Nokia E52 review

Nokia has done very well with its E series handsets. Primarily designed for the business community they quickly gained a foothold outside that arena becoming a neat foil for the multimedia rich N series as a less blingy, less swanky but very usable alternatives.

We reckon the E series has reached a high point with the E52 which is a great example of how to make a seriously capable mobile phone and package its abilities in a well built and understated casing.

It almost defies belief that Nokia has managed to cram quite as much as it has into the frame of the Nokia E52. The phone feels very comfortable in the hand and its relatively sliver-like form means it fits into most pockets with ease. For the record, then, its vitals are as follows: 116mm tall, 49mm wide, a svelte 9.9mm thick and 98g in weight.

The metal grey coloured casing is attractive, and there’s a pattern on the aluminium backplate which adds individuality and helps with grip.

Into the front fascia Nokia has engineered the three all important elements of screen, number pad and shortcut buttons. The screen is a 2.4-inch 240x320 pixel display which is clear and bright. Its automatic rotation works well and is very useful for things like Web browsing, text reading and picture viewing where the extra width the 320 pixels provide is welcome.

Side buttons comprise a fairly predictable set. On the right there’s a camera button, combi volume and camera zoom buttons and mute/push to talk button. On the left there’s a microUSB slot for charging and PC connection.

And, on the top edge, joy of joys, there is a 3.5mm headset slot. The provided headset is one piece which is a bit annoying as you can’t use a favourite set and keep the handsfree mike intact, but at least you can use a top-notch headset with the phone to improve music quality.

There’s a microSD card slot under the backplate on the right side, and this can be used to boost the 60MB of internal memory. A 1GB card is provided but the phone supports cards up to 16GB in size.

The number pad comprises large, well defined keys which have a good return. We found fast texting was no problem. The markings on the number keys – and the other front keys – don’t stand out too well against their grey background, and those with poorer eyesight might find that a negative factor. Try before you buy.

Between screen and keyboard the obligatory navigation pad is large and its well raised rim easy to hit. Call and End keys and softmenu keys are flush to their surrounds, and raised between them are left and right rockers which take you home and to the calendar on the left side, to messaging and back on the right side.

On the features front there is little that is left out. This is a HSDPA handset which can boast download speed to 10.2Mbs. There’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. The software is S60 3rd Edition and its goodies are plentiful. There’s an FM radio as well as access to the Nokia Music store. Ovi Maps (formerly Nokia Maps) and Landmarks give you something to use with the GPS out of the box.

There is also a good range of ‘office’ applications for those mobile professionals, including QuickOffice for creating Word, Excel and PowerPoint presentations, and a PDF reader. Of course, if you are really into creating documents then you might look for a smartphone with a sliding QWERTY keyboard, but for those moments when you just have to write something, the setup here works well enough.

A real plus is the dual home screens system. You can set up two different home screens, with different wallpapers and shortcuts and then switch between them using a tool that is always present on the applications shortcuts screen. This gives you a very easy way to move quickly between work and non-work modes, escaping the professional look for something more funky.

There is a front camera for two way video calls. The main camera shoots at 3.2 megapixels which isn’t exactly up there with the best of them in specs terms. But image quality is good.

For all these goodies one of the best things about the E52 has to be its battery life. Nokia says you should get 8 hours of talktime, 12 days on standby, and 18 hours of music playback. We don’t know what went wrong – or right – with our testing, but we got more than 26 hours of music playback from our continuous test.

Overall, then, the E52 has to be our favourite E series handset to date. Nokia has crammed the goodies in, come up with a strong and ergonomic physical design, and apparently surpassed even its own battery life claim.