Nokia E5

Editor's Review of the E5

At first look, the Nokia E5 looks uncannily similar to Nokia's earlier E71 and E72 mobile phones but this follow-up actually features more of a plastic feel and design. At half the price of E72, it is understandable that the Finnish handset maker should opt for cheaper plastic than metal, but that is not to say that the E5 looks cheap. On the contrary, the E5 exudes an elegant yet homey appearance with its wavy contour both at the back and at the corners.

Weighing in 126 grams and measuring at 115 millimetres long, 58.9 millimetres across and 12.8 millimetres thick, the E5 is easily handled with two hands. Nokia has also improved the lay out by lengthening the space bar on its full QWERTY keyboard, while also providing one touch access to turning the torchlight on, putting it in silent mode, and Bluetooth capability by long pressing on the appropriate keys. This is on top of the dedicated keys for Home and Messaging.

If you are bored with black, the Nokia E5 allows you to choose from four other casing colours: chalk white, copper brown, sky blue and silver grey.

For those who do not know it yet, Nokia has adopted a new naming system for its phones starting from March 2010. All handsets will be under four series: N, E, X or C and will be proceeded with a single number from 1 to 9, with 1 designating the lowest and most basic mobile phone in the series while 9 being the most advanced. Nokia's E series includes handsets that are aimed for business and productivity. The Nokia E5 then has the best mix between price and function in this portfolio.

For one, the Nokia E5 sports a 2.4 inch screen that displays up to 256k colours with resolutions of up to 320 x 240 pixels. It also features a 5 megapixel camera capable of capturing photos of up to 2592 x 1944 pixels and records VGA videos at 15 frames per second.

Internal memory on the E5 amounts to 250 MB, enough to store unlimited phone book entries and detailed call logs for the last 30 days. You can pop in a microSD card to add more storage memory up to 32 gigabytes. This is perfect because the Nokia E5 can also play back MP3, WMA, WAV and eAAC+ music files and H.263, H.264, WMV and MP4 video files.

You can also play the pre-loaded games on the E5, and if that is not enough you can easily download more games because you can easily connect to the Internet with this handset. Internet connectivity is provided by class 32 GPRS and class 32 EDGE networks, while high speed Internet is available via HSDPA and HSUPA connections. You can also go wireless with its 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi compatibility, as well as UPnP and DLNA technology. You can also interface with other computers and devices with the microUSB port and Bluetooth v2.0.

Running on Symbian OS Series 60 and a processor horsepower of 600 megahertz, the Nokia E5 is guaranteed of fast and efficient operations. With other features apart from the ones described above, such push e-mail capabilities, stereo FM with RDS, GPS support, organizer and voice command, you would surely appreciate how fast the E5 is.

The Nokia E5 was announced in April 2010 with an expected release date somewhere in the third quarter of 2010.

Limitations

On its own, the Nokia E5 is a great phone that packs in the features that any businessperson would like to have on a smart phone. It may be seen as a lower end E72 with the reduced specifications on its features like a lower screen colour depth, lower camera focus range and lacks an accelerometer sensor.

However, at its price range, the E5 makes sense as a no-nonsense business phone that is beautiful inside and out. Not bad really for a first outing in its E series of mobile phones.