Nokia E51 - Fab phone! (Nokia E51 with Contract)

Member Name: depurple2

Product:	Nokia E51 with Contract
Date:	26/08/08 (375 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice to look at, lots of features, good battery life

Disadvantages: Need Micro SD card to expand memory to decent amount.

aMy poor old phone finally went to mobile heaven, and it was time to look for a new one. I have always been a Nokia fan, but I looked at an LG phone and a Samsung before settling on the Nokia. I definitely made the right decision.

The E51 is nice to look at, and feels well made. The screen is large enough to view web pages (as long as you don't mind scrolling a bit), and the resolution is good. The screen colours are quite vivid and true to life. The buttons are easy to use, and are not so small that you keep pressing the wrong ones. The case is made of metal and so will not crack easily. The back is easier to remove than other Nokias I have had, which is good as I have had to resort to levering the back off with a fork before. The only bad thing is that the camera lense is exposed and so could get scratched easily.

The menu system is intuitive and easy to navigate through. Even I managed to find out how to work the thing without resorting to the instruction manual. If you have had a Nokia in the past it won't take you long to get used to it. The home screen displays a clock and the date, and a collection of shortcuts to the things you use most, like text messages and contacts. The phone was easy to set up as Nokia have a feature which allows you to transfer all of your contacts, etc, by bluetooth.

The phonebook function is similar to previous Nokias - there is room for lots of information about your contacts (several phone number, address, email, etc), and you can assign different ringtones to different people. This is handy because you can decide whether it's actually worth digging the phone out of your handbag just by listening.

The camera is 2 Megapixels with 4x digital zoom, which is quite basic, but it takes an adequate picture even without a flash.
The internal memory is quite poor, but you can expand it with a Micro SD card, which costs around £10 for 2Gb.

The phone has an MP3 player, but I must confess I haven't used it much (I'm the sort of person who would listen too much and then wonder why I have no battery left to make calls, so I avoid it). It also has a loudspeaker if you feel the urge to annoy everyone on public transport. Sound quality is good though, both for music and voice calls.

I have also managed to set up my email on the E51, which only took me about an hour. Anyone who isn't blonde should be able to do it in about 5 minutes. If you get stuck and are on Orange (as I am), there is a step by step guide on the Orange website - just pick your model of phone, fill in the boxes, and Orange texts all the setup stuff to your phone for you.

The E51 also comes with "Nokia PC Suite". Normally I use these sort of discs as coasters, but this one has actually proved to be rather useful. It enables you to back up all of your contacts, calendar entries, etc, to Microsoft Outlook, as well as transfer photos and MP3s using the data cable which is supplied. This is a USB cable so should fit just about all computers.

The phone has a theoretical stand by time of 13 days and talk time of 4.4 hours, although in reality I have found the stand by time less, I guess due to the fact that I actually use it occasionally. I haven't tested the talk time - I doubt I'd find a willing volunteer to listen to me for 4.4 hours, unless I perhaps tried calling Barclays "customer service" (You are 459th in the queue...).

My E51 was free with an 18 month Orange contract.

Summary: A great phone which is easy to use.