We’ve been avid fans of Nokia since their debut in the nineties, bringing us the delights of ‘create-your-own’ polyphonic ringtones and the epic mobile phone game ‘Snake’, but we must admit that of late Nokia just hasn’t been able to wow us as it once did. Of course with magic phones created by HTC, Apple and RIM, we’ve become a bit obsessed with the new kids, but Nokia is persevering in an effort to regain your favor and has brought out a new phone – the Nokia E5- as a means of making up for the shortfalls of the successful E72 model, but is it enough to draw us away from the super-shiny newcomers of the market?
Well there’s plenty of things you will enjoy if you purchase the Nokia E5. Aesthetically it is not dissimilar to its predecessor, but it feels very different in the hand. The QWERTY keyboard feels incredibly good to use, with soft rounded keys that are gentle on the fingertips and make only the tiniest of sounds. Compared to the click-heavy BlackBerry Bold 9700, the Nokia E5 is as quiet as a mouse.
It is important to remember that the Nokia E5 is primarily a business phone, so its biggest competitor is BlackBerry. As a result, Nokia have equipped the E5 with a great e-mail client, where setting up your e-mail accounts is incredibly simple, as is composing and receiving messages. If you have an account with the likes of Gmail or Hotmail, you simply have to enter your e-mail address and password, which brings a sigh of relief to those unfamiliar with all of the tech-jargon other phones are fond to confuse you with.
It’s a solid handset to hold and feels like it is a good-quality phone that won’t let you down should you accidentally drop it. The E5 lacks the metallic features of the E72 so it feels slightly plastic-like, but that’s forgotten after a short time. The 5 megapixel camera is pretty bog standard for a phone of this caliber, but due to its lack of auto-focus it falls short of its competitors. It does have flash though, which kind of makes up for the auto-focus shortcoming, as it helps light our pictures on nights out on the town.
The S60 operating system is OK, but if we’re being brutally honest it is incredibly dated in both performance and appearance. We hate to say it but the thin font and plain text makes it look rubbish, not be mention the incredibly low-fi graphics and outdated icons. It kind of makes us feel bad just for using it.
The screen, although bright and clear, is a bit on the small side for browsing and reading e-mails, which makes it fall short to us if it’s to be a business user’s phone. The e-mail client can, on occasion, spend ages downloading messages and user’s have reported frequent crashes, which is definitely not something you want in a modern-day handset. Nokia have had time to work out these issues.
In conclusion, the Nokia E5 is a good handset with a great feel to it, but for those who want a little more for their money that calling, messaging and e-mailing will want to opt for something decidedly more up-to-date. Without the fluidity of Android nor the apps of iOS, it seems the phone is desperate for the user to just work, work, work with no time for play. In short this is not what we would expect from Nokia.