly fill a small room with the power of this speaker.

There are a few rubberised buttons along the sides and top of the E51. There are three on the right-side; a mute button, flanked by volume up and down buttons. These also work with multimedia applications. On the left side is the infra-red port and a record button, which launches a voice memo application. If you launch this while you are in a call, you can record both sides of your phone call. I like that the rubber is part of the case, making the buttons seamless. The power button on the top of the phone is the same as these too.

On the face of the E51 you have a total of 13 keys. There are the normal software keys plus two keys for accepting and rejecting/ending calls. Those four keys encircle the D-pad and four application keys. The application keys can be mapped to launch any application of your choice, they also have a double function by means of being held down. For example, in the default configuration, the e-mail key takes you to your inbox with a short press, but will take you to the e-mail composition screen after a long press. The numeric keypad is a joy to use. While the E51 is so slim, they’ve managed to be really generous with the size of the number keys, which makes a quick text message easy.

The back of the phone is dominated by a stainless steel plate, which slides away to reveal the battery, SIM slot and Micro SD slot. It is a mild inconvenience to have to open the phone to remove the memory card, although I personally prefer this to an external slot with a rubber bung.

The E51 does all the setting up for you. As soon as I’d installed my old SIM card, it set it’s web brower home page to that of my mobile provider, and it also downloaded all the data connection settings. It also sets its clock according to the mobile network time. All this was a really nice touch.

I was impressed with the WiFi sensitivity, the E51 can detect more local access points than my Centrino laptop can!

Finally, battery life. The reported battery life of the E51 was one of the influencing factors in my choice. Now, my appraisal of the battery life may not be fair because I do tend to use the E51 more as a portable media player than I do as a phone and I use a lot of WiFi, as such, I need to charge everyday. However, there have been rare days where I’ve been away from a charging point, and I’ve just used the E51 as a phone. On days like that I’ve only lost something like 2 out of 7 battery bars.

Now, lets move on to the software:

The phone has a basic video player and a music player. The user interfaces of each definitely have their shortcomings. The video player (supplied by Real) even lacks forward/reverse searching, very frustrating if you want to re-watch the bit of a video that you just missed. At least the music player has a library function so you can filter out music albums and composers (and it has forward/reverse searching!).

I have since upgraded with a paid application called “CorePlayer”. This works with a galaxy of video and audio formats. While CorePlayer is vastly superior to the built-in video player, I still prefer to use the built-in Music application for audio. This is because the media library is so easy to use, when compared to CorePlayer’s relatively clunky library feature.

On more business related matters (as befitting an E-Series handset), I am very happy to report that the built-in PIM synchronisation client works flawlessly. This was a very important factor for me, as it’s something I’d rely on everyday. If you use websites such as ScheduleWorld.com, Memotoo.com or even Mobical.net, then you need to use the SyncML protocol to synchronise the calendar and address book of your phone with an online server. The only shortcoming of the E51’s PIM software is that categories are not supported (unlike Windows Mobile as I understand it).

The Adobe PDF viewer is impressive when you see the speed at which it renders a page. Although the shine dims somewhat when you realise there is no “re-flow text” facility. However, there is a pay-for upgrade, which has the re-flow option and does indeed make for a much better reading experience. In fact, I am already on to reading my second e-novel on the E51. I do think it’s disappointing that I had to pay extra just for this feature though.

The E51 also comes with Quick Office’s office suite, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation application, all of which are compatible with Microsoft formats. Out of the box, these are only readers, and there are various upgrade options all of which are at graded prices. The Word processor upgrade is a welcome addition. I have been able to receive Microsoft Word files via e-mail, make alternations, and send the edited version back, via e-mail, all on the E51, with no PC being involved at all. As for spreadsheet and presentations; the spreadsheet is somewhat lacking in it’s editing abilities, and I have still not yet had need to test out the presentation application.

On to internet applications …

The e-mail client works well. I use an IMAP e-mail service and I was impressed to see that the e-mail client could see my IMAP folders. This means that I have access to all my archived e-mail The S60 web browser is also impressive. I have used it a lot, and I have even managed to use it for posting on forums. There are some advanced websites it can’t handle, and it does not have flash. I am just beginning to experiment with Opera Mini as a faster alternative. Although because of the proxy technology that Opera uses, I would always go back to the S60 browser for better privacy.

Conclusion

Am I glad I bought an E51?
Yes I certainly am.

What do I like most about the E51?
The looks and the size, being able to view all my media, read PDF’s, get my IMAP e-mail and browse the web.

What would I change?
Not that much really. I wish there was an all in one data & charging port. I wish it had a little more processing power for some hi-res video podcasts.