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Features

One of the main highlights of the E51 is the multiple one-touch dedicated buttons for email, contacts and calendar applications. These keys are also customizable, recognizing short and long presses. A quick press on the Contacts button brings the user to the contacts menu and holding down the same key for a longer time doubles as a shortcut to create a new entry.

Besides the main keys, the * and 0 buttons also activate the phone's Bluetooth and Web browser, respectively. In addition, there's a dedicated key (available also on the earlier E65) for muting calls (and vice versa), which is useful when the user needs to be excused for a moment during a conference call.

The quadband E51 is no slouch when it comes to connectivity, with dualband 3G/HSDPA on 850/2100MHz frequencies, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth stereo, infrared, 2.5mm audio jack, mini-USB port and support for various email protocols including POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP. That's practically more than you'll ever need on a daily basis and a close match to what the earlier 6120 classic offers. Most of the slimmer devices end up being victims of a do-it-all connector which makes multitasking impossible. On the E51, the charging and mini-USB port are separate components, so you can juice up the device while synchronizing data with a PC.

The handset is based on the Series60 3rd Edition platform with Feature Pack 3.1, so the interface will be familiar to most Nokia users. Otherwise, it's a gentle learning curve for newbies. Standard applications like Active Notes, In-device Search, Team Suite and Quickoffice were preinstalled on our review set, so we didn't have to waste time downloading the programs. Our only gripe is that the installed Quickoffice version is a view-only copy. So that means you'll have to factor in additional cost to upgrade the app if you want editing features. According to Nokia, the reason for this is due to the smaller screen size of the E51 compared with, for example, the E90 with a larger widescreen display. Other programs that can be downloaded over-the-air include Windows Live services such as Live Messenger (it's free for now, but may be chargeable in future), Gizmo for VoIP calls and Yahoo! Go.

For mobile email, the E51 supports various solutions including Mail for Exchange, Visto mobile and Seven Always-on. We didn't try the latter two since we are happy users of Mail for Exchange for its straightforward setup and ease of use. Mail for Exchange is sometimes referred to as Nokia's implementation of Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync--both programs are capable of pushing email from the server to the mobile device.

There's a sizeable 130MB of onboard user memory and that is expandable up to 4GB with a microSD card. The card slot is found under the battery cover, which can be a hassle for switching cards on-the-fly, but we're just nitpicking.

As for entertainment features, the 2-megapixel camera is a barebones set without the bells and whistles of its Nseries counterparts. It is sufficient for basic snapshots, but don't expect high-quality prints from it. The colors were washed-out and the default white balance was a bit too cool for our liking. Using the Night mode boosted the sensitivity of the sensor, but in turn the pictures seemed as if they were heavily coated with a layer of sand. The E51 doesn't have a front-facing camera for video calls and the main shooter doubles as a camera module for that purpose. That way, only you get to see the calling party, or vice versa, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of holding a video conversation.

Other multimedia offerings include Visual Radio, a music player (MP3, AAC, WMA, AMR-NB and AMR-WB formats), video streaming and playback in H.264 (MPEG-4), 3gpp and Real codecs.

« Design | Performance And Conclusion »

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