Nokia E55 smartphone

The Nokia E55 is actually one of a pair of very similar handsets simultaneously released by Nokia. Its brother is the E52, which is pretty much the same, except that it has a standard numeric keypad rather than the E55's SureType-style Qwerty keypad with two letters assigned to each key. That aside, both phones come with Wi-Fi, …

[Sulphur Man]

Dodgy comparison

"Nokia is claiming that the E55 is the world's thinnest smart phone, which, much like world-class sprinting, is a contest that is increasingly based on very small margins."

Are you aware of young Jamaican sprinter, name of Bolt? If not, how is Neptune this time of year?

[Marc Spillman]

Enough of this teasing

When are we going to see a review of the E72, I've been holding out for this handset for ages but it never seems any nearer to coming out :(

[Magnus Ramage]

But it can't be a smartphone!

It's not an iPhone, Android device or Palm Pre. Those, to hear much of the media just now, seem to be the only smartphone options (occasionally also Windows Mobile). Symbian doesn't seem to register. I really don't know why - it's a much more mature smartphone OS than any of the others, and of course has a very solid heritage back to EPOC. Just bought my first Symbian phone and seeing those .SIS installation files makes me very nostalgic. I guess Symbian is a purely European operation, so maybe the Americans don't notice it?

[Bad Beaver]

Where's the meat?!

Guys, for real.

When you tell me "the supplied earbuds are crap", tell me whether the phone can amply drive proper alternatives.

When you tell me "the buttons could be better", tell me whether the hardware is up to snuff compared to the excellent E51. Rumor has it the E52 utterly sucks in terms of hardware and call quality when compared to its predecessor – so what about the E55?

When you tell me "has lots of data slots in contacts", tell me wheter it properly syncs them. Especially whether it syncs different categories / calendars / groups with OS X apps. It's a business device, that stuff is important.

It's a Nokia E, I expect it to work in a halfway decent way. What I need in a good review is a level of fine detail that I could otherwise only acquire by actually buying one. So don't waste a page showing us that the camera sucks (E series! Nobody really cares!) but get more bloody facts on the table!

[zanto]

E series

nokia had a winner with the e71. Apart from them forgetting about timed profiles. Does this phone have it?

[Anonymous Coward]

E55

I bought this a week ago and it is fantastic (previously a E51 user). The call quality is brilliant, but I haven't had the chance to use it in crowded noisy places like Oxford Street yet. Used PC Suite to sync my Outlook data with it - no problem despite having hundreds of contacts. Nothing seems to be out of sync.

The keypad is briliant. Took me less than a couple of hours to get used to it. By the next day I am already typing faster in comparison to a normal T9 keypad.

Screen is clear and readable. QVGA is a disappointment, but S60v3 is pretty good at taking advantage of the small screen in comparison to my old Win Mob phone.

Built quality is excellent as usual, though it is still a clear downgrade compared to the stainless steel equipped E51/E71. Personally I wouldn't mind a thicker/heavier phone if it has stainless steel. So clearly not as indestructable as the E51, but still better than 99% of phones out there.

Camera is ok, but couldn't care about it much. Would have been great if it has macro mode. Taking pictures of documents and business cards would have been easier that way.

The phone is also incredibly fast. The processor may be based on an outdated technology, but it doesn't show here. The E51 was already a quick phone, but can slow down in certain areas like multimedia and web browsing, but here everything is quick thanks to FP2 and the 600Mhz processor. Web browsing is a delight and opening Maps 3.0 is near instantanious. No slowdowns in other apps like Viewranger and gallery.

Battery life is great too. About an hour of talktime, an hour of WiFi, couple of tens of SMS and e-mails and two hours of music playback a day and the battery indicator only dropped by a bar.

If there is a downside to the E55, is that the E72 will be out next month. Advice is to wait until the first price drop as I do not think it is worth £275, especially when the E72 will retail for a bargain £330.

[The Original Ash]

Title

Can it handle more than 200 messages stored before it grinds to a halt?

I don't need an answer. My E51 was enough of a reminder to put me off Nokia. Was a fantastic phone apart from that, though.

[Duncan Blyth]

M600

After getting an LG viewty, I went back to my se m600 because my bumbling thumbs couldn't input accurately enough for the touchscreen. I can't believe it has taken this long for another phone that is sympathetic to the big thumb brigade with the two letter/key qwerty.

When will the likes of blackberry and hp learn that not everyone can carry a child around with them to type texts?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Original Ash

Bizarre. I have an E51 with more than 2000 texts sorted in various folders and 1000 in the sent folder. It is speedy as when I first got it (accessing the folders is a bit slower, but no problems with inbox, creating messages, and definitely does not slow down the entire phone). And I am still using the original v100 firmware on it! (can't be bothered to update since I never had a problem with it)

[Bill Fresher]

Good phone

I bought one of these.

I used to have an E66 which I thought was great but this is much better... it fixes all the things that bugged me about the E66:

1) it's slimmer and quite a bit lighter.

2) it has a normal headphone socket.

3) with light/moderate usage the battery easily lasts 4 days.. compared to 2 for the E66.

4) it's faster.

5) you can set the snooze interval for the alarm.

6) the keypad is great.. takes no time to get used to and hugely increases text input speed.

7) GPS now comes with a compass.

There are other bits and pieces I've come across that are an improvement but I can't remember them and can't be bothered to spend time thinking.

[TheRealRoland]

Re: keyboard needs getting used to, but after extensive use...

So is eating razorblades; once you get beyond the pain and a bit of blood loss, it's probably all right...

One of the commenters before me is right; we need numbers, data, information, not stuff like 'lots of contacts', etc.

[Mark Serlin]

Adequate Pictures

and interestingly the reviewer seems to live in the same street as me :)

[batfastad]

Delighted to see

Phones are still being made that aren't completely reliant on touchscreens. Keep 'em coming, we're not all iTards!