Nokia E5 Review

Nokia E5 is one of the messaging phones released by the Nokia recently. The E5 comes with full qwerty keyboard and excellent features for the social website integration features. This will definitely attract the social networking consumers and heavy texters. The E5 features a 5 megapixel camera, 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, MicroUSB, MicroSD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack, and etc. The most of aspect of the Nokia E5 is its economical price. Read the full review to find out more about the E5.

Design

The Nokia E5 somewhat resembles Nokia E63 in design. It has got an attractive sleek look. We also liked its slim profile and it is one of the compact messenger phones around. The Nokia has ensured to make E5 message friendly. It measures 115mm tall, 58.9mm wide and 12.8mm thick. It weighs around 126grams. It is available in 5 colors: Carbon Black, Sky Blue, Silver Grey, Copper Brown and chalk white.

The E5 sports 2.36inch display, which has the resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and supports 256000 colors. The screen is bright and colorful. We don’t have any gripes with it.

Below the screen you will find a navigation array that includes a four way square toggle with middle select key, two soft keys, dedicated shortcut keys for accessing favorite contacts and messages, the call and End/Power key. We liked the full qwerty keyboard. The keys are sufficiently large and tactile, which offer better feedback. The messaging on this phone is breeze. You will find a 3.5mm audio jack on the top of the device and a microUSB port on the left spine. There is a camera at the back of the device.

Interface

The Nokia E5 is running on the Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5 and S60 user interface. It is pretty much same as other Nokia Symbian phones. The Symbian has lost its sheen with the market is ruled by Android and other smartphones OS. However, the Symbian OS has done a good job here. The Menu system, Icons and interface is very nice. You can access the favorite contacts immediately above the display, so that you can get in touch with them instantly. The favorite contacts will be listed horizontally and you call make call with just a click of a contact. Any updates from Facebook & Twitter w.r.t. to that contact will be displayed on the home screen itself. You can customize the home screen with dedicated widgets for the calendar, chat, email and organizer.

Connectivity & Internet

The connectivity features are more than adequate at its price range. You can avail data transfer through Bluetooth with A2DP and USB v2.0. You can stream audio to Bluetooth headset wirelessly. The internet can be accessed with the help of 3G (HSDPA, HSUPA), Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, and GPRS. The data transfer speed is enhanced with the EDGE support.

The E5’s web browser is pretty decent as this supports full HTML and as well as WAP 2.0. The web browser supports Flash lite v3.1 and RSS feeder.

The Nokia E5 is nicely integrated with social networking sites, such as Facebook, and Twitter. It also supports Instant Messaging for Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, and Windows Live Messenger. You can create and manage all your email accounts including Ovi Mail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and other email accounts (SMTP, IMAP4, and POP3).

Multimedia

The E5 comes with Real multimedia player. The interface is simple and convenient to use. It supports almost all popular audio and video formats except Divx and XviD video formats. You can download plenty of songs from Ovi Music. It also suggests the songs based upon your previous searches. The sound is excellent. It also features FM Radio with RDS feature and Internet Radio.

Camera

The Nokia E5 is equipped with 5 megapixel camera with a Flash. The camera interface is same as other Nokia phones. The camera features Autofocus, 3x zoom, scene modes, manual exposure settings, color tones, light sensitivity modes, Still image editor, and show viewfinder grid. It can record videos at a resolution 320 x 240 pixel at 15fps.

The image is quite good. The images look bright, crisp and colorful with good detail. The video quality is reasonably good.

It has a 256MB internal memory and you can expand external memory up to 32GB in the form of microSD cards.

GPS

The Nokia E5 is preinstalled with Ovi Map application i.e. Nokia Maps 3.0 SR3. As we know, Nokia offers free subscription of Ovi Map app for life. The E5 has built in GPS receiver and A-GPS receivers. It will locate your position on the Map within matter of few seconds, thanks to A-GPS feature. The GPS also includes Friends finder, City Explore and Life Caster apps. It also facilitates turn by turn feature. You will get the details about the hotel, events and landmarks.

Other Applications

The other essential features of the E5 include Dictionary along with Chinese Dictionary,  Calendar, a timer, To-do list, Note pad, unit & currency Converter, Calculator, voice recorder, Voice commands, a world clock, vibrate mode, a 1000 entry phonebook,  Flight mode, and speaker phone.

You will also get Quick Office suite to create, edit and manage your documents. On the other hand it will also feature Adobe PDF reader, Zip file reader, and device encryption for data security. It also includes the business need apps like OVI Contacts 1.1, Lotus Notes Traveler, F-Secure, Vlingo, World Traveler, VPN client, VoIP Device management (TARM support) and etc.

You can personalize the phone with themes, wallpapers, ringtones, message alerts, widgets, and screen savers. You can download all these from the Nokia’s Ovi Store. You will also get access to Ovi Suite and Ovi Share. You can also back up your contacts in Ovi Contacts.

You can pair the contacts with photos, ringtones, MP3 files and any one of 64 polyphonic ringtones.

Performance

The call quality is good. Callers at both the end have no problem. The sound is clearer and louder. The speaker phone is also good.

The Nokia E5 is powered by 1200 mAh Lithium-Ion battery. It has the rated battery life of 18 hours 30 minutes of talktime and 705 hours of standby time. It keeps the phone alive for 38 hours on continuous music play.  The battery life is also good comparing to most of the cell phones in this category.

Price

Nokia E5’s price is very cheap and affordable. It comes at a price of Rs.11000.