A Classic Reborn



If you are an executive in the market for a suitable cell phone, Nokia’s E series offers the best bang for the buck. The Nokia E51 is the latest from the venerable E series, and an apt successor to the hugely popular E50 model, which it will eventually replace. The E51 brings in new features at a price that’s hard to beat.

The keypad is completely revised, with dedicated keys for Contacts, Calendar,

E-mail and Home. The soft menu keys, however, are too small for comfort. The rest of the keypad is a delight—good tactile feedback, and key spacing is immaculate. The rubberised keys for volume up / down, push-to-talk and power are hard to operate, though.

The E51 feels peppy—it uses the same processor as on the flagship N95. With 130 MB of memory on board, you can do a lot of multitasking without the phone getting sluggish, and the memory can be expanded to 4 GB via the microSD slot (a 512 MB card comes bundled). The E51 runs on Symbian OS Series 60, and crams in lot of features besides the standard set. Most of these will go down well with executives—for example, the Advance call manager lets you manage incoming and outgoing calls efficiently. In addition, WorldMate, an application for frequent fliers, comes bundled.

The E51 is a 3G, quad-band phone with HSDPA, Wi-Fi (802.11g), Bluetooth, Micro USB and an infrared port. There’s a switch to turn Bluetooth on and off on the main keypad. Multimedia features include a good MP3 player, a 2MP camera with still and video shooting, and FM radio.

Signal reception is good, as is voice clarity. Internet browsing speeds are faster than with the E50 or E61, thanks to the revised Web browser. The camera is above average, but loses performance in low-light conditions. The speakerphone is clear, with little or no echo on the recipient’s side. We got around three days of battery life with nominal usage and a terrific seven days of standby time.

The Nokia E51 retails at Rs 14,699; it is, we think, a must-buy.

Specifications
Weight: 100 gm; Dimensions: 114 x 46 x 12 mm; Quad-band; 2MP camera; Video recording; xHTML browser; Push-to-talk; micro USB, infrared.

Contact : Nokia India Pvt Ltd   
E-mail : ext-manoj.goel@nokia.com
Web site : www.nokia.co.in
Price : Rs 14,699