Nokia E61

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By Damian Koh, CNET Asia
Jun 29, 2006

First announced in October 2005, the Nokia E-series is targeted mainly at business users and IT professionals with its suite of powerful applications. The exclusion of a built-in camera on the E61 is either a love-it or hate-it situation, though it would have been great if the Finnish company had a similar smart phone but with a camera. Its inexpensive price tag will also appeal to not just the target audience but also mainstream consumers who are looking for a multifunctional handheld that isn't too clunky.

Design
While some people may find the E61's design boring and somehow not as sleek as the Samsung i320n or Moto Q, its matte-silver chassis and overall simplistic appearance make it ideal for most business users.

Size-wise, this Nokia nearly matches the ultraslim form factor of the Moto Q, but the girth of the unit is not uniform all around. For instance, the slimmest portion is at the bottom of the handset which measures 12mm and it expands to a maximum of 16mm at the top edge of the unit. The E61 is also slightly wider than the Moto Q by about 6mm.

For those who like thumbing their text messages, emails and documents, the E61 comes with a QWERTY keyboard that illuminates in a cool shade of blue when activated by the ambient light sensor. We may be nitpicking here, but the relatively tight layout of the buttons did result in occasionally pressing the wrong keys. However, we got used to the plastic keys which provide a nice tactile feel. The joystick, though useful for navigating the menus, was a tad too stiff for our liking.

The E61's large 2.8-inch QVGA screen is one of the few smart phone panels capable of displaying up to 16 millions colors. Users have an option of settling with the default blue-themed background or download additional ones. Poking at the display is not advisable since this is not a touchscreen phone, and you may want to invest in a screen protector to prevent scratches on it.

Users can configure the top row of applications to those most frequently accessed such that these appear when the phone is in idle mode. The left and right softkeys can also be customized to the desired programs.

The earpiece sits between the Power button and the email indicator which lights up once an email has reached your predefined inbox, while the speaker is placed on the left side of the screen. Also on the left are the standard volume rocker and a dedicated key voice record/dial button, which doubles as the Push-to-Talk button. We found all these keys to be easily accessible with the left thumb.

The rest of the connection points (DC-in, infrared, and Pop-port) sit on the underside of the E61. When you slide open the back casing of the unit, you get a miniSD slot hidden on the side. The good thing is the memory card is hot-swappable without having to remove the battery.