Nokia E51 executive phone

Business is business, so it’s no surprise that the world’s mostsuccessful mobile maker knows exactly what makes the executive phoneuser swoon. Nokia has a long track-record of producing handsets thatmay not get consumers’ pulses galloping, but which absolutely bowl overbusinesspeople.
The E51 is Nokia’s latest of these. Its design is classic Nokiaunderstatement - a slim candybar phone with an elegant metal trim andback panel adding a classy feel to the package. The metal edging isavailable in three flavours: shiny silver, black or bronze.

Nokia E51: pushing all the right buttons for businesspeople?

It’s optimised for email, supports a wide range of popular pushemail offerings, and it features VoIP voice for low-cost calling overthe internet via Wi-Fi. High-speed data connectivity is facilitated byHSDPA 3G.
While the E51 has been crafted first and foremost with businessusage in mind, with plenty of office tools and personal informationmanagement features, Nokia does acknowledge that even business userslike their multimedia distractions. The phone has an MP3 player, an FMradio, a RealPlayer video player and a two-megapixel camera on the back.
A subtle pinhead pattern etched on the back of the casing is notonly aesthetically enhancing but also helps you grip the phone whenyou're tapping away at the numberpad. The E51 is a good size, measuringa long but slim 115 x 46 x 12mm. The metal casing helps push up theweight to 100g, giving it a substantial and well-balanced feel withoutbeing pocket-saggingly bulky.

130MB of internal memory is built in for content downloads, althoughfor extending the phone’s storage capabilities you can add Micro SDcards of up to 4GB in capacity, fitting them into a slot under the rearcasing.
The E51’s Wi-Fi and HSDPA capabilities means the Nokia Web Browserdoesn’t drag its feet. You can view web pages in their normal fullscreen format, with Mini Maps helping you negotiate the pages. Pagesare completed quickly on the high-speed data connections.

Available in three flavours: shiny silver, bronze or black

The camera on the back of the E51 is a standard two-megapixelshooter that produces average quality photos. This is unlikely to be aselling point of the E51 - its user interface isn’t particularlycamera-like, with most of the limited settings options listed in simplelist format.
The camera achieves better results in bright lighting conditionsoutside, while indoors images aren’t as crisp – there’s no flash tohelp matters in low-light conditions. Video can be recorded too, thoughat a maximum 320 x 240 (QVGA) resolution, and is again fairly averagemobile phone limited quality fare.
Nokia’s figures for optimum battery life suggests up to 13 days onstandby or 4.4 hours' talk time. We managed to get around three or fourdays of standby with an average amount of usage, although this declinedwith greater use of Wi-Fi, the music player and other power-hungryfeatures. Still, intensive business users shouldn’t find battery lifean issue here.

Verdict
The E51 has all the credentials to make the grade as a high qualitybusiness phone, but it has much more appeal than simply a work-dayhandset. It has a sharp and understated design and it's straightforwardto use if you want to access key features easily.
The phone’s display isn’t going to be large enough for some users,and anyone looking for a top-end multimedia cameraphone, GPS-equippedmobile or BlackBerry-style keyboard should look elsewhere. But the E51is a cracking handset that is more sophisticated than it looks, withexcellent business-grade features.