Nokia E51 Review

The Nokia E51 first came out in September last year, it already got my attention. After quite sometime, I finally got myself a unit and here’s my verdict.

The Nokia E51 is a business/productivity phone so expect good connectivity options — WiFi and 3.5G or HSDPA (3.6MBps). If your phone has these two features, you’re all set in the data connectivity department. This is especially true if you have WiFi at home and you can use VoIP to make unlimited long distance calls on your phone for free (check out Fring/Gizmo).

The phone’s form factor is a familiar candy bar and surprisingly thin at 12mm. The dark glossy-metallic finish gives it a nice, elegant appearance. For a retail price of Php12,300, this unit is a great buy — probably the cheapest full-featured business phone that went out of Nokia’s doors. Has Bluetooth, FM tuner, mini USB and IR port.

Dedicated buttons are found around the central navigation pad — for Calendar, Contacts, Email and main Menu — faster access to most commonly used apps. You can even program it so that a longer press will prompt you additional functions. The Cancel/Back button is place at dead center which could get confusing for first-time users but it’s actually a clever placement.

The phone speakers are placed at the back, on two slits just above the 2 megapixel camera (1600×1200 pixels, video QVGA@15fps). There’s no front-facing camera so you can’t make 3G video calls. The screen is only 2 inches across (240×320) but I thought with the extra space on the side, they could still push it to 2.2 to 2.4 inches.

It’s built with an ARM 11 369 MHz processor, has 96 MB SDRAM memory and 130 MB user data memory. Comes with a free 512MB microSD card but is upgradeable to 8GB (if you can find one locally).

New owners of the Nokia E51 can’t go wrong with this phone. Well, that’s until the qwerty Nokia E71 goes on sale at the end of the month.