Nokia E51

Nokia E-series phones are aimed at business professionals who need to access mail and internet day in and day out and at the same time also not lose out on multimedia features.Nokia E51 is one of the latest offerings from Nokia in this segment and has many improvements over its predecessor Nokia E50.

Nokia E51 specifications:

• Dimensions : 114.8 x 46 x 12 mm
• Weight : 100g
• Display : 2″ QVGA, 16M colors
• 96MB SDRAM,130MB phone memory
• GPRS,HSCSD,EDGE,3G,Bluetooth,IR
• WLAN: WiFi 802.11g,VoIP over WLAN
• Symbian OS 9.2, S60 v3.1
• 2 MP camera

Design and Keyboard

The design of E51 is very business like and has no frills but a simple metallic body.The handset is quite slim at just 12mm and its 100g weight makes it light on the pocket.All this seems good but one major disappointment with E51 is the material used to make the back panel of the phone.The panel is very much prone to oily hands and you would hardly find it clean at any point of time.

The keyboard has been designed pretty ergonomic as expected and it does not disappoint.What does disappoint though are the navigation keys that have been made very tiny and have been cramped in small space and navigating through them is tough as you always tend to press a neighboring key.

Display and Layout

The E51 sports a small but crisp and bright 2 inch display having a resolution of 240 x 320.The small screen and high resolution makes the font size small but it is very much readable.The display has good clarity also in bright sunlight.

The layout is neatly organized by Nokia and leaves no room for complaint except for the navigation keys as already mentioned above.The ambient light sensor is on the right side above the display.The display and the keypad nicely blend into one another.The pencil key which is a standard on Nokia smartphones is missing but not its functionality as hash key takes over its function.The power key is at its traditional place on top right side.The volume keys have been placed in the middle of right side of E51 and a voice command key in between the two.These keys are not very responsive and require fair amount of force to activate them.

Music Player and Camera

Nokia E51 does not have a music player which will go down too well with music buffs.It does not offer high functionality as N-series music player.The interface is also very simple and feels boring.Music management is at the same level with other music phones and you can download tracks via the internet too. The supported tracks are MP3,WMA,AAC,eAAC+.The audio quality is good but not at par with music phones and that is understandable.

Camera is not what you will like to use too much.The camera is a mere 2 MP when 5 MP phones are getting released so fast.The camera also lacks autofocus and the basic flash which makes it completely useless for night pics. The pics have greenish appearance which is a bug and is likely to be fixed in future firmware updates.The photos have high noise levels and excessive sharpness. The video mode is limited to 15fps another disappointment. Overall its a camera for a few casual pics.

Connectivity, Browser and Organizer

Connectivity is the area where E51 score heavily.The integration of WiFi is cool but the icing on the cake is VoIP over it. Bluetooth also has A2DP so that you can enjoy music via wireless headsets.EDGE,3G,HSCSD are added benefits.

Browsing the internet with E51 is a pleasant experience.The mini-map feature is available like in Opera Mini and is very handy for navigating through large web pages.Virtual cursor,custom zoom level,3D view makes the browsing experience rich.You would not need to install a third part web browser!

Organizer is another strong point of E51.The scheduler is neat and has variety of tasks to configure.Adobe Reader and Mobile Office take care of your document files.Zip Manager has also been pre-installed to handle zip files.Other standard application include Notes,calculator,converter. Nokia Team Suite is a new application which handles your group conference calls,emails and text messages and does that efficiently.

Pros:

• Light weight
• Good amount of RAM
• Excellent connectivity options
• Fast performance
• Neat layout
• Great browser

Cons:

• Bad camera
• Fingerprint prone back panel
• Average music player
• Cramped navigation keys

Final Thoughts

The E51 is truly aimed at business class users and will not go down too well with general users.It has all the features needed in a business phone but it lacks ability in music and camera department.Hopefully Nokia will fulfill these in future versions of the phone.Buy this if you are not affected by its drawbacks.