Telephony is fine as always
Signal reception in Nokia E51 takes us back to the good things in
this handset. It is just what you would expect in a no-nuisance
business device. The loudspeaker is also good, with vibration strong
enough to make sure you never miss an incoming call or message. The
phone offers excellent in-call voice quality, sound is very clear
without any interference.
Calling Dexter on Nokia E51
The ringing volume of Nokia E51 is quite standard, judging by our
lab tests, and offers almost the same loudness as Nokia E50. It's worth
noting though that the Nokia E51 ringtones do sound loud, crisp and
rich, and with them the E51 seems to perform a lot better than with
other ringtones. With them the E51 scores Very Good, instead of only
Average. Subjectively, we really liked the mellow sound of the Nokia
E51. It's not a surprise that it doesn't score much on the loudness
test, however we really liked the mild and rich way it sounds in almost
scenarios.
With Nokia E51 any sound file can be used to indicate an incoming
call, as long as it's any of these formats: MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMA,
AMR-NB, and AMR-WB.
Here is how Nokia E51 ranks among some of the other handsets we have
measured in our loudspeaker test. You can find more information about
the loudness test itself here.
The Nokia E51 runs on Symbian 9.2
Nokia E51 runs on the Symbian 9.2 OS with Series 60 3rd Edition user
interface. The added Feature Pack 1 is no news for Nokia smartphones
any more but still deserves mentioning.
The phone's main menu has only two view modes, both well known: a 4
x 3 grid of icons and a list. As already mentioned, navigating the
menus is fast, with instant response to key presses.
The two different main menu views
The blue circle next to the icon of a running application is a well
known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications
that are still running in the background. Thanks to Feature Pack 1, the
days when there was only a single alarm slot and the voice recorder was
limited to a miserly minute are now long gone.
You can now set as many alarms as you like with Nokia E51 • Some of the alarm settings
The active stand-by display is a well-known feature of Symbian
handsets. It's a nice and convenient way to bring shortcuts to all your
favorite applications to your home screen. You can even assign
shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access.
The two soft keys' functions can also vary. Unfortunately, the
current track is not shown on the active stand-by display which is a
trademark feature of the N-series phones.
Default standby and the one with mail account displayed
The user available memory is 130MB, which is a substantial figure in
all cases. Still, the microSD card slot is there to meet the higher
storage requirements with up to 4GB cards supported.
As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice command system.
It is doing a good job for native English names, but it handles
non-English names a lot less smoothly.
Voice recognition works on average
E-series support themes too
There are five preinstalled themes on Nokia E51. Their style is
quite reserved and businesslike and if you are a person who loves
colorful and entertaining themes, you should consider looking up
third-party themes.
Four of the preinstalled themes
The Turquoise theme
The phonebook takes care of all your contacts
You know our opinion of smartphones phonebooks - they are simply
spot on. The one on Nokia E51 makes no exception. It will store a
virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields, all the available
memory potentially usable for contacts. Contacts can be freely ordered
by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing
of any of their names.
The phonebook completely lives up to the expectations
Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and
you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also
create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. We
personally find it difficult to think of something Nokia has missed
here. Personal ringtones and video are also available for assigning. If
you prefer you may group your contacts and give a specific ringtone to
each group.
These are only some of the available fields, which can be assigned to a contact
The Call logs application, although not exactly a part of the
phonebook is also one of Nokia E51's strengths. It can hold up to 20
call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed
calls. These are all accessed with the Call key from the stand-by menu.
If you open the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a
detailed list of all your communications for the past 30 days. These
include messages, calls and data transfers.
The call log application keeps track of all your communication for the past 30 days
Unlimited goes for the messaging as well
If you are the texting kind, Nokia E51 will give you no reason to
grudge. With the very comfortable keypad, typing comes nice and easy
and, not before long, you'll be going at full speed with your messages.
There are four different message editors - one for each type of
available message: SMS, MMS, audio message and e-mail.
The messaging department • a dialog window for creating a mew message
The SMS editor is the well-know intuitive application for all
Symbian S60 smartphones. It has a counter of the characters left to the
limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number
of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.
It goes without saying that a delivery report can be activated. The
reports pop up on the standby screen when the keypad is unlocked, and
are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu.
When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the
message, the editor prompts saving it to the Drafts folder or deleting
it.
The SMS editor is very intuitive and easy to use • some of the SMS options
The MMS editor is virtually the same as the one we just described,
with the added subject line being the only difference at first sight.
While creating a MMS, you are allowed to insert image, sound clip,
video clip, or a predefined template.
Writing a MMS and some of the MMS options features
Now, the audio message is technically also an MMS but obviously it
is more important to people at Nokia and they have created a separate
editor for it. The software editor can either record the message right
away or use a previously recorded sound clip. Unfortunately, adding
text to it is impossible.
We doubt it the audio message editor will be put to frequent use, especially with no option to add text to it
The email client is the regular one too. It supports POP3, IMAP4,
and SMTP protocols. The email client can download headers only, as well
as the whole messages. There is also support for attachments, so Nokia
E51 can meet almost any requirement as far as emailing goes.
Additionally, there is support for a wide variety of third-party
solutions, including Mail for Exchange, Visto Mobile, and Seven
Always-on. Business people who need a good mail client will appreciate
the E51, while the SU-8W Nokia Wireless Keyboard sure adds value to its messaging capabilities.
The email client is a great application • Writing Dexter an email
Music player gets low priority in E-series
The music player is one of the few departments where Nokia E51 lacks
in both functionality and interface. The music player interface is
quite dull, with no option to change its appearance. Controlling it
with the D-pad is odd too, as up and down on the D-pad are used for
browsing tracks, while the volume is controlled by the left and right,
which is not intuitive at all.
The supported formats are the usual MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. The
Music library is good enough and sorts songs by artist, album, genre
and composer automatically, while searching tracks is done by gradual
typing. A convenient feature is Track lists, containing the "Most
played tracks", "Recent tracks" and "Recent additions". Downloading
tracks via Internet is supported as well.
Upon completing a USB transfer, the phone automatically prompts
scanning for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new
ones to the music library.
The music player is average but Music library makes up for it
The player comes with five equalizer presets. If it still seems
insufficient, you can create new ones in a matter of seconds. When the
player gets minimized, the only way to access it in the middle of doing
something else is via the task manager window that is invoked upon a
long press of the home key (menu key).
Available equalizer presets and the new one we've just created
Bluetooth supports the A2DP profile, which allows listening to your
music on a wireless stereo headset. We had no problem connecting any of
the tested headsets.
Audio quality is at its average
Our audio quality test showed that Е51 performs well, managing
better marks compared to the Nokia 7500 prism, but still lagging behind
the music-centered Nokia N81, to randomly name some of handsets we've
compared. Nobody expects stunning music performance in a business
phone, so we can safely assume that the overall result is just fine.
The first generation of E-series smartphones was even worse. You can
find more information about our audio quality test here.
Nokia E51 and Nokia 7500 prism have almost the same frequency response graphs at max volume • Nokia E51 and Nokia N81 compared
At the movies
Nokia E51 features a Real player for playing your video clips. The
video player can be displayed in both portrait and landscape mode and
can be switched to fullscreen.
Watching a video clip on a small screen like this is not an
earthshaking experience at all. When in full screen, the softkey
functions are hidden so that they don't spoil the viewing experience
and only pop up when a key is pressed.
Forwarding and rewinding are not among the available options of the
player. It's high time those basic functions were included in every
Nokia phone's player.
Watching clips in the Real player is OK in Landscape mode only
The Nokia E51 is equipped with FM radio with support for the Visual
Radio internet service. It can store up to 50 radio stations.
The Visual radio application can download the radio stations in your
area and save them to the handset with their names if an internet
connection is present. We would have preferred RDS support, though not
having it isn't really that much of a disappointment.
The Visual radio and some of its options
Gallery boring
The gallery of Nokia E51 is as modest as in any other E series
phone. It offers few options and is not intended for intensive image
handling.
Image viewer is not ample at all
Otherwise, no changes are to be seen here in terms of features -
pictures can be viewed in both portrait and landscape mode and zoomed
in up to 2x.
Zooming in a photo
The gallery's functionality is basically doubled by the file
manager, which is at hand too. There is an application manager to take
care of the installed applications on Nokia E51. Its functionality
boils down to providing details about installed applications, removing
them and keeping a log of movements in both directions.
File manager and application manager are the same well known applications
The useful "Search" application is also present in Nokia E51. The
application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia containing a
given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked
and all results are then shown. If you have a vast base of files,
located on both the built-in memory, and the memory card, this
application will get much appreciated.
The search application sifts through every bit of data on your phone
It's equipped with a 2 megapixel camera
Nokia E51 is meant for business, and its 2 megapixel camera is more
of an accessory than a main feature. It can still do a job for you in
case you need to take some shots.
The camera main view with the options menu
The two megapixel camera in Nokia E51 has no autofocus, nor flash.
There isn't even a mirror for self portraits though 4x digital zoom is
available. You won't find a dedicated key, either. The camera can apply
some basic settings including night mode, sequence mode, self timer,
white balance and color tone.
Image quality is defined in three steps - normal, basic and high.
Users can choose between two image resolutions - 640x480 and 1600x1200
pixels. Apart from the quite usual camera settings, a nice touch is the
optional toolbar. It provides three shortcuts for quick access to
video, night and sequence modes, while the last key is responsible for
closing the toolbar.
Some of the available settings and camera options
The images captured with the camera look undoubtedly greenish, which
is unusual for Nokia cameras. It sticks out a mile, when compared to
another two megapixel unit, or in our case the not quite deservingly
bashed iPhone camera.
Again, as the EXIF data is very scarce, we can only interpret the
results relying on our experience with phone cameras. So, looking at
details the first thing to stand out is the excessive sharpness. This
is a recurring problem of phone cameras - in an attempt to capture fine
detail, the extreme sharpening actually distorts it, though the slight
improvement in contours makes people believe the images look better
than they would have with moderate sharpening.
That's what you get with the iPhone camera, where detail is
smoother. Intense sharpening has other disadvantages, such as artifacts
and high noise level, as you can see in the E51 images, especially in
the clouds and sky.
Nokia E51 camera photos
Have a look at the sample shots taken with Nokia E51 and iPhone.
Quick 2 megapixel camera test: Nokia E51 vs. iPhone cameras
The video camera of E51 is capable of capturing video in MPEG-4
format and in QVGA resolution at 15 fps only. Zooming while recording
is possible, but that doesn't give any boost to the overall low camera
scoring.
Here is a sample video, taken with Nokia E51 camera.
Connectivity is a strong side of E-series
Transferring data is what Nokia E51 really likes to do. Just name
the data transfer medium and you can be certain that this handset
supports it. MiniUSB v2.0 and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP profile support
and IrDA (115 kbps) just start the count. All kinds of network
connectivity are also supported - from GPRS and EDGE to 3G with HSDPA
support - Nokia E51 has it all. To complete the wireless communication
tally, Wi-Fi 802.11g with VoIP over WLAN support is also on board. Even
the card slot for microSD cards (up to 4GB supported) is here.
MiniUSB, Bluetooth, IrDA, Wi-Fi and microSD card support in E51
Browsing away
Browsing the internet with Nokia E51 is a pleasure. No matter how
elaborate the web page, it fits perfectly on the screen and looks
almost exactly like on a PC. The virtual mouse cursor takes browsing
another level up.
It is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be
activated to help navigating your way around large sites where lots of
scrolling is required. Additionally, when you scroll a bit more, a
preloaded semitransparent image overlays the page. The zoom level is
also adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses.
Normal and landscape views • mini-map and semi-transparent map
The history pages are revealed in 3D like view with the current pick displayed at the center.
The visited pages history has some 3D effects
Organizer
The time-management skills of Nokia Е51 are really top-notch. We
start the exploration of the large application package with the
calendar. It has three different types of view - monthly, weekly and
daily, and four types of events available for setting up - Meeting,
Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Every event has its own unique fields,
some of which allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as
a reminder.
Different calendar views and the events available
The mobile office is presented moderately, with preinstalled
applications able to open Word and Excel files seamlessly. Unluckily
editing documents is not supported by the included version of the
Quickoffice. If you would like to be able to edit these files you will
have to purchase the complete application at the Nokia Download center.
Quickoffice is a quick remedy for your daily documents
Adobe Reader LE is also included and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.
Adobe reader and ZIP manager are flawless
The other included organizing and time-management applications are:
a feature-rich unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well
as a Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them,
as their functionality and performance are familiar enough.
Converter, calculator and notes also at hand
Active notes enable users to create notes containing rich text and
multimedia items (e.g. pictures, voice clips, video clips). Notes can
be synchronized with PC and browsed from your desktop via any XHTML
compatible web browser.
Active notes: a notes application on steroids
Another interesting application is the Nokia Team Suite. It provides
easy-to-use UI for organizing and facilitating group conference calls,
email messages, or text messages.
Team suite offers extended group functions
Conclusion
Each of Nokia's Enterprise devices has its strengths, but usually at
the expense of a few compromises. The stylish Nokia E51 proves to be a
well-balanced performer that will certainly meet the contemporary
business requirements. Fine looks are just an added gain.
Nokia E51 might be the right bestseller stuff not only for business,
but for regular users too, for its all-purpose applicability. The 350
USD price tag sure adds to that excitement. With E51 there's one more
pro on offer.
Taken Form :
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e51-review-193.php
