Nokia E51

...big and too expensive? Then Nokia has a solution called E51 for you.

==Design&Construction==

Width: 4.6 cm
Length: 11.4 cm
Depth: 1.2 cm
Weight: 100g
Material: steel combined with plastic
Colours available: black steel, white steel, bronze steel

A rather long-looking cell phone, very thin and compact body. If you're used to sth bigger, this will feel almost too thin ...
...I started to feel like Nokia was digging up maximum from this little guy. Similar goes to when you find out how the little knob to attach a strap is constructed.
Here is where I started to trust Nokia that even if sth they made seems weird and useless, they knew why they made it this way.
*Side and top buttons are embedded in rubber, which makes them rather hard to push but I prefer this to pushing sth by mistake only coz I ran a finger ... more

Looking for more than a normal boring cellular phone, you would like to use the internet, but you can't afford a smartphone or do you think they are too big and too expensive? Then Nokia has a solution called E51 for you.

Design&Construction

Width: 4.6 cm
Length: 11.4 cm
Depth: 1.2 cm
Weight: 100g
Material: steel combined with plastic
Colours available: black steel, white steel, bronze steelA rather long-looking cell phone, very thin and compact body. If you're used to sth bigger, this will feel almost too thin and sliding off your hand, but you get used to it and it feels like the one and only soon.

• The stainlesss steel&plastic combo is well-designed and alligned, everything stays in its place. No funny design features, this phone gives a professional impression. Surface gets fingerprint stain easily, but that's why you get a cloth in the package :p
• The screen is easy to read on direct sun, and takes as much space as the keyboard does. Above the screen there is a LED indicator that notifies you about received messages, missed calls and other events, the light flashes for amount of time you can specify, or this function can be turned off.
• Infraport can be found on the left side and next to it is the push-to-talk button. Off button is on the top, it opens profiles and remove-memory-card option; on the right side are volume control buttons.
• Surprisingly, the keys seem to have kinda big gaps inbetween, so you'd think there might had been some space saving, but the on-click response is excellent and clear to feel and it wouldn't happen to me to push sth I didn't mean to. And even using this much space for 1-9 keys there was room enough around the big navi-key to add a special erase button and 4 extra one-touch keys that can be assigned a shortcut on both short and long click, so in fact two shorcuts, that's where I started to feel like Nokia was digging up maximum from this little guy. Similar goes to when you find out how the little knob to attach a strap is constructed.
  Here is where I started to trust Nokia that even if sth they made seems weird and useless, they knew why they made it this way.
• Side and top buttons are embedded in rubber, which makes them rather hard to push but I prefer this to pushing sth by mistake only coz I ran a finger over it.
• I'm slightly disappointed there is a 2.5mm jack, why not have the 3.5mm one? It!s on the bottom part next to mini USB port(connecting to computer via USB doesn't recharge the battery) and charger's socket.
• Memory card's (Micro SD, up to 4GB; internal memory 128MB) slot is under the back cover and even if the phone can be switched into a remove-the-memory-card mode, it's not as handy as the push-to-insert/remove slots that can be accessed without removing the cover of your phone, so I was forced to use the USB cable more than I wanted to. The memory card isn't included in the package.

User interface

• Symbian S60 3rd edition, fully compatible and editable, you can make your own folders, save them where you want to, move the originals and rename almost everything. Nice little icons organizable in a grid or list view, you can turn off icon animation - another serious-phone feature, this thing doesn't wanna look like a toy. One lil thing where I miss the fun part is no smileys in smses, that could had been there.
• Phone book - exhaustive! You can add a large number of details to each contact, starting from phone number and email address, over home address and birthday, to children and assistant's contact details. It can be sorted by both first and last name, obvious is having a ringtone and picture added to contacts, as well as sorting contacts into groups.
• Office - a whole set of office applications, which for some reason I don't understand, lacks the stopwatch feature. ZIP and PDF file reader, converters of anything you want. Nokia maps are useless without GPS, which you anyway need if you wanna use the navigation tool.
  Nokia PC Suite allows you to synchronize the content of your phone with MS Outlook and other clients, organize and edit phonebook, backup all data, provide your computer with internet using the phone as a modem and more.
  Active notes - create notes containing video or sound.
• Internet - UMTS, GPRS connectible, very cute is that the phone can auto-set your operator's settings for internet, wap and web service, so you get the settings done fast and easy. WLAN also available. xHTML web browser does the job and even if the screen isn't big enough for comfortable web browsing, it works if you need it to and don't have your laptop at the moment.
• Fun - mp3 player, FM radio with RDS, Realplayer, flashplayer, sound recorder, all easy to use with a nice interface, nothing to criticize. Only I have to praise Sony Ericsson for giving really good headset with most phones, that's a learning point for Nokia, as the headset sold with E51 can't be taken seriously for listening to music and I have to wait about two weeks until sth that looks like a senseful headset will reach the market.
  You can download chat messengers through the Download! function, as well as antivirus software, other applications, such as software updates, are available on Nokia's website.
• Camera - 2Mpix without autofocus and all the nice things Sony Ericsson has, but for occasional pic shooting it can be enough (and keeps the price low). However, there's a disappointment here - Nokia states on its website and also in the booklet that the phone is compatible for videocalls, which is where I wonder why would I make videocalls if people I call weren't able to see me - E51 only has one camera, on its back side.
• Both Bluetooth 2.0 and infraport for more wireless communication options, especially owners of older phones will appreciate the infraport.
• Battery lasts about 5 days (and nights), if you don't use the phone nonstop. Charger and headset have each its own socket - strike back to Sony Ericsson which doesn't allow you to listen to music while you're recharging.
• Memory: Internal memory is 128MB and you can see the difference of data access speed if you store all content (e.g. messaging) on the memory card, it's then quite slower than on the internal memory, so when you activate sms typing from the quick panel, it takes 5 seconds to open the new sms - this was tested with a 4GB Kingston Micro SD memory card.

*Negatives
Depending to what kind of operating system are you used to, you might find some features of E51 problematic, as some functions don't do the same like it was in S40.
I'm an ex-user of Sony Ericsson W810i, so I discovered a couple of flaws only later, however, those are a problem of the firmware, not of the phone itself, so it's up to Nokia to emit a firmware update.
- in inbox, the time of sms reception is only displayed on the same day
- if you have more numbers saved to a contact, receiving a phonecall from the person the display won't show which of his/her numbers is the person using at the moment (the same for smses)
- organizing the phonebook might be tricky as no matter whether the contacts are sorted by first or last name, on search by letters the phone displays all first/surnames containing those characters
- no birthday alarm is shown even if the birthday detail is given to a contact
- you have to close all applications and also menu folders clicking "exit" button repeatedly until the desktop appears, else those applications/folders remain opened on the background (long push "home" key to see a list of running applications", so you might easily fail to notice this is happening ad of course those running applications take the battery energy

Design&Construction

A rather long-looking cell phone, very thin and compact body. If you're used to sth bigger, this will feel almost too thin and sliding off your hand, but you get used to it and it feels like the one and only soon. *The stainlesss steel&plastic combo is well-designed and alligned, everything stays in its place. No funny design features, this phone gives a professional impression. Surface gets fingerprint stain easily, but that's why you get a cloth in the package :p

• The screen is easy to read on direct sun, and takes as much space as the keyboard does.
• Surprisingly, the keys seem to have kinda big gaps inbetween, so you'd think there might had been some space saving, but the on-click response is excellent and clear to feel and it wouldn't happen to me to push sth I didn't mean to. And even using this much space for 1-9 keys there was room enough around the big navi-key to add a special erase button and 4 extra one-touch keys that can be assigned a shortcut on both short and long click, so in fact two shorcuts, that's where I started to feel like Nokia was digging up maximum from this little guy. Similar goes to when you find out how the little knob to attach a strap is constructed.
  Here is where I started to trust Nokia that even if sth they made seems weird and useless, they knew why they made it this way.
  Side and top buttons are embedded in rubber, which makes them rather hard to push but I prefer this to pushing sth by mistake only coz I ran a finger over it.
• I'm slightly disappointed there is a 2.5mm jack, why not put the 3.5mm one?
• Memory card's (Micro SD) slot is under the back cover and even if the phone can be switched into a remove-the-memory-card mode, it's not as handy as the push-to-insert/remove slots that can be accessed without removing the cover of your phone, so I was forced to use the USB cable more than I wanted to. The memory card isn't included in the package.

Overall

A smart-looking very handy phone, a professional's must-have item and a secretary for everyone, a survival kit of the modern world. Looks great and does a great job without compromises on performance.

-Edit-

A couple of not-so-smart glitches you find only after a longer period of use:
1) If I save a birthdate as a detail to a contact in my contacts list, the phone doesn't offer an alarm option for this event and therefore it doesn't remind me of contact's birthday (old nokia's had this function, why make a downgrade?)

2) I miss smileys in the text messages. I know this is supposed to be a "serious" cellphone, but smileys wouldn't hurt

3) There is no reception time displayed in an incoming text message. The reception time also isn't displayed in the inbox (excluding today's text msgs), there's only the date of reception.

4) Neither in inbox nor in the text message there isn't displayed the number the message was sent from if it was sent from, when the sender has more than one phone number. The same about incoming calls (and the calls log, too) - if you have saved more than one number to a contact in the contacts list and then the person calls you, you only see the name, but not the number she/he calls from. This makes the whole "save thousand details to each contact" function useless, because if I wanna see no only the name, but also number, I will anyway have to save every number of each contact as a separate entry.

5) Searching in the contacts list doesn't make sense, as when starting to type a name it shows all contacts whose both first or last name (i wonder what would happen had I saved middle names to contacts, too...) contain such characters and that is a mess. I don't understand why the search function doesn't correspond with the way the contacts are sorted, e.i. by the first or last name?

6) The call log is cleared after switching the phone off and on.

7) Nokia claims this phone can do videocalls (see http://www.nokia.cz/A4678225 or http://www.nokia.co.uk/A4577123). The phone only has one camera, so I would like to know how am I expected to make videocalls with it?

Further, I think it's a pity the camera is of such a low quality and here I'm not talking about megapixel range but about a greenish shade on any photos the phone makes regardless if in daylight or not. The quality of the handsfree headset which is being sold with E51 as default, is not worth mentioning. But I do have an SLR camera and I can (and will, as soon as it is available) buy a better handsfree headset (at least I hope WH-700 will do the job), so these two are minor flaws, but those I mentioned above do bother me every day using the phone as I use it a lot, which is why I really hope Nokia will soon release a software update that would help us, customers, get more out of our phones.

Therefore a summary:
Still a damn good phone which is traumatized by Nokia's poor choice of firm/software and since that is not an irreversibe flaw and for the sake of all above mentioned positives, I still stay with Nokia. 

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