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.

Features
Powering the E65 is the Series 60 3rd edition operating system, with various business and collaborative software such as Quickoffice and Team Suite preinstalled. What the Nokia Team Suite does is manage a group of people, or contacts, into "teams". For example, you can select some of your colleagues to form a team and you can then call either the whole team or to selected team members. Likewise for sending text messages. Quickoffice is what Piscel Viewer is to the Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone edition. It doesn't allow you to create new documents, but you can view Word, Excel, PowerPoint and text files.

Connectivity-wise, the E65 is pretty much well-equipped with quadband GSM (800/900/1,800/1,900MHz), 3G, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g with VoIP support), infrared and Bluetooth 1.2. The handset also doubles as a modem when connected with a compatible computer and comes with Mobile VPN for connection to corporate intranets and services via IPsec technology. To read your emails, this Nokia supports POP/IMAP, SMTP, IMAP4 with idle protocols, Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email 8.0 and various third-party clients. But with a small screen and the absence of a QWERTY keyboard, the E65 is best for reading emails and less often for replying.

We tested out Google's Gmail service for mobile clients via the built-in browser which provides an acceptable browsing experience despite the small screen. While it's convenient for occasional use, a 2.2-inch display still doesn't provide enough screen estate for prolonged viewing or reading extensive Word documents.

The E65 is not entirely without multimedia goodies. The installed RealPlayer plays your MP4 files while the onboard Music player croons your MP3/AAC tracks. Disappointingly, there's no FM radio. There is also a Flash application and Gallery where you can browse through all your media files using a tabbed interface. If you're up for it, there are several other trial programs which you can download via Nokia Catalogs, such as Digitizer, F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus, Psiloc Wireless Presenter and Wayfinder Navigator. The onboard message reader is a hit-and-miss situation. On the one hand it's convenient to have the program read out text messages, but when we were using it outdoors we could barely hear what it was saying until we brought it close to our ears.

Performance
When considering the basic functions of a phone and an inexpensive price tag of S$348 (with a 2-year price plan), the E65 didn't disappoint. Nor did it overwhelm. Call quality was acceptable, with only the speakerphone volume a tad too soft. Video playback with the RealPlayer on the unit was satisfactory though we would have preferred that it allow us to switch to full-screen landscape mode. According to Nokia, the E65 is rated for a talktime of up to 6 hours and 11 days on standby, both on a GSM network. A basic user should be able to get by for as long as three days without a need to reach for the travel charger.

As mentioned, there's no camera on the front of the E65, so that rules out video conference calls. The 2-megapixel shooter at the rear also has a rather barebones feature set. There's no LED flash for low-light shooting, nor can you autofocus with the camera. What you get are Night and Sequence modes, a self-timer and settings to adjust the white balance and color tones. Image quality was barely satisfactory and would suffice for only snapshots or Web display purposes. There's 50MB of built-in memory, otherwise you can choose to record your snaps onto a microSD card.