The Nokia E5 Review: A Cheaper E72
by Mithun Chandrasekhar on November 30, 2010 2:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- E5
- Mobile
But something has gotta give, right? Something has - and sadly, it is the screen. Coming in at a shade less than 2.4 inches (2.36” to be exact), it is without a doubt small. Packing a low 320 x 240 resolution, this QVGA landscape is a thorough disappointment.
The screen is actually the biggest reason why I feel the E5 is not a true successor to the E72. While the latter packed a similarly small display, it was much more vibrant and readable both indoors and outside. Although the E5’s screen is usable indoors, it looks washed out; under sunlight, it is about as unusable as some OLED displays. Turning the brightness all the way up helps a bit, but having to do so every time you step outside doesn’t make sense. This is probably because the E5 has a cheaper transmissive-type LCD instead of the transflective LCDs seen in higher-end Nokia devices like the E72. As a result, the E5 tends to get washed out in direct sunlight. The E5 comes equipped with an ambient light sensor that seems to do its job well enough, except in the sun. For some reason it doesn’t max out the brightness outdoors, which would otherwise alleviate some of the display's outdoor use issues.
Camera
Moving on, we have the 5 megapixel, non-auto focus camera and LED flash on the back of the E5. It is not particularly good at anything more than candid shots in well-lit surroundings.
Although the LED flash is reasonably powerful, pictures taken in anything but perfect lighting are grainy and lack detail. The E5 does have Nokia’s Extended Depth of Field feature and it’s a nifty feature as it makes sure both the foreground and background are always in focus, thereby “eliminating” focus time. The 2592 x 1944 images are on an average about 1.5MB which means they are quite heavily compressed.
If only it had better optics to make better use of the feature. The video recording part of the phone is even worse; it can only shoot VGA/15 fps video at best. But considering the fact that this phone is targeted at the business crowd, the mediocre-at-best camera should not count against the phone.
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digitalw - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
when picking the right phone for you, it is not to begin with the OS and CPU speed, your needs are first then pick the phone that match them :)Akdor 1154 - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Very nice for a first review. :)A couple of thoughts - 1: On my E55, and every other S60 device I've used, clicking the centre button while in the contact number field of a new SMS will open the contact list, which can be searched by typing the contact's name. Does the E5 remove this behaviour?
2: Have they fixed the bloody email system to use Destinations instead of Access Points? This is a huge irk for me as it means I have to constantly change settings to have email come over wifi. To make things more confusing, currently "onboard" email accounts CAN use destinations, however Nokia Messaging accounts (i.e. Push email) cannot; they need to be set to a distinct access point.
mythun.chandra - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
1. You are correct on this. Looks like the functionality exists, but just isn't as straightforward. Thanks for pointing it out! :)2. Nope, it's still the same old frustrating "Access Points". However, it does come with an app called "SmartConnect" installed that let's you group multiple AP's into one AP. So you can group all your frequently used WiFi AP's under one heading and use that instead. Clunky, but it works! :)
YukaKun - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
It's been a great review as usual, but I'd like to make a point when you state "build quality". Who has forgotten his phone over the rooftop of the car, dropped it by accident or just throw it away by mere anger?The only phone I've seen survive almost every adversity from clumsy use are Nokia's. Hell, I even got a story from a friend who threw his like 20 or 30 mts to the next-next house into a concrete wall and survived with a scratch (the good old 5120, lol). I doubt these will do the same, but I'd like to strengthen the point in "build quality" here. Nokia deserves a 5 star rating in that department, but it's not just about "details" on the final build, but endurance also comes into account.
I'd love to see some sort of metric into that :P
Cheers!
PS: First post @AT, yay!
craig0ry - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
I disagree. The older "dumbphone" Nokias like the 5120 are indestructable. My N95 held up worse than my BlackBerry. While it never "broke", all it took was one or two drops on the pavement and the exterior looked like I'd kept it in a blender.calyth - Friday, December 3, 2010 - link
I agree. My N82 didn't fare any better, and I didn't drop it. However, my Bold 9000 held up alright after a few drops, and my Bold2 9700 looks just like I bought it (and fumbles here have dropped that one too).Nokia's build quality has been circling the drain for quite a while. It's even more apparent with their feature phones.
jisakujien - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Thank you, great review. It's too bad you didn't look at Exchange functionality though -- it's pretty important for a lot of business users, and many smartphones (in my experience) have iffy Exchange support. You could have downloaded a 120-day trial of Exchange Server 2010 and had it installed in a VM in a few hours. It's actually pretty easy to install and configure (especially compared to stuff like sendmail!).mythun.chandra - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Good point. I will try to include this in future reviews with devices support MS Exchange :)Scholzpdx - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Isn't there a native Opera Mini 5.2 for Symbian? Opera Mobile 10 hangs like crazy on my Blackjack 2, but Opera Mini makes my browsing on the Blackjack 2 almost as good as my Fiance's Iphone.As I can tell, this Phone is pretty similar in speed (hardware spec) to the old Blackjack 2, so using Opera Mini 5 would drastically change that part of the review.
mythun.chandra - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Actually if I'm not mistaken, Opera Mobile is for smartphones while Mini is for java-only phones. Plus, installing Mini would have skewed the results/experience because in case of Mini, the actual rendering engine in on the Opera servers, not in the phone itself (unlike Opera Mobile).But I didn't have any issues with Opera Mobile. It worked fine by itself... :)