Not everyone wants a fancy touchscreen phone and Nokia knows that. The Nokia E51 was a roaring success and its successor promises even more. Find out if we loved the Nokia E52 as much as we loved the E51 and more importantly if it’s worth upgrading to.
What we like
The E52’s thin design is complimented by a metallic-coloured casing which wouldn’t look out of place in a BMW or Jaguar. It might not have a fancy touchscreen but it feels good to use. Its large 12-key keypad is easy to type with and the E52’s screen is large enough to read text on comfortably.
Unlike its predecessor the E52 boasts a 3.5mm headphone jack which means you can listen to music using your own headphones. We downloaded the Spotify app, which is fantastic but requires a monthly subscription, and found the music quality was good enough for the commute in and out of work – not iPod good but acceptable.
Setting up our email was easy and the E52 supports Microsoft Exchange. You can set up two different homepages and add or remove various widgets, which is handy if you don’t want to see work emails on the weekend. Alternatively, you can set up your homepage to display home and work stuff in one go, which is what we did.
We don’t normally talk about battery life unless it’s incredibly bad or incredibly good and fortunately the E52’s is incredibly good. We charged it once and it lasted for around two days. During that time we listened to music, made calls and browsed the web, so the battery certainly packs a punch.
Last but not least, we found the E52’s GPS worked well with Google Maps, and HSDPA and Wi-Fi meant that we could browse the Internet very quickly at home or on the move.
What we don’t like
As much as we like the E52’s design it’s S60 3rd edition user interface is starting to show its age. Tapping in and out of menus became annoying at times and while we appreciate that not everyone wants a touchscreen phone with a fancy interface, those who do like fancy UIs will find the E52’s a bit boring.
The other issue with Symbian is that getting apps isn’t as straightforward yet as it should be. Unless you’re used to poking around the mobile web then you might find it complicated to download your favourite apps. We recommend downloading the following apps: Skype, Spotify, Opera Mini and Google Maps.
The E52’s 3.2-megapixel camera isn’t great. We took pictures indoors and outdoors and we weren’t hugely impressed with the results. Sometimes photos came out well but overall most of our pictures looked slightly out of focus.
Conclusion
We really enjoyed using the E52. It’s a solid phone with a variety a features and it looks good. The 3.5mm headphone jack alone makes it worth upgrading to if you own and love the Nokia E51. If you’re looking for standard phone with a 12-key keypad that does a little bit more than most then this is it. If you’re secretly pining for an iPhone though then avoid this phone.
Specification
| OS | Symbian |
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