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Reviews and tests / Nokia E51 Review
SMAPE  Reviews and tests  Nokia  Nokia E51 Review
Nokia E51

Nokia E50 set up a new standard of compactness among S60-based smartphones, the device was in a very high demand in its respective market segment – the audience comprised different customer categories exceeding the limits of the corporate class – even though the smartphone was largely advertised as business solution. The ‘Nokia for Business’ came to be a mass market product due to the balanced combination of compact dimensions, the strict classic design and a functionality proven by time. By the time it was launched into serial production, there were a number of similar models belonging to the same series present on the market, the closest one being probably Nokia E60. The latter possessed a better functionality, though it was entirely targeted at the corporate sector, its multimedia functionality was somewhat curbed, the camera was missing – apparently in favor of the Wi-Fi module, which made the main difference between it and the E50 model. Nevertheless the majority of customers opted for compactness. Thus was revealed the idea that the compact smartphones sporting a neat balance between the price and the functionality have all the chances of taking over significant area on the world mobile market.



Nokia E51 photos

Design and Ergonomics
Screen
Controls, keypad
Battery
Data exchange protocols
Performance
User Interface
Phonebook and call service
Messaging
PIM
Nokia Web Browser
Camera
Multimedia: mp3 player and FM tuner
SMAPE's opinion


A sequel to Nokia E50 has been long looked forward to by lots of people. It didn’t the original E50 for too long to become a bestseller thanks to its balanced set of features, design and dimensions. Nokia E50 was the slimmest and smallest smartphone ever issued by Nokia, in fact it was the first product by that company that deserved the epithet ‘slim’ – the maximum thickness was only 15,5 at the thickest point and only 12 mm in average. The device sported a high quality of materials (stainless steel prevailed), a fair functionality for a product of that class, and, what was the essence and the key, a very affordable price. The drawbacks of the product could only make up a short list, mainly consisting in the lack of Wi-Fi and little more – although the target audience at which the device was aimed wasn’t expected to be seriously interested in the Wi-Fi functionality. As for the rest of features, the bargain proved to be far above than just satisfactory – that’s why it enjoyed so much popularity.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos
Nokia E51 / E50


The life cycle of Nokia E50 lasted for more than a year and a half, and now it’s time for the product to begin phasing out, giving way to its direct sequel Nokia E51. A significant number of factors prove the continuity between the two – market positioning, maximal compactness and the price bracket.



Nokia E51 General Specifications
  Telecoms: EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA/HSDPA 850/2100
  Memory: 130 Mb of user memory, microSD card slot, up to 4 Gb supported
  Data transfer protocols: USB2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (A2DP is supported)
  Camera: 2,0 Mp (up to 1600x1200)
  Display: 2.0", 240x320, 16 M Colors
  Battery: BP-6MT, 1050 мАч
up to 3,48 hours of talk time
up to 312 hours of standby
  Dimensions: 115 x 47 x 12 mm
  Estimated price: €300

So the users of Nokia E50 got a worthy replacement following all the trends started by its predecessor. The novelty preserved all the positive aspects of the ancestor – compactness, incredibly slim build, high quality of materials, and a good deal of additional features were introduced: the much expected Wi-Fi module is now added to the pool of features, and all the weird brand-type sockets were replaced with standard ones. Nokia E51 is sure to reiterate the success of its precursor and has everything necessary for that. No competitive product could be possibly observed to appear in the foreseeable future to challenge E51 – the one and only model among the slim phones to feature a fully functional Wi-Fi module while retaining dimensions like that.

Design and ergonomics



Nokia E51 utilizes the classic candy bar form factor, a concept largely preferred among business-oriented solutions. The appearance is totally different from Nokia E50, save for a few common points. Nokia 6120 is more likely to find a lot in common with the novelty, drawbacks included. Here comes the same grease-accumulating polished surface, the steel framework along all the four sides of the casing (in E51 it’s polished and varies in color, standing for a few color variations of the product available from the stores: black, silver and bronze; the latter possesses the most impressive appearance of them all, the orientation towards a wide audience can easily be felt here, businesswomen included.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Let's compare to Nokia E50:

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Let's compare to Nokia 6120 Classic:

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Let's compare Nokia E50, E51 и 6120 Classic:
Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

The phone is very slim, in fact the slimmest Nokia of all the already existing models. The device gives the hand a very comfortable feel, the steel parts of the casing cast a pleasant chill. The outline of the casing loosely resembles Nokia E50, the chassis is made of plastic yet the metal battery cover and the frontal panel produce an impression of a monolith. The build quality is very high, no play between the parts or screeching – both problems are out of the question.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

It’s not a secret that Nokia have been running through certain problems with a number of their models where it came to the quality of the chrome coating. Nokia N76 model has been known to suffer from that issue in a very noticeable way, the service centers were ordered to replace the parts touched by the ‘plague’ for free, which virtually stands for full casing replacement. The same nuisance has been affecting the navigation keys of Nokia E65, E61i and a number of other. The second generation of Eseries devices the problem has to be done away with, the negative experiences of previous models were taken into account, but it’s really hard to tell if E51 will show any signs of the chrome coating degradation over significant periods of time. The most likely answer would be no, though, - making the same mistake twice is something totally unacceptable in the Nokia policy.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

The increased visual difference between Nseries and Eseries devices was artificially introduced to make the unpretentious and ill-informed customer clearly distinguish between the two series which, contrary to the popular belief, aren’t the same product line at all. The metal parts and spotted texture (both to become a popular trend) stand for E-series now, combined with a number of possible variations. For example, the battery cover of each of the color variations of Nokia E51 differs in texture. The cover is made from hardened steel, it’s tight and not easy to remove at all, on the other hand there’s no chance for a play between the cover and the rest of the phone to appear. The memory card expansion slot is found beneath along with the BP-6MT battery with a capacity of 1050 mAh.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

The back and side surfaces are made from black matte plastic, the camera module is found enclosed into a glossy insertion, which makes it look like Nokia E50. A little bit above the speaker is seated – it’s just a sole one, yet the 3D tones option might help making it sound like a stereo system. The options are the same – sound trajectory, pitch transition interval, reverberation. The effect, however, is hard to tell from the non-boosted mode.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

The lower edge comes with a miniUSB slot, a 2.5 mm headset socket and the thin charger slot. The side edges host volume controls and the dedicated button used to turn the mic off during talk and a special key that launches the voice recorder. The upper edge is notable for the profile switch button.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

The light indicator flickers white at a fixed interval of time that can be customized by the user (from 5 minutes to 2 hours), it also can be turned off. At the same time, in a manner very similar to E50, four types of events can be set to act as triggers for the light indicator to respond: missed call, new incoming SMS message, MMS message or an e-mail.

Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

Display



The display is relatively large for a smartphone, the overall dimensions counting 31x41 mm (2’’ diagonal). The size is comparable to Nokia 6300, 6500c, E50 and so on. On the whole, it causes no discomfort at all – probably the font sizes are a little bit small, but the rest is definitely all right. In fact, this is an exact replica of the screen used in the previous model, E50.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

The screen is powered by the TFT technology and is capable of displaying 16M colors. The matrix sports a mirror backing, which helps to see the screen information in direct sunlight. The view angles of 6120c are large enough, the view angles are comfortable for almost any situation. The brightness is on a high level, turned to maximum it makes a match to 6300. The luminance sensor adjusts the brightness level automatically.

Controls



The phone comes with a significant number of extra control keys. The only comparable solution would be Nokia E65, but in the current case the novelty is something we’d dare call ideal in this aspect – the number of buttons stays the same while their associated functions are overhauled, resulting in a more user-friendly solution. So Nokia E51, in addition to the standard set of controls, offers a number of dedicated One Touch buttons to access the most frequently used specific applications almost instantly. They’re all placed around the navigation button, much like Nokia E65, the size and feedback are good enough not to trouble yourself with. Nokia E50 was universally reproached for low ergonomics of the exterior control elements because of the crowded positioning of the buttons and excessive amount of stray keystrokes as a result. The problem is gone by now. The whole keypad is made of black matte plastic, it feels like something more expensive than just 6120 Classic for instance.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

The one touch extra controls comprise the following buttons: Calendar, Phonebook, Messages and Home Desktop. Now the menu button shares a lot of common in appearance with WM-based smartphone. Besides of a new symbol written on it, the very way the button works was changed. It’s the Home Desktop that you’ll get to after pressing the button and not the main meni any longer. The meny memory effect at last reached the Nokia phones – just like with Samsung ones, the menu keeps track of user actions and always opens the last viewed menu on each access. The symbol on the delete button was changed likewise, it’s now analogous to what we saw with Nokia E90. The most interesting thing is that every One Touch button can be reconfigured to launch custom applications, which was an option never to reach E65. Both long and short strokes on the One Touch buttons are mutually distinguishable and both can be used for different actions. So you can assign up to 6 different actions to the three extra buttons.

Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

The navigation button is much like the rest of E-series products, sporting a chrome coating and a certain danger of degradation thereof; Nokia officials seem to be regarding this possible threat as a myth, let’s hope it will truly be a myth and none of the copies of the device will ever suffer.

Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos Nokia E51 photos

The numeric keypad is quite standard, the pencil function is missing and the # key is used instead. Pressing the * key for a prolonged period of time will turn Bluetooth on and off. The keypad backlighting is pale white, it’s not too bright yet clearly visible from a distance. On the right side of the phone, right between the sound volume controls, the mic on/off button is situated – which can prove useful if you participate in mobile conferences and such like distant meetings, the left one hosts the voice recorder launch button. Quite accordingly, you can start recording a talk even without the slightest effort, you don’t have to enter any menus.

Battery



The standard BP-6MT battery sports a power capacity of 1050 mAh which is very good for such a slim device. As stated by the manufacturer, the phone can stay online for about 4.38 before the charge is wasted out, which is equal to 13 days of standby cycle. During moderate duty endurance tests (about an hour of talk time, four hours of listening to the music, an hour of working with camera, menus and other miscellaneous functions) the handset was able to withstand 3 days of autonomous operation before the battery charge faded away and the phone began crying for a good recharge. That’s quite a fair result for a product of such build and class, so we’d say no problems can be observed on this side. It’s a bit better than the same parameter of its predecessor, which stands to reason and is quite satisfactory.

Nokia E51 photos



Nokia E51 Battery
Phone: Nokia Е51 Nokia 6120 Classic
Ordinary using 3 days 2 days
Multimedia cycle, videoо (3GP) 3:30 2:50
Multimedia cycle, audio (MP3) 13:20 10:10


Data transfer protocols



The product possesses all the standard mobile networking features common for that product class, the wire data exchange is done through USB (miniUSB slot), the rest of the slots includes the 2.5 mm headset jack HS-47 and the thin charger slot.

The miniUSB slot is found at the bottom of the device, the data cable ships in the sales package as well. The data transition speed of this model is fairly comparable to Nokia 6290. The USB standard 2.0. the Mass Storage mode is supported – you can choose between Mass Storage, PC Suite Synchronization and Modem Connection. While used in the Mass Storage Mode the phone doesn’t go offline, the functionality of the device is retained at the utmost degree.

Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

The 2.5mm to 3.5mm jack for the standard socket is known to exist in two distinct forms: the original one manufactured by Nokia themselves and the 3rd party creations. The AD-44 included into the standard sales package of Nokia 5700 is perfectly compatible with E51, the sound quality keeps at the same high level; the bundled Philips headset taken from the Nokia 5700 sales package sounds in a fashion quite comparable to that of original 5700 in terms of audio quality while plugged into the model in question using the adaptor – save for a few minor differences in the depth of field and the way how the high pitches and the basses sound.

Nokia Е51 is designed to operate in EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks as well as WCDMA/HSDPA 850/2100, the support for the latter being one of the product’s key features, in a manner very similar to Nokia 6120 Classic – it’ one of the most affordable smartphones with such functionality.

As stated by the manufacturer, Nokia E51 utilizes Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, all of the general profiles are supported:

  • A2DP
  • Audio/Video Remote Control
  • Basic Imaging
  • Dial-up Networking
  • File Transfer
  • Generic Access
  • Generic Object Exchange
  • Handsfree
  • Headset
  • HID
  • Object Push
  • SIM Access
  • Serial Port


  • The A2DP support allows for the wireless headset to be used along with the integrated music player, no problems were spotted by us so far regarding this part of functionality.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The Bluetooth data transfer speed reaches about 130 Kb/s. The Bluetooth visibility interval is now available as a customizable setting, ranging from one minute to one hour.

    One of the most significant improvement of Nokia E51 over its predecessor is the b/g Wi-Fi support, which places the product above the rest of slim phones of today market. The WLAN Wizard application helps to configure the connection in a quick an easy manner. The security protocols are WEP, WPA, WPA2. IP telephony is a technology utilizing the IP protocol for transmitting voice and data, of course in the current case the deal is all about the user opportunity to send voice calls over to compatible devices not through the GSM/3G networks but via a WiFi connection. The feature finds its foundation in the SIP protocol (Session Initiation Protocol) developed by the MMUSIC group (Multiparty Multimedia Session Control), a division of the Internet Engineering Task Force. The settings include a choice to login into VoIP either in manual mode or automatically, the default call type can be specified (cell network / web call).

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Each phonebook record provides for a special info field containing the person’s SIP address. According to the SIP specifications, there are four types of SIPs:

  • name@domain;
  • name@host;
  • name@IPaddress;
  • telephone_number@gateway.


  • Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Performance



    In the field of performance lies the striking difference between the product in question and a multitude of other smartphones issued by Nloa, the standard values were a 220 Mhz CPU frequency as specified by the TI OMAP 1710 chipset. In the current case we observe a noticeable performance boost which can’t be explained by anything but the transition to the totally new hardware platform. Without dwelling deep into technical detail let’s just note out that the performance of the casual phones is in the breath of that displayed by Nokia 6120c. A number of typical operations characteristic of smartphones and casual phones alike display no difference in time taken to solve those particular tasks, which is a huge plus of the model. The hardware part of the phone almost completely coincide with that of Nokia 6120 Classic, N76 – this fact is indicated by the comparable test results as well. As compared to Nokia E50, the huge advantage in performance is easily noticeable.



    Nokia 6120 classic Nokia E51 Nokia E50
    Jbenchmark 1.0.1 Score 5797 5875 3475
    Text 1650 1677 949
    2D Shapes 1472 1514 885
    3D Shapes 707 703 377
    Fill Rate 385 372 202
    Animation 1583 1609 1062
    Jbenchmark 2.0.1 Score 688 638 281
    Image Manipulations 405 399 240
    Text 761 752 344
    Sprites 566 561 341
    3D Transform 366 924 542
    User Interface 915 679 114
    Jbenchmark 3D HQ 198 200 124
    Jbenchmark 3D LQ 396 377 228
    Triangles ps 59710 54703 38448
    Jbenchmark HD Gaming Score 168 (5.4 fps) 161 (5.7 fps) 99 (3.3 fps)
    Smooth triangles 107684 106296 59442
    Fill rate, KTexels 2410 2249 1322


    The phone works operates under command of the latest revision of the Symbian mobile operating system, the exact version is 9.2 / S60v3 FP1. There’s no support for Fast Boost mode, though the phone boots up quickly enough anyway – hardly more than 20 seconds is the average boot time that we witnessed.

    The amount of integrated memory available to the user after the OS is loaded and ready for operation counts about 20 Mb of free space as compared to the total 64 Mb of integrated user memory. That’s not much, somewhere on a level comparable to the rest of the devices by that manufacturer. The small amount of memory imposes certain sorts of limitations, there’s no way to avoid that. On the other hand, an unpretentious consumer who buys a smartphone for the first time in their life won’t probably notice those limitations at all. Similar to the rest of devices based off the third edition of the S60 platform, the applications close on pressing the Power Off / Cancel button and are minimized with the help of the Menu button. The Heap memory size and the maximum jar size are unlimited.

    The integrated memory size is 256 Mb, of which some 130 Mb are available for storing user data.

    User interface



    The software part mostly coincides with Nokia N95, 6110 Navigator and a multitude of Nokia products based off the S60 3rd edition FP1 platform. This also means that all of the base functionality provided with the platform is present here as well, save for a few moments that will be discussed in the article a bit later. The difference from the earlier versions is rather minor, including the OS-level support for the A2DP profile, HSDPA, the updated Nokia Web Browser, Freescale CPU support. The latter is one of the key features indicating the smooth transition to CPUs other than TI OMAP, leading to significant portfolio expansion. As it has been already mentioned, the hardware platform based off the Freescale chip is notable for lower development costs combined with a high performance, especially when it comes to the menus and standard applications like the phonebook, PIM, messaging service, camera and so on – the stereotypical image of a “slow smartphone” is waning into obscurity thanks to such products as Nokia 6290, N76, 6110 Navigator, 6120 Classic and so on. Formally these belong to the mod-end market and none of them is remarkable for an outstanding functionality or any claims for a top position in any sector – the real flagships will be TI OMAP (2420 / 2430) solutions with a hardware 2D/3D accelerator, the standard task performance will stay on the same level. This way Nokia are developing two branches of devices targeted at different market sectors: multimedia-oriented flagship models and high-performance mid-end products, expanding the presence of smartphones on the mass market.

    Nokia E51 shares a common hardware base with all of the above-mentioned models, i.e. the model is based off a single-chip Freescale solution which stands for a high performance in most situations; the testing results are listed in the corresponding chapter of the article.

    The arrangement of menu elements is quite typical for Nokia smartphone, almost nothing new can be observed here, except the abscence of the two new 3D profiles Horseshoe and V-shaped which are well known in other products. The menu isn’t animated, however one pleasant thing is that the right corner of every menu item no matter if the icon is a shortcut or a folder, a semi-circular mark appears if the application is currently running in the background.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The Go-To standby mode expansion first appeared among the S60-based Nokia products, the pioneers being 6680/6681. From five to eight (depending on the screen resolution and orientation) application shortcuts, schedule gist and player settings were originally the stuff that this feature allowed to pass to the screen during standby. Later the Go-To active standby mode appeared with Series40 as well, also sporting an expanded functionality – simple phones came to beat smartphones at least in one area, which looked a bit unusual.

    Some of the latest devices based off S60v3 Feature Pack 1 utilizes an improved version of the go-to active standby mode allowing for some addon modules, simply speaking an opportunity to let the summary info on the currently running applications to be shown on the screen. Nokia E51 offers maximum functionality in this aspect. The same remains true for the rest of Eseries products.

    The Go-To active standby mode can be switched off if the user doesn’t feel that he really needs a lot of info and shortcuts to be displayed in the standby mode. As seen in its standard implementation, the active standby mode makes a row of six shortcut icons to appear on the screen, the number of icons is unfortunately limited unlike with the Series 40 products. Also there’s an opportunity to set custom shortcuts for 3rd party applications, which is really comfortable since you no longer have to go to lots of menus one after another to launch a frequently used application like ICQ.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 offers certain Bluetooth device search functionality, though the application version is lower than we observed with Nokia N81. One of the Go-To options is the enhanced Search function, there were some slight changes introduced in comparison with the rest of Nokia smartphones, but on the whole the functionality remains the same. You can search anywhere ranging from Interned to your own content, messages, calendar events and alike, the application bears strong analogies with the Smart Search function widely used by Samsung.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The variety of devices based off FP1 can differ in some of the minor points like the menu elements arrangement and the order of icons, which doesn’t make a serious difference anyway since you can always customize this aspect to your liking.

    Similar to the rest of S60 devices, the voice control feature doesn’t require getting used to the user’s voice in order to operate, you can use voice control without any preparation since the device adapts to your voice almost instantly, but you can also turn this adaptation off as well if the phone is used by a number of people. The voice control is activated by holding the right button pressed for a short period of time. The list of voice control settings tab includes five options (Modes, Mailbox, Bluetooth, Voice Recorder, Camera) but any other application can be added to the list as well.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The handset offers a few themes, it’s possible to choose a screensaver, the default option being a screen-size clock, but a text message or an animation could be used as well (each preinstalled theme has a unique associated screensaver. If you choose a custom animation, you must specify the playback time and backlighting duration, it stands to reason to specify the same value in both cases.

    Let’s now pass to the new concept of the standby mode introduced as part of the expanded set of functions found in the new model. The Home Screen is in fact a real desktop-type object, hosting application shortcuts and a number of plugins used to tweak numerous settings, IP telephony preferences, the voice mail options, e-mail specifications and so on. Once you do your changes to a pluging’s settings, it’s minimized; also the same can be achieved manually by pressing the delete button once while working with the plugin menu. The menu button was re-christened and is now called Home Screen, every time you press it the new desktop pops up instead of the habitual main menu as it used to be. Nevertheless that’s a very handy approach to controlling your phone, and most upcoming solutions are very likely to adopt this trend as well.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Call service



    The contact book is among the most powerful features of S60-based smartphones. Almost no difference can be observed on this front as compared to earlier versions. Some slight changes in the information field layout and visual effects are the only thing that makes a difference in this FP1-based firmware. The number of contact records is only limited to the amount of free user memory, which is quite typical of almost every smartphone. There are three types of fields for phone numbers, video calls, IP-phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail address, web address, mail addresses and a single type of field for pager number, first and last name, note and date. Only one Name/Last name and Birthday record can be set per contact, but the rest of the fields can be ‘cloned’ as many times as you wish, besides i.e. you can both delete fields which appear as unnecessary and create new ones. The length limit of a field is 50 symbols. The mail address field includes seven subfields. The Symbian’s field renaming feature is quite expectedly included in the phonebook service. Not only the phone number, but as well the e-mail address, video call number, SMS, MMS and PPT contacts can be set as standard. The PhotoID service stays same with previous versions, so you might want to look for a 3rd party application since Nokia sticks to their purposely limiting this functionality. The very word ‘thumbnail’ is just enough to ascribe the deal. A contact can be associated with a VideoID clip that would play every time this person calls you over the phone. The priority is given to the VideoID should a contact have both a picture and a video associated. The ringtone will be completely replaced with the video soundtrack, which to some would appear annoying. Only .mp4 files can be used by the VideoID function.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    There are three options for listing contacts:

  • Last Name First Name
  • Last Name, First Name
  • First Name Last Name


  • Quite, accordingly the phonebook search can be performed not only by a single field, the search phrase length limit is 40 symbols. A dedicated tab lists the user groups, switching between the tabs is done by pressing the navigation button left and right, each of the groups can be specified a unique ringtone.

    The integrated speech synthesizer can pronounce the name of the person who are calling you. First a ringtone is played once, then the name is pronounced and the ringtone follows again in an endless loop. The only thing you need to use it is to activate it. The same synthesizer is used for voice dialing - so you don’t have to leave voice marks, only the contact name needs to be spoken out for the dialing to start. The accuracy of recognition is rather high, in most cases it works without any need to repeat things twice. However in a very noisy environment you might happen to be forced to. There’s nothing much special about the quick dialing option.

    The call logs are organized just as in the previous versions: Incoming, Dialed and Missed calls are displayed on the three respective lists, no uniform list comprising the three kinds is available, unfortunately. Switching between the lists is done by pressing the navigation button sideways. The maximum period of time for which call information can be stored is one month, which can be further customized to ten or one day. A number of filters can be applied to the call log, each call event can be viewed separately with all the detailed information.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Messaging



    The phone supports SMS, MMS and E-mail functionality. Nothing really remarkable is seen on this front: just the usual set of functions necessary for everyone like templates, t9, drafts, saving messages to the memory card (supported both for SMS and MMS). The text input is done in the quite traditional manner, switching between languages is done in the context menu, the # serves for the rest of the functions of the missing Edit button – caps lock, num lock, copy and paste.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Switching between received, sent and other kinds of messages is done by pressing the joystick or the navigation button sideways, it’s quite comfortable and eliminates the necessity to get back to the messages menu every time now and again, the tabs representing each category of messages are shown in a row at the top of the screen. Messages can be sorted by date, sender, subject and the type of the message itself. You can move messages between folders and create an unlimited number of custom folder inside the My Folder directory.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The delivery notes are stored separately, they can be discarded both one by one or by the whole stock. The user can specify if they want the delivery notes to be sent both for MMS and SMS messages or any one of the two kinds.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The MMS service is comfortable, the maximum message size is limited to 300 Kb, an image, an audio clip (talk record) and a video clip can be attached to the message. MMS options include the image size setting - original, small and large. The message text can either precede or follow the multimedia content. The address field isn’t just limited to a single line of text, it also optionally contains the Subject or Carbon Copy fields.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Upon creating an MMS message the context menu offers to compose a slide show. Should the user agree, a total of four templates are displayed - Image (image slides), Video (video snapshot slides, Thumbnails (pairs of two), and Headers (each slide is shown with a text header). The templates are easy to handle, allowing for creation of impressive animated messages.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The e-mail client supports the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 protocols. Upon creating a new mailbox a special wizard is launched, automating the process to the point where it becomes totally easy even for an inexperienced user. Some of the fields are filled autmatically, tips are displayed during each step, the only thing that is directly required from the user is to specify the mailbox and server type.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Scheduled e-mail checks are supported, three modes for downloading mail to the smartphone are available: headers only, full messages or full messages with attachments. The volume of downloaded information can also be limited to a specified number of incoming messages, or alternatively, all of them can be downloaded upon every e-mail check.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Voice messaging is supported: the text field is substituted with a large icon, the activation of which will bring up the voice recorder interface and the recording begins immediately. After recording the message, the maximum length of which is limited to two and a half minutes, the icon changes its looks. If you want to record the message again, you can delete the previously recorded one from the message by pressing the C button.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The incoming messages can be read aloud by the integrated speech synthesizer. The implementation isn’t too good, it’s inferior in quality as compared to Nokia 5500 sport, the controls are somewhat awkward. The speech volume is adjustable, ranging from 1 to 10. The only preinstalled voice is Ellen, an AI English speaker, surprisingly no other languages are supported. Also there’s no way to specify a folder for the system to read messages from, in other words the phone only recognizes the Incoming folder but won’t let to choose the e-mail folder which otherwise would be great. Unfortunately, copying e-mail messages to the Incoming folder doesn’t improve the situation – the application only recognizes text messages. But the biggest minus is the lack of an automatic or quick launch option for the speech synthesizer, in other words you have to go though a few menus every time you want to use that functionality. So with the N81 handset it’s easier to read a message than listen to it.

    PIM



    The personal information manager comprises a number of applications including: Measures and Currencies Converter, Notes, Voice Recorder and Calculator. The converter and calculator are quite standard applications found on many phones based off the same platform: the convertor acts in full accordance with its name, converting a selected currency or measure into another kind, the calculator is very primitive and only supports the very basic arithmetic.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The alarm clock has quite a number of settings as compared to what we had with pre-FP1 devices. Besides a one-time signal, the alarm clock supports a schedule on a weekday basis, the signals can be one-time and recurring, it’s possible to set a signal to be played once a week or daily, on a specified weekday only, on workdays or on weekends. Although the application doesn’t allow to configure a signal to be played on a manually selected number of days, limiting the user to the options listed above. There’s an option to set any weekday save for Sunday as a workday. Any custom ringtone can be used for an alarm clock signal.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    The calendar supports four viewing modes: by month, week or day (hour-based schedule is available in this case), or as a task list featuring completion deadlines. Stats on the number of completed and unfinished tasks can be displayed on the screen during standby. Customizable default values include the calendar signal, the starting weekday and the default viewing mode.

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots Nokia E51 screenshots

    Nokia E51 screenshots