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Nokia E51 Unlocked Phone with 2 MP Camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, MP3/Video Player, and MicroSD Slot--U.S. Version with Warranty (Black Steel)
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Average customer review:
Product Description
Nokia E51 Black. Works with AT&T and T Mobile service only. Thin design loaded with features to help balance your business and leisure time Access your email while on the go with support for most leading corporate and personal email applications Browse the web and email with high speed 3G, HSDPA, or WLAN connection Make lower cost voice calls over the internet with the built-in WLAN Stay connected to the people and information you need with a long battery life and large internal memory
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #9572 in Cell Phone Accessories
- Color: Slv/Blk
- Brand: Nokia
- Model: 002C9N1
- Released on: 2008-01-01
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: .47" h x 1.18" w x 4.49" l, 1.20 pounds
Features
- This unlocked cell phone is compatible with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. Not all carrier features may be supported. It will not work with CDMA carriers like Verizon Wireless, Alltel and Sprint.
- Quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and 3G compatibility via 850/2100 HSDPA plus EDGE capabilities
- Stylish, business-oriented stainless steel phone with access to personal and corporate email, document viewing, push-to-talk capability (network dependent)
- Wi-Fi networking; 2-megapixel camera/camcorder; MicroSD expansion (up to 4 GB); Bluetooth stereo music
- Up to 4.4 hours of talk time and 312 hours of standby time
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Product Description
Ideal for business-savvy globetrotters who require a full range of smartphone capabilities, broadband connectivity, and real-time access to your contacts, the stylish Nokia E51 brings it all together. This quad-band GSM/EDGE phone is also ready to run on 850 MHz/2100 MHz UMTS/HSDPA 3G networks (found in Europe, Australia and Asia), enabling fast downloads and streaming multimedia while on the go. It also includes integrated Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11b/g) for accessing open networks at work, at home, and on the road from a variety of wireless hotspots.
The candybar-style E51 is nicely slim at less than half-an-inch thin, and it features a large 2-inch LCD with support for 16.7 million colors for excellent depth. It's based on S60 software operating on the Symbian OS, enabling you to personalize the E51 by choosing from a wide choice of compatible applications that can be downloaded--including games, navigation, entertainment, and productivity titles. Other features include a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity for both communication headsets and stereo music streaming, MicroSD expansion, MP3 player, FM radio, and up to 4.4 hours of talk time.
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 The slim Nokia E51 is loaded with features to help balance your business and leisure time. |
Phone Features
The thin, stainless steel E51 has a 2-inch QVGA display (240 x 320 pixels) with an amazing depth of 16.7 million colors. It includes an ambient light sensor and an LED light indicator that can be customized to let you know of missed calls or incoming emails and text messages. It has a standard numeric keypad as well as several One Touch keys that provide direct access to functions, including email, Bluetooth, and the Home screen.
Getting on the Internet is easy with the E65, thanks to its EDGE data connectivity (and compatibility with 850/2100 MHz 3G networks). The integrated Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11b/g) enables you to make VoIP phone calls over an open network, and it offers a variety of security settings (WPA2-Enterprise, WPA2-Personal, WPA-Enterprise, WPA-Personal). When used with a carrier data plan and the phone's USB or Bluetooth data capability, the phone can also be used as a wireless modem for laptops and PDAs.
This phone provides Bluetooth version 2.0 wireless connectivity with EDR (enhanced data rate), and includes profiles for communication headset, handsfree car kits, and audio/video remote control. With the A2DP Bluetooth profile, you can stream your music to a pair of compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones.
The E51 can also access mobile Internet telephony (Voice over IP, or VoIP) from homes and hotspots. For example, the downloadable Gizmo application enables you to make and receive inexpensive calls from your mobile phones and chat or talk with friends who are online.
This business-savvy Nokia E-series phone offers integration with a wide range of business email solutions, including Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email and Mail for Exchange to communicate with Microsoft Exchange Server. It's also compatible with POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP email accounts and provides the ability to view attachments. The dedicated Email key on the front cover, indicator light for new email, and a preview window to the latest email on the home screen will help you keep up with email when on the move. It also features SMS text and MMS multimedia messaging, as well as instant messaging capabilities via AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN.
Powered by the S60 3.1 Edition operating system, the E51 comes with the Nokia Office Tools 2.0 application bundle, which includes Nokia Team Suite, In-device Search, Quickoffice, Macromedia PDF reader, Zip manager, File manager, and Active Notes. The Nokia Team Suite provides easy to use UI for organizing and facilitating group conference calls, email messages, or text messages, while Quickoffice provides viewers for Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint documents. The in-device Search enables user to easily find data in device. For example, messages, email calendar data, and contacts can be searched easily via this application. And Active Notes enable you to create notes containing rich text and multimedia items (e.g. pictures, voice clips, video clips). Notes can be synchronized to PC and browsed there via any XHTML compatible web browser.
The 2-megapixel camera on the back has a 4x digital zoom, and it can also capture videos at up to 320 x 240 pixels and at 15 frames per second (fps). Video clip length depends on available memory. The phone has an integrated digital audio player, and the phone is compatible with real-music ringtones in a variety of formats (MP3, MPEG-4, AAC, eAAC+, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB). You can listen to your favorite radio programs via the integrated FM radio, and the Visual Radio feature lets you see information about songs or artists. Other features include:
- 130 MB internal memory, expandable to 4 GB with optional MicroSD memory cards
- Enhanced Active standby for business: gives you quick access to your favorite applications and a summary of the day's activities, right from your device's main screen
- Push to talk (PTT) capabilities, speakerphone, voice recorder
- Text-to-speech feature: hear your messages read aloud to you from your device
- 2.5 mm Nokia A/V connector, mini-USB 2.0 connector
- Video streaming and playback with H.264 (MPEG-4), 3gpp, and Real codecs
- Nokia Maps application integrated into device
- Contacts, calendar and to-do list: supports PC synchronization with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes via Nokia PC Suite
- Bluetooth profiles: A2DP (stereo music streaming), AVRC (remote control), HFP (hands-free car kits), HSP (communication headsets), BIP (for sending images to another device), DUN (dial-up networking), FTP (file transfer), OPP (object push for business cards, calendar items, and pictures)
Vital Statistics
The Nokia E51 weighs 3.53 ounces and measures 4.49 x 1.81 x 0.47 inches. Its 1050 mAh lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 4.4 hours of talk time, and up to 312 hours (13 days) of digital standby time. It runs on the 850/900/1800/1900 GSM/GPRS/EDGE frequencies as well as the 850/2100 MHz 3G UMTS/HSDPA frequencies.
Customer Reviews
My Favorite Symbian Series 60 Smartphone
The E51 is sleek, built for style and productivity...a rare combination that means popularity with true merit. So I'm quite puzzled that this phone isn't being pushed as much as the N95.
It's got the right dimensions, not too heavy in the shirt pocket, feels good in my hand, the keypad has excellent touch and layout with 1-press keys for Calendar, Contacts, Email, Bluetooth (on/off) and Silent/General mode.
It's real cool that the 1-press keys for Calendar, Contacts and Email have different modes.
Short press starts the app (Calendar, Contacts, Email).
Long press starts a new record within the app (new calendar entry, new contact, new message).
I've re-assigned the 1-press key for Email to start the Messaging app, and long press starts the CryptoGraf Messaging app to encrypt my messages.
There's WLAN internet access with a proper browser. The camera, with just 2 MegaPixels, is good enough for my needs.
The screen is crystal clear and good for viewing video and images. BTW, I thought it gets scratched quite easily, but that's just the plastic screen protector. I removed the screen protector and the screen stays scratch free even after I put the phone in my trouser pocket along with my keys.
Another feature that makes the upgrade from E50 to this E51 a great idea...there's a font setting for adjusting the menu font sizes to Large, Medium, Small.
Voice call quality is quite good. The speakers are also quite good but they're awkwardly located on the back.
The volume controls on the side of the phone are not easy to use...it's quite confusing that the 'cursor key' acts as a volume control for the media player, but the voice call volume control is on the side of the phone.
The CPU is very fast at 350MHz, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, Mini USB 2.0, 2.5 mm A/V connector. The BP-6MT 1050mAh battery gives me great talk time and standy time even with liberal use of bluetooth and WLAN.
Finally, a world-class stylish phone for geeks like me
Most of the cameras today are aimed either for kids (like the chocolate), fashion conscious adults (the big hit razr), or business people (the bulky blackberry or treo).
What if i want a phone that is sleek but also loaded with all the important business tools? well the E51 was a Godsend.
This sleek phone comes with high speed 3G internet and WiFi connection. Gone are the days paying $15 to connect to the internet at airports and hotels. Simply use the mini usb cable or download a symbian based modem application and you can use your phone as your modem.
The camera is decent (2mb) and since micro sd cards are so cheap nowadays (i bought a 4gb Kingston one at Amazon for $14) you can use this phone also as a portable mp3 player (stereo ear phones included).
The best part of all though; it runs on Symbian. Download Opera mini and Google Maps (with a neat 'show current location function) and you have the capability to browse html pages and use the phone as a water down gps device.
Best feature/price ratio on the market!
After owning the device for a month now, here's my quick rundown of the positive and negative aspects of the phone.
Pros (in order of importance):
+ Excelent feature vs. price ratio. You'll be hard pressed to find another mobile device offering the same feature set, smartphone capabilities, and strong community following, for the same price. This is arguably the best bang for your buck smartphone on the market right now. After researching for quite a while before purchasing, this was a big deal-maker for me.
+ Slim, stylish, classic candybar design and quality construction. The phone feels sturdy and the noticeable weight provides confidence it's not going to break if you happen to drop it accidentally (I can personally attest to this).
+ High-quality screen. Sure, it's a bit on the small size compared to other Nokia offerings, but the QVGA resolution and 16M color display more than make up for it. You'll have a hard time watching full-length movies on it because of the size, but the pictures really look great and the UI is a pleasure to look at, especially with your choice of 3rd-party themes.
+ Excelent performance. Plenty of CPU power and RAM to run several resource intensive games and application, at the same time.
+ Symbian OS 9.2. This is a tried and tested smartphone OS. You just can't beat the huge application library available on the platform. Coupled with the performance bit above, the OS just flies through anything you run. Very responsive and stable.
Now, onto to the negatives.
Cons (in order of annoyance):
- Weak battery. If you plan on using any of the features aside plain voice calls, get used to carrying the charger with you at all times. The battery is seriously underpowered, and a few hours worth of WiFi (for VoIP calls and light web browsing) on a full charge will last you--at most--24 hours. And don't even think about turning on Bluetooth for your wireless headset, since it will drain a full charged battery in about 5 hours--no joke. This is really a shame and it's one of the most frustrating aspects of the phone.
- Application certificate: mandatory. The S60 3rd Edition Symbian OS makes a requisite that all installed applications must be signed with a proper certificate. This reduces the amount of software you can install on the phone by a large amount, since most freeware or small apps you might run into are usually unsigned. The only way I have found to remove this "feature" is to effectively hack your phone, with the risk of corrupting your system. Thankfully, all went well and I'm able to install all I want now, but this security measure is simply too restrictive for the end user. If you want to take advantage of the best aspect Symbian has going for it, get ready to perform this procedure.
- Bugs in the current firmware. Although Nokia regularly updates the firmware of most of its lineup, it has recently set all their efforts on their flagship N series devices. The latest E51 firmware (200.34.36) was released on April 24, 2008, and has some major issues with the SIP client and browser, yet no update is in near sight.
=== Added on 2008-12-26 ===
- I forgot to mention the very annoying case of the side buttons (volume, mute, power, PTT). They're EXTREMELY hard to press. You literally have to hold the phone firmly with one hand, while you push forcefully on a button with your other hand. It also helps if you have long nails to dig into the buttons. Not sure why Nokia decided to have them so difficult to press.
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- The following are not so much of an annoyance, as me nitpicking. The only feature missing from the phone that's not a gimmick (touchscreen, accelerometer, etc.) and would come in handy, especially in business oriented devices like the E series, is A-GPS. But since this would certainly drive the price way up, I think it compensates quite well despite not having this feature. The other feature gripes, like no flash or autofocus on camera, would really be pushing it, since this is not a camera phone, but it's still worth mentioning. One other small thing, is that the phone gets considerably warm during prolonged usage (15min+), be it WiFi, voice calls, video playback, etc. You can still hold it in your hand just fine, but I got worried the first time I noticed it. It's no big deal, really, once you get used to it.
In summary, the one thing that soures up the experience of using this phone is the battery. For that fact, I'll have to give it 4/5 stars, but I'm completely satisfied with my purchase, and will surely consider another Nokia smartphone in the future.
