Sleek and sophisticated phone is all business...but it doesn't have to be!

April 29, 2009: Just a quick update.  I've had this phone for 8 weeks now and I have not had to reboot it even once.  I did run into a synchronization error with my Calendar which forced me to use the "Full resync" option in the Mail for Exchange app, but that's it.  Recently, my boss and I were comparing my E51 with his new ATT Fuze (HTC Touch Pro).  We were playing around with ringtones when his Fuze just locked up and required a reset including pulling the battery. Heh! No fancy "touch" UI on the E51 but it has proven to be rock SOLID and STABLE.

My long time phone, a Motorola RAZR V3, that I got under a 1 year contract from T-Mobile almost 3 years ago is finally ready to be replaced.  The phone itself works fine, although the battery is in need of replacement again.  However, the mini-USB charge port is starting to become loose and it's getting a little tricky to charge the phone when you have to jiggle the cord just right.

My requirements for a new phone are solid construction (the phone is kept in my pants pocket most of the time and therefore gets banged around a bit), good call quality (it first and foremost must be a good phone, the other stuff is just gravy), and strong signal reception (I work in an office building).  Pluses in order of importance to me: calendar "push" sync with Exchange ActiveSync, WiFi support (to save on data charges if I don't want to pay for unlimited data), browser support, email sync (I might not even use this last one).

I also wanted to get a new phone without committing to a new contract, so without the carrier subsidy that means price is a factor as well.

I was pretty convinced that I needed a Windows Mobile 6.1 (standard or pro...don't really care that much about touch interfaces at this time), so I was surprised that I ended up with a Nokia.  To be honest, I might still get a WinMo phone down the road for better access to the WiFi network at work (see comments in Connectivity section below), but until then this phone is more than capable of exceeding my basic requirements.  And my wife is kind of eyeballing taking over the E51 (although her nature is so frugal that she refuses to take me up on my offer to buy one for herself outright).

This phone is positioned for the business user, but I would have no hesitation in having this as a personal daily use phone as well (my wife certainly thinks so).

Packaged Accessories
In the package, you get:

- The phone
- The battery
- The travel charger
- Manuals
- E51 software CD...haven't opened it, It was more convenient to download from Nokia's website
- Cleaning cloth
- USB sync cable
- HS-47 Earbud headset

The headset is pretty basic, but sound quality is low-end and at least for my ears nearly impossible to keep in.

Construction
The E51 is a classic candybar cell phone with a numeric keypad.  It is somewhat tall, but very thin (4-1/2" high x 1-7/8" wide x 1/2" deep).  Unlike most phones which are mostly plastic these days, the E51 has a metal bezel on the front surrounding the dispaly and keypad as well as a matching battery cover.  The battery cover has a pattern etched into surface (pattern varies with color, on my black phone the pattern is a series of slightly curved lines running from top to bottom).

The phone appears well sealed against dust so far (and I usually keep my phones in my front pants pocket where dust can be a real problem).  In past Nokia phones I have owned, the option of interchangable faceplates have always had the side benefit of allowing the dust to be cleaned with the LCD and display window.  There are no interchangable faceplates for the E51, but it does appear that one *might* be able to remove 4 screws (you'll need a precision screwdriver set with a Torx T-6 head) to remove the front plate.  Warning: I have not verified this and it'll almost certainly void the warrantee if you try!

With all the metal, the phone has a nice heft and is very comfortable to hold while talking of working with applications.  The phone is so thin it seems like it should be lighter and is heavier than you might expect, conveying a sense of quality.
I am somewhat concerned that the metal case, especially the battery cover, may be more susceptable to dents and scratches than high-quality plastic.  Still, it is a rare pleasure these days to hold a consumer item made of metal like this.

LCD Display
The display is a 2" diagonal QVGA (quarter VGA; i.e., 240x320).  There is a light sensor to allow the phone to adjust backlighting to the ambient light level.  This is a very good LCD display and is very crisp.  Very readable indoors and outdoors, although the colors will wash out quite a bit if the sun is shining directly straight-on into the display.  The substrate of the LCD has a silvery sheen to it that helps legibility under such conditions.  Tilt is just slightly away and some of the color is restored, although it is by no means going to be vivid under such conditions.  Overall, the display exceeds my expectations.

I do wish that there were more options for engaging the backlight when the keypad is locked.  If the phone itself is locked by a PIN, the backlight will stay on for a decent amount of time if you press the left softkey.  However, if only the keypad lock is active (the one that requires the left softkey followed quickly by the * key to unlock), the backlight comes on only very briefly.

Battery Life
The 1050 mAh battery is rated to give the E51 over 4 hours talk time and 13 days standby.  I do know that on the first day of super heavy playing around, I drained about half the power.  Under my normal usage pattern (frequently checking calendar, moderate phone usage including in some dicey reception areas) that I can go several days without charging.  I haven't tried testing how long it takes me to go to zero (it's not worth the risk of my wife not being able to call me) but I'm comfortable with charging just twice a week (and probably could get away with once a week).

Controls/Ports
The E51 has a convential 3x4 keypad positioned below the display.  Situated between the keypad and display are the typical send/end call keys, two context sensitive softkeys, a backspace key, and a 4-way directional ring with selector in the middle.  In addition, there are 4 additional keys: Home, Calendar, Contacts, and Message.  The Calendar, Contacts, and Message keys are configurable to launch other applications than the defaults.  Furthermore, they distinguish between a quick a long press, giving you 6 functions that can be assigned to these keys.

I'd also like to note here that when at the home screen, the * and # keys provide two very useful shortcuts.  When the * key is held for a long press, it toggles the Bluetooth transmitter on/off.  When the # key is held for a long press, it toggles between the normal and silent ring profiles.  This only works from the home screen.

The other nice trick with the keypad is that when traversing the menus (if you leave them in the default "grid" configuration), each keypad key is a shortcut to the corresponding location in the onscreen 3x4 icon grid.

On right side, are volume up/down/mute buttons.  On the left side is a voice recorder button and an infrared IrDA port (wow, didn't know anyone still used these, but I think I still have access to some IrDA laser printers that could leverage this!).  And on the top there is a power button (actually, when phone is on it brings up a menu that lets you power off, lock, or change the ring profile).  These buttons along the sides and top of the phone are rubber encased and somewhat difficult to press, sometimes requiring me to brace the phone with my other hand or reaching over to the other side for additional leverage.  They do seem to be loosening a bit up over time.

On the bottom of the phone are the phone's main ports.  Leftmost is the mini-USB port for a data connection to a computer.  In the middle is a standard 2mm Nokia power port.  On the right is the 2.5mm headset port (more on that in a later section).  The tiny rectangular hole just above the power port is the microphone.  There are also two exposed electrical contact pads of unknown function, although I would hazard to guess that these are terminals for a charging dock (which either does not exist or is no longer manufactured as far as I know).

Finally, behind the battery cover you can access the SIM card port (battery must be removed to change SIM) and a port for a microSD memory card.  Note that on the Nokia website the maximum capacity microSD card supported is supposedly 4GB, but from personal experience I know you can use a higher capacity (I am using an 8GB Kingston microSD).  You may need to update your firmware to get this support (I have version 300.34.56 (dated 11/12/2008) from the factory; you can check the firmware version by dialing *#0000#).

Using Standard 3.5mm Headphones
The 2.5mm audio port is intended to support a headset, including the microphone.  Therefore the connector is of the "three band" (in reference to the black bands seperating the conductive portions of the connector) rather than the more typical "two band" type on non-miked headphones.

When I tried a generic 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter from Radio Shack, I only got one channel (the right) from several different types of headphones (I tried: iPod earbuds, Sennheiser HD590, Grado SR60, Sony SR-70 in-ear phones).  Symptoms may vary for you...according to the web, other ways this may manifest is: no sound at all, sound on only one side, works OK if you pull connector out slightly.

One possible workaround mentioned on the web is to use a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adaptor in combination with a Nokia HDA-11 audio adaptor.  I have not yet verified this (and perhaps I'll never get around to it as I'm considering going with a Bluetooth solution instead).

Update: A 4-conductor 3.5mm to 2.5mm adapter will not work (identifiable by three concentric bands around the tip of the connector...like the Radio Shack 274-004), but a standard stereo 3-conductor adapter alone will (2 bands around tip...might be listed as a 1/8"-to-3/32" stereo adapter).  No need to combine this with a Nokia HDA-11 as I mention above.  I was lucky enough to find an old 3-conductor adaptor from an ancient iPaq PDA and try it out this afternoon.  Volume is good, but I am picking up a background hiss...possible a ground loop issue with the microphone conductor in the 2.5mm jack? 

Whatever the cause, using an adapter the background hiss is definitely a problem (it helps if you use a less "bright", more "warm" set of headphones).  In addition, the sound is quite flat and while I usually don't bother fiddling with equalizers in this case I found it necessary.  Luckily the E51 player includes a 5-band equalizer and I was usually able to get an acceptable tonality just using the presets.  I would not recommend using this as your main all-day MP3 player but it'll do in a pinch if you're out-and-about and need a quick fix without carrying a bunch of other electronics around.  I hope I get better results with a Bluetooth headset (if I ever get around to trying it).

Reception/Call Quality
I've been searching for a replacement phone for my venerable Moto RAZR V3 for some time and while it has it's faults the RAZR has great reception and call quality (I can get a signal and make/receive calls in my buildings elevator...to the amazement of my coworkers who have much n  newer and fancier phones like the AT&T Fuze, Blackjacks, and the iPhone.

This Nokia has just as good call quality.  My wife cannot distinguish between this and my RAZR.  And on my end, the audio might be slightly better.  The speakerphone is definitely louder and clearer (much clearer) than the RAZR.  Signal reception also appears to be on par with the RAZR's excellent performance in my building (including the aforementioned elevator and the underground parking garage).

Connectivity
The E51 is a quad-band GSM phone (800/900/1800/1900) which means it should work on any GSM network in the world for making calls.  For data, the E51 is an 850/2100, which means in the US you'll only get 3G with AT&T Wireless.  I'm on T-Mobile so I'll just get the somewhat slower "2.5G" GPRS/EDGE data network.

In addition to the mobile provider networks, the E51 also supports 802.11b/g WiFi connections.  In fact, the E51 arguably is simpler to setup on home WiFi networks than the Window Mobile phones that I had experimented with at home.  However, note that at work the opposite might be true: it required a bit of work on my part but I had no trouble getting the right wireless authentication certificates to gain access to WiFi at work on a WinMo phone.  With the E51 I'm still trying to and have only succeeded in gaining access to a special unsecured "guest" account.  Your experience will vary depending on what sort of policy/infrastructure your IT department is using to secure your work network.  If just WEP it'll be dead easy on the E51.  Something more elaborate, you might be out of luck...but you can always fall back to your mobile provider's data plan.

I also mentioned infrared IrDA connectivity and alluded to Bluetooth as well.

Camera
The E51 is available with and without a camera.  The non-camera option is supposedly to address the concerns that some businesses might have about security and confidentiality.

My E51 has the camera and I have to say that Nokia is capable of implementing much better camera (look at some of the N-series phones like the N85).  On a phone like the E51 size must be a limiting factor (and I'm not referring simply to sensor size here but rather the limits of the optical path in such a thin device).  The 2 megapixel camera in the E51 is not going to replace even a cheap point-and-shoot.  However, I have found the camera capable of capturing a whiteboard full of text and in a business environment this is probably the only use I have for a camera.

The camera also supports video.  Perhaps my expectations for video quality are simply lower, but the video seems actually OK compared to the still image capabilities of the camera.  Quality is similar to what you would get from a Flip but probably a lower framerate.  Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to use this feature.

Software
The E51 is marketed as a business phone (although I'm using it mixed for work and personal) and that is reflected in the supplied software.

I'm not going to exhaustively list every other application, but will note that there is a calculator, notepad, ZIP decompressor, and PDF viewer.  There is also a version of QuickOffice for reading Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents (although you cannot create new documents...you'll need to by the full version from Quickoffice or one of their competitors).

A really important app of note is Mail for Exchange, Nokia's Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync compatible solution.  This allows you push sync your email, tasks, contacts, and calendar.  You can selectively sync any combination of these.  Note that email can only sync your inbox folder.  If you need to sync subfolders, you may need to look into a more sophisticated solution like DataViz's RoadSync.

The Nokia browser is quite impressive.  Like Apple's browser, it is based on WebKit and is much better than I expected with a neat zoom/thumbnail use, including for navigating your page history.  The browser also boasts a mouse-like cursor controlled by the nav pad.  However, rather than having complete freedom over the cursor, the nav pad jumps either fixed distances or to links in the page (which ever is closest).  I must say that I quite like this browser.  I had expected to install a 3rd party browser like Opera mini or Skyfire, but the Nokia browser is good enough that I may not bother.

There is no built-in entertainment software like games on the phone.  There is a video player (RealPlayer) and an audio player.  However, these arguably have business uses as well, hence their inclusion.

The final piece of software I will highlight is the homescreen or, as Nokia calls it, the "Active Standby" feature.  For homescreens, I prefer Windows Mobile as Active Standby is more limited in its capabilities and custimizations.  Active Standby combines a simple launcher with plug-ins that display some useful data (like your next few appointments).  The launcher appears as a row of icons beneath the clock and signal/battery meters.  It supports only up to 6 applications.  However, as mentioned previously you can also tie 6 additional apps the Calendar, Contacts, and Message keys (short and long presses accomodate two assignments per button) plus the 2 softkeys, there is a lot apps you can have quick access to...just not as an easy-to-remember icon in the actual launcher.  As for the plug-ins, you can display useful info on your homescreen like appointments, missed calls, messages, WiFi state, and a lot of other options including Search.  Search is interesting: of course you can do internet search (you can choose to Live, Yahoo, or Google as your default) but you can also search local content on your phone as well.