Mobility Now

Recently I changed my E61i for a E51. I’ve been using this new phone for a while now and decided it was time to write a review. The E51 was released in November 2007 and is the latest in the business line from Nokia. The company has 2 main lines of products in their smartphones division: the N-series which focuses on high end camera and video features, and the E-series which focuses on stability and connectivity options.

Since I came from the E61i, I’ll start by listing the differences between the 2 phones. The phones are similar in many ways, but the E51 has key differences:

• Lack of a QWERTY keyboard
• Much better form factor (it’s smaller and thinner)
• Dual band 3G (high speed works in many North America areas, unlike the E61i)
• Slightly smaller battery (1050mAh instead of 1500mAh)
• Mini-USB port (instead of the old Pin-port)
• Headset jack
• Visual radio

Hardware

The main attraction of the E51 is the form factor. It truly is a gorgeous phone, solidly built, small and very thin (114.8 x 46 x 12 mm) and available in many colors (I picked black, as shown in the photo). This means of course no QWERTY keyboard, which makes it a no go if you require a full size keyboard. If form factor is more important to you than the QWERTY, then then you won’t find a better size for the amount of features.

Speaking of keyboard, the one on this phone is very nice. The keys seem solid to the touch and are easy to use. The keyboard has the standard number keys, a D-pad (which btw is not to be taken lightly, as someone who’ve gone from joysticks to D-pads, it’s such a huge improvement), a delete key and 4 custom keys. The custom keys link to the menu, calendar, contacts and mail. Also of note is that 3 of those keys can be customized to any other application, which is something you couldn’t do on the E61i.

On the top and sides there are buttons for power, volume up, down, mute and the voice recorder.

Connectivity

This phone is all about connectivity. It has GSM, EDGE and dual-band 3G (WCDMA 2100MHz and 850MHz) which means you get high speed 3.6Mbps data transfers where those frequencies are supported. This means all of Europe, most of Asia, and many of the newer networks in North America (it works fine using Rogers in Montreal).

The phone also has wi-fi 802.11g with built-in support for VOIP. It also has Bluetooth 2.0 (with A2DP), and USB using the mini-USB cable (with mass storage mode, which is very nice since you can connect it to any Windows PC and it allows you to transfer files right away, without the need to install drivers or PC Suite).

Finally it also has a standard 2.5 microphone jack, which means any headset with a (small) plug will work in it, which is also nicer than having to deal with the proprietary plugs.

CPU and memory

The phone has a surprisingly large amount of memory with 130Megs of user data memory and 96Megs of SDRAM. As a comparison, the E61i had 60Megs, and non-smartphones such as say the Moto RAZR has 10Megs. This means you can store many more applications, data and also run more apps at the same time. The phone also has a MicroSD card slot supporting cards up to 4GB (although people report using 6GB and 8GB cards fine).

This phone also has a 396MHz processor, which is an improvement over older E-series phones which had 220MHz CPUs. This means everything will run faster. And indeed, browsing menus and starting applications is visibly faster on this device. This has to be the fastest phone I’ve used.

Features

The E51 runs S60 9.2, which is the first E-series phone running this latest version as far as I know. It comes with all the usual S60 features, like contacts, calendar, notes, SMS, MMS, E-mail, Web (full S60 web browser with landscape browsing support), PTT, RealPlayer, Podcasting, Music Player, QuickOffice (read only, but upgradeable to edit mode), Maps (the phone has complete GPS, maps and localization search support built-in if you have a Bluetooth GPS receiver), recorder, Java support, and so on. It also has a FM radio with visual radio support. Plus, since S60 v3 is now a mature platform, the UI is rock solid.

S60 is a very versatile platform and I won’t go into details as to what all the features are or all the applications that can be added. You can basically do as much as you can on any other phone platform, if not more, using the wide array of tools built into S60. When you first turn on the phone there are a large amount of applications that help new users set things up. First there’s the language and time zone settings, then an installer to get any memory card applications installed, and a series of modules visible on the home screen that helps you setup E-mail, VOIP and so on.

Multimedia

The camera on the E51 is the 2MPx camera module that is the same as most other E-series phones. It takes 1600×1200 images and QVGA videos at 15fps. Those can then be stored in phone memory or on the memory card, or sent via E-mail, MMS or Bluetooth. The photo quality is average indoors, so it’s best for outdoor shots.

The music player, video player and gallery are the same ones as previous E-series phones. They are very functional and include all the basic features you’d expect, such as storing images in folders, marking files, copying and moving them, sending them off, viewing them as a slide show, listening to music and play lists, viewing videos locally or streaming (in RealPlayer format only, which is rather rare nowadays) and so on.

Compared with typical phones, the multimedia features are on-par or better, but compared with N-series they are very basic. This is not a phone aimed at high end multimedia users, and you won’t find on-phone photo editing, the enhanced N-series gallery, auto-focus or a flash.

Battery life

Even if it has a smaller battery than QWERTY phones in the same line (1050mAh versus 1500mAh), the battery life is still excellent. You can expect a week of standby time and 4h20mins of talk time. I can charge this phone over the weekend, and if I don’t use it much it will still be running by Friday.

Conclusion

As the latest smartphone in Nokia’s business line, this is a fantastic phone. As long as you don’t need QWERTY, and really this is not a negative, more like a personal choice of large QWERTY devices versus small form factor, this is the best phone out there. Currently going for $300 (without contract) from most online vendors, this phone is perfect for anyone who wants a stable smartphone with the most connectivity options possible.

In my E61i review, I gave that phone a 9.5, and this phone is clearly superior, mainly because of the better plugs, 3G support in my area, FM radio, and a faster interface. In fact, I can’t find any negative so far, and from reading forum threads, it seems to be a favorite from anyone who’ve gotten it. For the audience this phone is aimed at, this is the perfect choice.

Score: 10/10

Note: This is a repost from July 2006 of my N73 review, updated for the latest firmware.

This is my first impressions after playing with my new Nokia N73 for a few days. I’m using one that came from Hong Kong, and supports GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and UMTS 2100. Note that being in Canada, we don’t have 3G quite yet and even if we did it wouldn’t be the right frequency.

Original firmware information: V 2.0628.0.0.1 10-07-2006 RM-133 N73 (11)
Updated firmware: 3.0704.1.0.1

The box
The box I got came with: the phone, an asia-type charger, a data cable, a headset, a 128M MiniSD card, a user manual, a driver CD and a charger converter to use the older chargers. In the package was also a plug converter for the asian charger. Note that all the applications were installed on the phone, except for Sudoku, a dictionary and a series of extra DRMed ringtones which can’t be played without buying them, which I didn’t do.

The phone
Size wise, the phone is smaller than it may appear in pictures. I’m going from a Nokia 6620 to a N73 so its visibly smaller. The build seems solid too, and the camera slide is nice as well. the screen is as bright and nice as others have reported already.

The memory card door is something others have commented on. While it’s true that a solid metal door would have been better, I think this is a very good door compared to other phones I’ve seen, and it’s not too hard to open once you figure out how.

It uses a standard pop-port which means any compatible accessories work with it. It uses the smaller charger port, I’m not sure why since there would have been space to put the older type.

The stereo speakers are nice and loud, much more so than my 6620 which really wasn’t loud enough. When using the headset or making a call with the normal phone speaker, the volume seemed in line with the 6620.

The phone also supports IR which I don’t really have a use for, and Bluetooth which is what I use with the PC Suite program.

As far as stability goes, the lag to browse menus and open applications is still visible like any S60, but it’s much less than my 6620 had. In the 2 days I’ve been playing with, the main problems it has is in the camera and gallery. Applications can be used in multi task but if you use the Web application, or if you open big files (I tried to open a 3 megs PDF) then you’ll start seeing those Out of memory messages. In normal use, you can easily have Contacts, Calendar and the music player up at once.

The camera
The main camera is 3.2MPx and takes 2048×1536 jpeg images by default. It is way better than the old VGA one on my old phone. I don’t have a digital camera to compare it with, but Flickr already has tons of N73 shots here.

When I slide the door open, the camera application takes about 3 seconds to open, which isn’t perfect but it’s not bad. When I take a picture, the lag is less than 1 second which is very good.

The camera app has 2 sets of settings. There’s the main settings which define where pictures are stored and such, which are saved. Then there’s the ‘active toolbar’ on the right of the screen which define the scene, exposure, white balance, self-timer, flash mode and so on. These are on the default setting when you start the camera and you need to change them. You can define sets for these settings, but you still starts in ‘auto’. This is one minor issue, since if for example you wanted flash to be always off unless you specify otherwise, I haven’t found a way to do that.

After taking pictures, you can edit them in the picture editing program, which I think is great. You can crop, resize, add text, change brightness, red eye and so on. Most phones and even cameras don’t have that built in. Videos work in the same way and it’s very simple to switch from picture to video mode. With videos you can also create a ‘muvee’ which is basically a video with sounds, pictures and text.

The gallery works in landscape mode and this is something some people don’t like. Also by default the gallery loads the last picture taken, as well as every image and video on the phone. This is somewhat weird to me since who would want to view everything in a mixed order. There is a way to view things in a much more sane way, with albums. You can add pictures to an album, and by going to Options -> View albums you can view your pictures categorized. I wish there was a way to go there directly instead of going by the gallery but I haven’t found if it’s possible.

Pictures and videos are stored automatically on the phone, and you can send them in the usual ways by MMS, bluetooth, e-mail, print them and so on. One interesting thing they added is the possibility to send them to your Flickr account or Lifeblog directly.

Calls
I haven’t made a lot of calls yet but so far the RF is fine. I had no problem using both the loudspeaker and the normal one. All the usual S60 settings are there and there’s nothing special to say about the N73.

Web browser
The phone comes with 2 different icons for web browsing. Services is the normal WAP browser, and Web is the new Nokia web browser. Some people don’t like it, but I love browsing the web this way. You basically see the whole page as it would be seen on a PC screen, and you move in the page with the joystick. The browser supports all the basic web features such as javascript, cookies, cache and so on. It also has a special Feeds folder in the bookmarks for RSS feeds.

One interesting thing is loading web pages is much faster on the N73 than it was on my 6620, using the same SIM card from the same location. I don’t know if the 6620 supported a slower type of EDGE but it’s visibly faster.

Applications
Another nice thing about this phone is the vast amount of applications that come bundled in.

The phone has the usual Messaging application. It allows the sending and receiving of MMS, SMS and e-mail, as well as creating mailboxes to communicate with various mail servers. One thing I noticed that is different than my old phone is the mail setup wizard which makes the creation of new mailboxes less confusing. Also the inbox can display each headers using 2 lines which shows more information in the listing.

The Music Player has a very basic interface but it’s pretty nice. When you open it, it scans the device for music. If you want to add music to it later, you have to make it scan again. You can access play lists and such from there.

Real Player is a common one for all S60 phones, and other than a new splash screen it’s pretty much always the same thing.

Flash Player is built in, I think mainly because Nokia wanted to add a nice looking tutorial. The tutorial shows in a very graphical yet basic way what the phone can do. There’s no other flash file included but if you look around the web there’s various flash files that are made for the mobile flash player.

The visual FM radio is quite nice too, and works like any normal FM radio tuner, with support for visual stations too. Using the included headset I had no problem listening to local stations.

The clock is exactly like the one on my 6620, except that it includes a ‘world clock’ which is basically just a list of various cities. It would have been nice to include a world map with timezones and such, instead of just a list.

The calendar also includes standard features you find on other phones, and with Active Standby, it’s so nice to at last be able to see calendar entries for the day on the standby screen, which my 6620 couldn’t do.

They also included office tools such as Quickoffice to view MS Office documents and Adobe Reader to view PDFs. I only tried Adobe Reader and it displayed the documents fine, but will run out of memory if you try to view anything remotely big.

There’s also built in IM, which I haven’t managed to setup right.

Lastly there’s a chinese-english dictionary, and an icon to download an Anti-virus program which I didn’t do.

Conclusion
It’s the best smartphone for multimedia purposes, and if you don’t need wi-fi, then the N73 is really the best choice.

The main qualities are:

• The screen
• The battery life
• The camera quality
• Built in applications.

The bad points include:

• The camera and gallery freezes and out of memory errors
• The lack of wi-fi
• The thickness of the phone

Total score: 9/10

Google Maps is one of the most popular mapping web sites online. Google introduced it a few years ago and has added an impressive amount of features to it. Late last year, they released a Java client called Google Maps for Mobile (GMM) which is available for any mobile device supporting Java. It’s one of the mobile applications I have the most fun with, and I feel it’s one of the most useful yet unknown program out there. GMM isn’t exactly new, but Google has continued to update it in the past months, and today it features almost the same abilities and flexibility as the web based version. Here I will describe these features and how this simple app can help so much.

The first thing to do, if you haven’t already, is to install it. Any Java supporting device that has Internet access (or on which you can transfer applications) will work. Simply go to the web site and download it. A word of caution on using this application: loading maps from your mobile will take a lot of data, so unless you have unlimited data from your provider, you need to watch your usage or risk a high bill. Thankfully GMM has a data counter in the top right showing you how much it’s downloading.

The most obvious feature of GMM is of course to browse maps. You can browse using the arrows on your device, and zoom in by pressing the middle select button. The left soft key will zoom out, and the right one will bring up the menu. From the menu, you can toggle between map and satellite mode. From there you can also access the true power behind GMM.

The first really useful feature is the search. You can do either a local search or a business search. Simply bring up the menu and press 1 or 2 then enter either an address or a business name. One neat thing is you can enter a wide range of items in the search box. You can input a zip code and GMM will zoom in to the location of that zip code. You can enter “pizza” and GMM will show you a list of Pizza restaurants in the area you are currently viewing. You can enter a street or city name, or a known place like “sphinx egypt”.

Whenever you search for something, one or more points will appear on the map. Simply browse through them by using the keypad with the 1, 2 and 3 keys. Also, any time you have a point selected on the map, you can press * to bring up the favorites menu. You can save up to 9 favorites, and those can be either map locations, search results or directions.

The next feature that is very useful is to get directions. By pressing 3 in the menu, you can select 2 points, and Google will display step by step directions. This is very precise and the results will go through every step between those 2 points, telling you which roads to take including exits and road names. Use 1, 2 and 3 to scroll from the start position to the end. One fun thing to try is to get directions to go across the Atlantic ocean.

A recent feature they added is the traffic reports. In several major US cities, pressing # in the menu will bring up the current traffic maps, showing which roads have heavy traffic. Green roads have light traffic while red ones are congested. As Google rolls out this information to more cities, GMM will be able to access this new data.

Lastly, there’s also a more advanced feature known as KML files. A KML file is a list of points on Google Maps, originally created for the Google Earth desktop application, which shows information for each point on the map. For example, someone could create a KML file that shows each Pizza restaurant in Paris, with a short description, picture and link for each. External links will load in the phone’s browser. The way to load the KML file is to do a business search from the menu, and in the search box, enter the URL of the file. GMM will load the file and display each point on the map. Simply use 1, 2 and 3 to scroll between each of them. You can find a list of files people made public on the Google Earth forum. Note that not all KML features are supported.

Google Maps for Mobile is really a cool application, mainly because being Java based, it’s so universal and lightweight, and provides access to all of the Google Maps data in real time. Google keeps updating it and they recently released versions for Windows Mobile and Blackberry, as well as GPS support for a handful of devices.

I try to limit my new mobile purchases to one device a year. I follow new releases very closely, and try to spot that gem which will do everything I need it to do well. The Nokia E61i, released last month, caught my attention as a potential gem.

I’ve been using my N73 since last summer (you can see my review on HoFo), so I’ll obviously compare my experience with this device with it. The main reason to buy an E61i was that I wanted to try out wifi and qwerty, which are critical for a true convergence device. I did not need GPS so I felt the ridiculous price of the N95 was not for me, and I don’t like sliders.

The box came with the following: phone, manual, CD, charger, USB cable, headset, 256m memory card.

This is the firmware information: 1.0633.22.05 15-02-07 RM-227

Hardware
As seen in pictures, this device is very nice looking and thin. It’s obviously wider because it’s a qwerty device, and you get a large screen. It feels a lot more solid and better built than even my N73 which wasn’t that bad. The back cover and front is all aluminum with plastic around the edges. The screen is very big and of excellent quality. The loud speaker is pretty standard compared with past phones, and the notification light is useful and customizable.

The keyboard is very nice. I have to get used to qwerty since I’m used to the normal phone keypad, but the keys are nice and the D-pad is such an improvement over a joystick. I find it weird that the side buttons are on the left side instead of the right side which would seem more intuitive for using it with the right hand, but the buttons are fine and easily usable.

Battery
Battery life is very good. The day I got it, I spent hours at 1 bar left and it never gave me a battery low warning. After charging in once overnight I have yet to drain the battery with heavy use. This is one of the major reasons for getting this device, as I really didn’t feel like charging a phone every night. This thing will probably be charged once a week and never come close to running out.

Software
This is where I think the E61i really shows what kind of device it is. The OS is S60v3, and does not include FP1. The UI (so far) is very stable and hasn’t crashed or given me a memory error at all. While FP1 would have been nice, I also see the N95 bug threads pop up and am glad they play guinea pig. Although stable, I did find the menu browsing to be slightly slower than my N73, but not enough to be annoying. I installed all my usual (GMail, Google Maps, etc) without any problem. As a test, I loaded the device manual in the PDF reader. On my N73 any time I tried to do that, I could not zoom in or browse it without crashing with an out of memory error. I was pleased that the E61i could view it with no error.

Another nice thing I found out is the device comes packed with software. Not only does it have all the usual Nokia stuff like messaging, Web, IM, PTT, WLAN wizard, quickoffice, etc, but it also comes pre-installed with Worldmate which I think is a very nice program, as well as installers for Exchange and Blackberry connect for those who need it, a golf game, Widset, Podcasting, a Reuters news app and even location and positioning software already on the device for use with a bluetooth GPS module. Note that mine came with a 256m memory card and most extra software were on that, so versions in other markets may vary.

As far as connectivity goes, it has everything from GSM, UMTS (which I can’t test here since I live in Canada), bluetooth, ir, wi-fi. The built in WLAN wizard works well and had no issue finding my network. The implementation is good, and it creates an access point so all applications can select to use wifi just as they would use a normal access point. I tried the built in wi-fi telephone app but couldn’t figure it out, I guess you need a SIP service for that. I just installed Friing and Skype was working right away.

Multimedia
The big change over previous messaging handset is the 2MPx camera. From reading comments I feared that this would be a weak spot that couldn’t take pics inside, but it’s not true at all. I found the quality to be quite good for a 2MPx and it works fine indoors and outdoors. The camera does not have auto focus or a flash so obviously sufficient lighting is required.

The gallery app is the standard non-Nseries gallery. It doesn’t have the fancy features, but it’s faster and it’s not buggy. This was the single most buggy area of my N73, and I can’t tell you the number of times my N73 crashed, froze or gave a memory error while using the camera or gallery software. The E61i doesn’t have the enhanced multimedia features of the Nseries such as picture editing but I prefer it to bugginess.

The music player is the same, which I find pretty basic, and it comes with the usual RealPlayer and such.

Conclusion
I think for what it’s purpose is, this is the perfect device for people wanting a well built, stable Internet device. It does everything it supports well, from browsing, messaging, editing documents, doing some basic multimedia and connecting in various ways. When looking at the competition in this area, I think this is a top solution. Over my N73 I gain the qwerty keyboard including a much better D-pad, wi-fi, a more solid build, at the cost of enhanced multimedia features of the Nseries.

Out of all the convergence devices out there (Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry, Symbian) I believe right now the E61i is the best choice, at least for me.

Pros:

• Solid build
• Battery life
• Wide range of connections
• Included software

Cons:

• Missing extra Nseries multimedia software

Score: 9.5/10

Nokia site for the E61i: http://europe.nokia.com/A4344018