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Nokia E65

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By Damian Koh,Nazhar Adnan, CNET Asia
Mar 20, 2007

One of Nokia's latest additions to the business-orientated ESeries, the E65 has rightly been styled to attract a more polished user class. Don't let looks alone fool you, though, for this quad-band slider in a sexy shell packs 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity with business features galore. For a phone this size, don't expect any onboard QWERTY keyboard. But if it's a compact handset you're looking for with the ability to read Office documents and check emails, the E65 might be a worth choice.

Design
One of the smaller Series 60 hand phones, the spring-loaded Nokia E65 slider has a soft leather-like back that adds style to this business-class phone. Weighing in at 115g with a thickness of 15.5mm, the Nokia slips easily and unobtrusively inside shirt pockets. The package comes with essential accessories such as a battery, connectivity cable, HS-5 headset (not stereo) and a travel charger, with a soft carrying pouch and 256MB microSD card thrown in as niceties.

The handset has a 240 x 320-pixel, 2.2-inch screen capable of displaying up to 16 million colors, which is easy on the eyes even under harsh sunlight. An ambient light sensor below the Power button illuminates the buttons and keypad when we move into dimly lit environments--nice touch there, but nothing new.

Over at the rear is where we find a 2-megapixel camera. Unfortunately, there's no reflecting mirror, nor is there a flash unit. So taking self-portraits will be a challenge. More on the camera features later. The E65 is also missing a front-facing camera for video calls.

In hand, the E65's sliding mechanism feels solid. Sliding up the top lid reveals the 3-by-4 keypad array beneath which is a comfortable size for one-hand typing, although hitting the bottom row requires a little stretching of the thumb. What we didn't fancy were the Left/Right selection, Menu and Clear keys which are a little too thin horizontally, making it hard to feel for the buttons. We also mistook on many occasions the Conference key for the Left selection button and the My Own key for Menu, which only added to the frustration.

 
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