Nokia E55 (5)

Hardware
Physical Features

Looking over the basic specifications, the E55 offers the following selling points in a body that is 48mm wide, 117mm long and a mere 10mm thick, with a feather-weight mass of 98 grams:
2.4″ 240×320 (QVGA) transflective LCD screen
Powered by the 1500mAh BP-4L battery
120MB RAM
60MB C: drive
3.2 megapixel Extended Depth of Field (EDoF) camera with LED Flash
Quad band GSM, GPRS, & HSPDA (“3.5G”).
Bluetooth 2.0
Wireless LAN 802.11b & 802.11g
FM Receiver
Assisted GPS & Digital Compass
Accelerometer
USB 2.0
3.5mm headphone socket

The design of the E55 can been seen as an evolution of previous Eseries candy bar phones. Comparing it to the E51, we can see that while the thickness and volume have decreased , Nokia have maximised the front area, allowing for a larger screen.

Design

Overall, the E55 has a very clean design with very little in the way of surface breaks. The right side has four buttons: the dedicated camera button, along with the volume keys, which flank an extra button that triggers voice control mode. I would have liked the voice control button to be reprogrammable, but it does act as a mute button during calls. The left side is blank, apart from an inconspicuous Micro USB socket for data and charging. The base just has two small holes, one for the microphone and one for attaching a lanyard. The top has a small power button and a 3.5mm headphone socket. After eight months of regular use, the power key has yet to fail, but has developed a disconcerting tilt when pressed off-centre.

Compared to the E51, the E55’s lack of coloured call and soft keys serves to give an understated look. It thus wouldn’t look out of place slipping into the pocket of a pinstripe suit, as befitting its Eseries classification.

Protruding between the soft key and call key rows are the shortcut keys. These are four buttons made to look like two, thanks to see-saw like covers. The first see-saw button consists of the ‘Home’ key and the Calendar button, the second has the E-mail/Messaging and Delete key. The first three of these have dual functions for long and short presses. The ‘Home’ key is set to having a short press sending you to the home screen, and a long press launches the application switcher. By default, a short press of the Calendar or E-mail keys launches their respective applications, and a long press respectively creates a new calendar item or e-mail; but these four inputs are reprogrammable. There are less shortcut keys here than on the older E51, but it doesn’t take long to appreciate having less button assignments to remember!

The D-pad and battery cover are made of coloured anodised Aluminium; clearly a test case for future phones, such as the N8. This is far more durable than coated plastic, e.g. as found on the E51 D-pad. In contrast, the E55’s D-pad doesn’t look at all tarnished after 8 months of use.

The back of the E55 is equally blank. Most of the space is taken up by the textured Aluminium battery cover, which is also anodised and coloured. Above the battery cover is a plastic housing for the EDoF camera and loud speaker. Albeit mono, the E55’s speaker is great. It has a surprisingly good bass response, and is loud enough to fill a small room.

Battery

The E55 runs on Nokia’s massive BP-4L battery. With the E55, my tests have shown that it will last for a full 24 hours under heavy usage, up to 56 hours with moderate usage, and around 3 days on very light usage. It’s a refreshing change to be thinking about battery life in terms of days, rather than hours! Removing the battery shows just how tightly packed the E55’s technology is.

Screen

The E55’s 2.4″ QVGA screen is transflective, a technology which has been discussed many times on All About Symbian, although the benefit bears repeating. A disadvantage of touch screen phones is poor visibility while outdoors. However, with the non-touch E55, and similarly equipped Eseries phones, you will always be able to read the screen, whatever the conditions. The photos below were taken with sunlight directly on the E55’s screen.

Half-QWERTY Keyboard

The most notable physical feature of the E55 is of course its 20-button “Half QWERTY” keyboard. This is a novelty for Nokia, but it has already been done with the Blackberry Pearl range. The keyboard design should not be confused with Sony Ericsson’s M600i and P1i, with which letters were accessed by physically pressing either side of each key. Instead, typing with the E55 is achieved by either predictive text, or multi-tap.

Overall, typing on the E55 works well. I had early hopes that it would be possible to type faster than with 12-button T9 keypads. However, when using predictive text, with one or two thumbs, in practised hands the E51’s T9 style keyboard can achieve as many words per minute. However, while it seems that predictive text typing on the E55 is no faster than a T9 phone, typing is more comfortable.

When the E55 was first released, there were complaints about typing punctuation marks. Unfortunately, after three firmware updates, this hasn’t changed. Each key has letters printed along the bottom, and a symbol or number printed on the top, which is accessed via the symbol-shift key (bottom left). The symbol menu key (“Sym”) has “*” and “+” as its extra symbols. Those symbols are typed by pressing the symbol-shift key followed by one or two presses on “Sym”. However, the full stop key has four symbols but does not behave in the same multi-tap manner. Instead, whether in predictive or multi-tap mode, the user has to cycle through each character until the desired one is found. This is a speed bump to typing, and the inconsistent behaviour is a significant barrier to learning to type on the E55.

Camera

The E55 uses a 3.2 megapixel Extended Depth of Field (EDoF) camera, instead of an auto-focus or fixed-focus lens. This is a new technology for mobile phones, but judging by the next generation of S60 phones (e.g. the E5) Nokia looks set to replace traditional fixed focus camera modules with this. Steve has already explained how EDoF works, but I’ll summarise it here for reference. The camera (effectively) has three (slightly different) fixed focal points for red, green, and blue light. Once the image data is read from the sensor, the software breaks the image up into sections and judges which colour delivered the sharpest image for each section. It then uses that colour data to define the image segment, and data from the remaining two colours to provide colouration. By performing this process on small segments across the whole image, it is possible to have both background and foreground objects in focus at the same time, from a metre away to infinity.

There is a single LED flash with the E55’s camera and while it’s better than nothing, even dual LEDs don’t cut it in low light conditions. What’s more, there’s no torch feature (as on the E63)! (If you want to use the LED as a torch, you end up having to record a Blair Witch style video!)

The camera’s user interface has two main elements. First is a status bar showing remaining battery life, remaining memory card capacity and GPS status (for geo-tagging). The other element is a vertical toolbar along the right. The still image mode has so many image adjustment tools, you have the option of customising the toolbar to show as many, or as few, items as you want.

Using the still image adjustments wisely can yield impressive results. For example, in the image below, the contrast difference between the night-time surroundings and bright screen was washing out all of the detail in the error box I wanted to photograph. Adjusting the exposure compensation allowed me to properly capture the black on grey text.

In addition to video and still mode, the E55 has a panoramic mode, with a helpful user interface for lining up each shot. Here’s an example of what you can achieve, and a demonstration of near and far focus:

The EDoF technology can achieve surprisingly good results. However, because it relies so heavily on image processing, some fine detail can look a little over-processed. You can judge for yourself with the two examples below: each image has been scaled down (but is a link to the original image) and then followed by a 1:1 scale cropped section of the same image.

Example One.

Example Two.

Video capture on the E55 isn’t spectacular, but measuring 640×480 pixels at 15 frames per second, it will do for the likes of YouTube.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Revisiting_the_Nokia_E55.php 

Nokia E55 (3)

In a nutshell, the E55 is the thinnest, lightest S60 smartphone in Nokia’s current lineup and manages to acquit itself well in almost all areas. At under 10mm thick, 54cc and 98g, the specifications are astonishing.

The E55 shown on top of the E75 (a QWERTY slider)

Tri band 3G, quad band GSM, Wi-Fi, A-GPS plus magnetometer, Bluetooth, 3.5mm audio and a cutting edge EDoF camera, are all impressive enough, but consider the fact that about half the E55’s meagre bulk is the juggernaut BP-4L battery that normally powers the likes of the E90, E61i and E71 and the miniaturisation is even more staggering. Then notice that the main keypad is qwerty, not numeric. Gulp.

Putting all this into perspective, you’ve got something with most of the power and functions of the huge E90 in a tiny form factor that’s just over a third the volume. As you might have noticed from the superlatives, it’s hard not to be blown away the first time you pick up the Nokia E55, but there are also quite a few downsides and there’s also plenty worth discussing and testing, not least the keyboard and one of the first EDoF cameras in Nokia’s smartphone range.

The E55’s styling follows that of the E51 and E71 before it, though with slightly less metal in the construction: you do get a metal battery cover and brushed aluminium fascia around the control keys, but much of the rest is plastic. The result still feels solid in the hand and you’ll enjoy the feel very much on account of the aforementioned thinness, the ‘interesting’ texture on the battery cover and the uniquely textured d-pad.

Working around the E55:
There’s a basic camera shutter button on the right hand side, along with volume/zoom/voice command keys

There’s a power button (nice to see this separate and not built-into the ‘hang up’ key) and 3.5mm audio jack on the top

There’s a microUSB port extremely neatly recessed (I missed it at first!) on the left. And yes, as with all Nokia’s latest, charging is also via microUSB, whether from the supplied mains charger or via data lead from a desktop.

There’s a microSD slot too, but this is concealed by the battery cover – not a bad design decision as this keeps the sides of the device cleaner and stops dust or damage to the card.

In terms of software, the E55 is very recognisably S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, the package is very similar to that in the familiar E75, though in the intervening months Nokia has upgraded its Webkit-based browser: v7.1, here is much faster and has a more streamlined interface (though still no way to copy text from a page or open a new window – sigh). The new Eseries PIM apps have been optimised, Nokia Maps has become Ovi Maps 3.0 (complete with lifetime pedestrian navigation – and 10 day ‘drive’ trial) and ‘Home media’ has appeared, to provide UPnP functionality. Oh yes, and Nokia’s Eseries team has licensed a whole bundle of third party software, of which more later.

On the downside, and quite inexplicably, both Podcasting and Internet Radio are conspicuous by their absence – I can only think that they were left out of the initial firmware because of a last minute show-stopping bug and that they’ll appear again soon. I hope so, since Podcasting is a deal breaker for yours truly. Interestingly, the review E55 arrived in a state in which Over The Air firmware updates weren’t working, but a PC Suite update later (to v21.013) got update checking working properly and we all now await the missing applications and (doubtless) the odd bug fix or two.

The biggest Unique Selling Point (USP) of the E55 is, of course, its keyboard. Squeezed into the same space as the E52 gets for its standard 12-key keypad, the keys aren’t huge. And each has to do double-duty in terms of letter assignments, in a system that Nokia calls ‘half QWERTY’ (and which RIM/Blackberry call ‘SureType’).

The idea is that you type away as normal and the predictive software in the E55 then works out what word you wanted to type based on the dual-letter keys kit. Compared to predictive text on a numeric keypad (which have 3 letters per key, of course), there are far less ‘wrong’ words suggested, which is an excellent start. Tempting though it is while typing to peer around for the next letter you want, I found it much faster to trust (iPhone-style) the software to get it right, to tune out of exactly what you’re hitting and simply type as you would on a normal QWERTY thumb keyboard. For normal prose the system works fairly well, although it’s easy to get your fingers in a muddle trying to enter words like ‘here’, which involve hitting the same key three times in a row!

However, things start to really slow down when you need names and non-English words, for which you have to toggle out of predictive mode and go into a multi-tap mode. This works as on a numeric keypad, except that here there are only two possibilities per key. Things also slow down a lot (in predictive mode) when you need to enter punctuated words like “it’s” – you enter “it” and then hit the apostrophe (a shifted character), followed by hitting the ‘AS’ key. The screen shows “it’a” (what kind of predicted word is that?) so you press the ‘AS’ key again, figuring that the word should be completed in multi-tap mode. You then have “it’as”. Frustrating. [update: after a few iterations, the system is now showing “it’s” as the first suggestion. Sanity has prevailed – thankfully]

Similarly, entering a simple comma requires grinding out five keystrokes – entering a period and then picking the alternative predictions for this one-character ‘word’ from a list – a comma is not even the first or second alternative offered! Or you can append a comma to a word, but the first suggestion is then a period and you have to do the same picking-the-comma-from-the-list thing – surely this system can be tightened up somehow?

The Help system continues to get more and more polished in S60, complete with a tutorial to guide users round the new keyboard – though it still couldn’t help me find a quick way to enter a comma in predictive mode!

In short, the predictive QWERTY system works about as well as predictive numeric keypad input overall – it’s inherently more accurate but isn’t optimised as finely yet for common input patterns (as above). As you might perhaps expect, text input speeds aren’t anywhere near those of full QWERTY keyboards (of any size) – after some practice on the E55 I managed to get to 24 words per minute on my test sentence pair. This is up to 20% faster than predictive input on a numeric keypad, but it’s not perhaps enough of an improvement to warrant the retraining necessary to move from the likes of the E51, especially when the standard keypad-equipped E52 has everything else the E55 has, but with the added advantage of familiarity.

As Rafe pointed out in his preview (link), the danger here is that the E55’s layout is just a little too different and the device may find itself being squeezed between some of its sister phones: the E52, and the E63/E71/E75, not to mention the upcoming E72. This would be something of a shame, but would be a scenario I can quite understand.

Now, onto the second USP, the EDoF (Extended Depth of Field) camera. This is a new idea, borne of the digital age. Rather than having a bulky and expensive auto-focus mechanism, the idea is that a cheaper fixed focus camera can be dramatically improved by using a custom lens which has been designed to focus the RGB components of light differently. When an image is captured (effectively three ‘photos’, one for each of the RGB components), every part of the photo’s viewing area is analysed, with the sharpest of the RGB images determining the detail used for that part, with the other image supplying appropriate coloration. In this way, the normal depth of field for a fixed focus camera is extended and objects a metre or so away can be captured fairly sharply, something which wouldn’t be possible with a vanilla fixed focus camera.

In reasonably good lighting, the results can be tremendous for such a small camera/sensor unit. Here are some samples, click each to download or view full-size:

Note the depth of field, the EDoF works well in good light conditions!

More EDoF examples… Objects both close and far away are all in ‘focus’

And here’s where things break down: firstly, it’s still a small camera with small sensor and in dim/indoor
conditions you’ll be struggling as with any other similar unit – the E55 is not an N95…; secondly, there’s a limit
to how far EDoF increases the depth of field – get within about half a metre of an object and it will start to get blurry…

Ah yes, my new car [you wish – now get back to work! /Crack – Rafe]; and a snap of a sign, taken from about
a metre away – note how this is within the EDoF (range) and how the text is pretty crisp as a result,
despite there being no actual focussing involved

Some motions shots – the EDoF camera seems to take photos with quite fast shutter times. The first photo was with both my
boat and the object boat moving, while the second is of a train going through the station at high speed
(estimated 80 to 100mph) – the shutter speed was so fast that the train almost looks stationary. Impressive.

Notably, the E55’s camera also includes a panorama mode, in the same manner as in the new N86 –
except here you get to stitch five photos – here’s an attempt of mine, taken in cloudy conditions.
The actual stitching together takes around a minute, so don’t expect to shoot panoramas quickly, back to back!

The extra image processing can’t work miracles however, and once the light levels go down you get the same reduction in depth of field, the same sensor noise and the same blurred subjects as with any other small-lensed fixed focus camera. It’s also worth noting that because the lens is fixed focus, there also can’t be a ‘Close up’ (or ‘macro’) mode, so anything closer to the E55 than about half a metre is destined to stay blurry and out of focus.

That said, I was impressed by the EDoF camera and would be happy using it as an ad-hoc snapper on the family day out – the results are usually quite good enough for even a discerning family album.

Video capture is at VGA resolution (the new standard, it seems in phone cameras) and at 15 frames per second. I was impressed by the colour handling here, by the pre-focus in video mode (to a couple of metres, something which the N97 still can’t do, to name but one device) and by the quality of the captured audio. Again, for personal use, I don’t think any user could complain about performance in this area.

Here’s a sample video (4MB, click the photo to play or download) – one of
the E55’s strongpoints, I think, despite the 15fps frame rate

And so to other aspects of the E55. The front panel keys are elegantly sculpted and a pleasure to use, while the 2.4″ display is the same as the E75’s – small for a 2009 smartphone, but well formed in the context of such a small device and, most importantly, transflective, meaning that it’s beautifully clear in sunlight – as with the E75’s and E71’s (etc.) displays, there are no lighting no-go areas for this screen (unlike those on the 5800, N97 and many competitors).

The (mono) loudspeaker on the E55’s rear is thankfully crystal clear and loud – great for listening to podcasts around the house. Music sounded clear but without much quality or bass over the supplied 3.5mm ‘4-way’ stereo headset/mike, though plugging in a ‘pro’ set of headphones showed that the tinny sound wasn’t the phone’s fault. Nokia do sell high quality in-ear headsets with microphone breakout box, if you really want to pursue hi-fi-like music on the move on the E55.

Nokia’s Eseries application set seems to have stabilised (with the aforementioned temporary omissions) – it’s worth noting that at long last elements of the Nseries photo gallery have made their way into an Eseries phone, with the slick, tag-based carousel now popping up when you click on ‘Gallery | Images’. Unfortunately, the list of items then presented includes videos as well. Along with Gallery | Videos and Video centre, there’s now three near identical ways into your videos. Nokia, the way you present media is just appallingly messy these days – please sort it out!

Gallery leads to Photos, which leads to – ahem – your photos AND videos

As mentioned elsewhere, video playback in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 is pretty mature now and virtually every MP4, 3GP and FLV video I threw at the E55 was handled without issue. WMV proved slightly more erratic, but as ever, digital video codecs are an utter black art and Microsoft is the dark wizard, WMV is never trivial to handle.

In terms of business software (this is an Eseries, after all), there’s the new Nokia Messaging email system, incorporating pseudo-push email from POP3 or IMAP accounts. As I’ve remarked before, this is something of a love it or hate it solution, but it’s certainly an easy way into mobile email for most, if not all, people. The full, editing version of Quickoffice v5 is supplied in the firmware, though the usual upgrading option to v6.2 wasn’t present, curiously – maybe this will come as well in an imminent firmware upgrade?

The two one-touch application shortcut keys work well, I love the way assignments can be made to a ‘long press’, effectively giving you four hardware application buttons and speeding up common access significantly. One thing that doesn’t work so well is the removal of the application grid shortcuts – on every previous S60 phone, you can press the appropriate number key to access the corresponding application in the menu grid on-screen. Admittedly the number grid is complicated here by the surrounding columns of QWERTY edge keys, but I still missed being able to hit ‘5’ for the centre shortcut, etc.

The ‘new’ S60 tweaks introduced for the E71 are here on the E55 as well, of course:

the Business/Personal home screen ‘modes’ (most useful, IMHO, for quick theme switching!)
the quick matching of contacts when typing in a name on the home screen – quite useful day to day
word auto-completion when entering text – the suggested word is shown completed in pale blue and a tap on the space bar accepts the suggestion. This is a little gimmicky – in almost every case where a long word is being spelt out, a shorter long word is popped up first and you end up tripping over yourself to make it right. For example, “communications”. “communication” is suggested only, leaving you to either spell the word out in full, or accept the singular and then backspace to fiddle around adding an extra letter. Similarly with “difficulty” and many, many other long English words.

Of special interest is that a number of third party applications have been fully licensed by Nokia for the E55. WiPresenter (from Psiloc) lets you use both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to control a Powerpoint presentation on a PC, while Font Magnifier (also from Psiloc) does exactly what it says, allowing system-wide font substitutions (between 50% and 140% of the original font size) to make text easier to read (or to fit in more text on-screen) in any application. Psiloc World Traveler (sic) is actually freeware anyway but it nice to see included here, providing Worldmate-like weather, currency and time information. Top Hits Solitaires (from Epocware) is a first class set of hundreds of card solitaire variations and one of my favourite commercial S60 games. Advanced Communication manager (from WebGate) is a call filtering application and Block Cascade is a Flash-based ‘Columns’ clone from Gamelion. Overall, a worthwhile set of extras, even if it does mean more icons for the new E55 owner to assimilate!

Also hinting that the current v21 firmware is incomplete is that the Ovi Store client and the N-Gage client were also missing from the E55. Both can be easily retrofitted if needed though – indeed, N-Gage had been added to the device, outside of the firmware, at the factory (and then got lost when Rafe wiped the device prior to sending it to me for review!). I’d expect both Ovi Store and N-Gage to be in the very next firmware image. Interestingly, the old Download! application is still present and on the front menu, although it does now seem to be free again from the scam that was the old Jamster (‘one of your three apps for the week’, etc.) system. Oh, and there’s no Ovi Store download link yet within Download!

There’s accelerometer-driven display rotation in almost all applications (including the home screen and menus) but, somewhat strangely, I couldn’t find an explicit way to turn this behaviour off – turning ALL sensor operations off does the trick, thankfully. Although clever, I end up disabling this on any phone I use, and I can only think that adding a dialog line to control this is another small omission. As it is, I lose the ‘flip to silent/snoozing alarms’ function if I don’t want display auto-rotation, which is annoying.

And so, for what seems like the umpteenth smartphone in a row, I’m tempted to issue a ‘this will be really good when the manufacturer fixes it up in firmware’ disclaimer. Don’t be too put off though, 99% of the E55’s functionality works as advertised, but the omission of Podcasting (to which I’m utterly addicted) and Internet Radio have meant that I, for one, couldn’t use this as my primary phone – yet.

The pairing of the E52 and E55, with near identical hardware, does make a lot of sense from Nokia’s point of view, in terms of economies of manufacturing. It also makes sense from a customer’s point of view, giving everyone the chance to choose their text input system. Like Rafe, I wish ‘Half QWERTY’ well but have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of buyers will veer towards the more conventional E52.

Like the upcoming E72, the E52 promises to be something of a landmark device, something so perfect that you couldn’t really envisage it being implemented any better, within the form factor.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E551.php

Nokia E55 (2)

Nokia E55 review: Five by five

Introduction

Sometimes, a phone is nearly perfect, except for that one small thing you want to change. If you felt that way about Nokia E52, the E55 claims to have the answer. Don’t get us wrong – the E52 has killer looks and specs. And the E55… well, like we told you, it’s the same phone save for that one little thing.

Nokia E55 official photos

If QWERTY keyboards are for heavy texters where does half-QWERTY fit? Some would say it’s the same target but different goal. You know, like heavy texting is a bad habit and half-QWERTY is the therapy. Now, now, no need to be too smart. But does it really make typing faster or slower, and how hard it is to learn the new layout? We ran a test to find out.

But more on that later. Thanks to the excellent connectivity options and Office editing out of the box, the E55 keeps your office at arm’s length – whether you’re out to lunch or out of town. Emails, presentations, spreadsheets, memos – you can bring all that everywhere you go. But hey, we’re not saying you should. Thanks to Modes, switching between Business and Personal homescreens makes sure you don’t have to bring work home.

Texting and email go without saying, but the Nokia E55 is one of the best-equipped Symbian devices around. Here’s the rundown:
Key features
Compact metallic body and extra slim girth (9.9mm)
Quad-band GSM support
3G with HSDPA 10.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps
half-QWERTY keyboard
2.4″ 16M-color display of QVGA resolution
Symbian OS, S60 UI with FP2
600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB RAM
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, DLNA support
Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS support, digital compass
Accelerometer for screen auto-rotation and turn-to-mute
One-touch shortcut keys mean “business”
3 megapixel enhanced fixed focus camera with LED flash
Secondary videocall camera
60 MB of internal memory, microSD expansion, ships with a 2GB card
microUSB v2.0
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
FM radio with RDS
Class-leading audio output quality
N-Gage gaming support
Ovi Maps preinstalled with trial turn-by-turn navigation license (10 x 1 days, to be used within 3 months) and lifetime City Explorer license
User-friendly Mode Switch for swapping two homescreen setups
Office document editor (with free MS Office 2007 update)
Remote lock/wipe over-the-air
Comfortable keypad
Smart dialing
Great battery life
Main disadvantages
Disappointing camera features and performance
Video recording maxes out at VGA@15fps
No DivX or XviD support (can be installed, possibly requiring a purchase)
No TV-out functionality
Keyboard takes some time getting used to (not too long though)

Nokia E55 live shots

The Nokia E55 has something of a split personality. The business features are complete but wait till you see what it offers for recreation. N-Gage support gives you access to a host of games, the audio quality is up there with dedicated music players and the huge battery won’t run out of juice until after hours of games and music.

The weekend getaway is also covered – just punch in your destination into Nokia Maps, and the E55 will take you there. It’ll even suggest a list of local attractions.

Head to the next page where we open the box and share our experience with the Nokia E55 and its keyboard.

Unboxing: a little more than E52

Instead of the 1GB card you get with the E52, the E55 comes with a 2GB one of external storage. Everything else in the box is exactly the same. The big bonus over the E52 isn’t in the box really, it’s the lifetime Nokia Maps City Explorer license, complete with 3D landmarks, detailed descriptions, weather forecasts and pedestrian navigation.

We’ve seen better retail packages in the Eseries

The microUSB cable is of the long ones and there’s a one-piece handsfree. There’s of course the mandatory charger, along with an adapter to use with old chargers. There’s also a user manual and this time the computer sync software is supplied on the memory card (you can download it off the company website too).
Nokia E55 360-degree spin

Nokia E52 stands at 116 x 49 x 9.9 mm and has a volume of 54 cc – the exact measurements of the E52. It is extremely pocketable and remarkably comfortable to handle. Gone are the glory days of the Nokia E71, now it’s neck and neck for the title of slimmest smartphone on the market – Nokia E52 / E55 and Toshiba TG01 are the current competitors but more are coming.

Even with such a slim body, the Nokia E55 is just 2 grams under a hundred, which gives it a really pleasant solid feel. The extensive use of metal is the main cause for that and we are pretty happy Nokia chose to continue this trend with yet another Eseries handset.

Design and construction: same phone, different keypad

We’re glad we got the black variety of the E55, otherwise it would’ve been a bit too much of a déjà vu. Yes, the phones are identical. And no, the half-QWERTY keyboard doesn’t make the E55 any less attractive than the E52. We guess enough users will find the keyboard a big improvement over the E52. It doesn’t make it any less obvious though which one is the niche and which one is the mass device. Either way, we’re talking two absolutely stunning lookers.

The metal accents on the handset’s body are a nice thing too see, and they boost both looks and durability. This time even the keys below the display are metal for an extra nice feel to navigating the handset.

The E55 is available in three different colors – Black Aluminium, White Aluminium and Red. Again, our unit in Black Aluminium looks great, the rear being especially classy.

The grooved surface of the rear cover has quite a raw and industrial feel which gives the otherwise slim and refined handset a bit of extra solidity. The front is keen to reply with a glossy silvery frame enclosing the black navigation deck and numpad.

The earpiece of Nokia E55 is placed at the top of the front panel, flanked by the ambient light sensor and the video-call camera.

The etched earpiece has a stylish metallic frame • The metal accents look great

Below is the 2.4″ 16M-color QVGA display. Its quality is quite pleasing with great contrast and brightness for a really vibrant image. In QVGA terms that is – the E55 is hardly up to scratch with high-res displays that are becoming more and more common. Yet, it’s quite hard to find a bigger, higher-res display in a bar-shaped handset in this segment.

The Nokia E55 screen offers uncompromised sunlight legibility, which is a company trademark. No matter how bright the sun outside, you can always read the display comfortably.

Continuing our journey down the front of the handset we come upon the metallic D-pad. It’s large and comfortable enough to use, just like the 8 keys surrounding it. They all offer nice tactile feedback and the metallic finish on most of them is an added bonus.

Essentially, the D-pad and two rocker-styled controls nicely project over a brushed metallic deck that accommodates the two soft keys and the Call and End buttons. The rockers host the menu key and backspace, along with the two typical Eseries one-touch shortcut keys. The latter can be used as shortcuts to four applications of your choice – two handled by short presses, the other two by a press and hold. Their default function is visualized by an icon.

Even some of the keys are metallic this time

Next is the half-QWERTY keyboard. Initially we had some concerns about it – it certainly isn’t the most common type. If you’re not familiar with this type of arrangement, here’s the gist – imagine a regular QWERTY keyboard but group the keys by two, so they form pairs like QW, ER, TY and so on. The numbers are arranged in the typical way on the middle three columns, making dialing a number a familiar experience.

Despite having 8 more keys than the E52, the keyboard is very comfortable and the keys are reasonably big. The rows are tangibly terraced for very good touch orientation. Still, there are some key combinations, which are awkward, like Shift + M for example. It takes some time before you stop bumping your thumbs.

The keypad is very comfortable and the buttons are big enough

For typing, you have two options – predictive input on and off. With text prediction turned off, one tap of a key enters the first character, while subsequent taps alternate between the characters assigned to that key. There’s a shift key which works in two ways – a tap switches between modes (lower case, all caps, prediction on and off) or you can press and hold it, which works exactly like on a computer keyboard.

There’s also a function key, which is used to access the alternative symbols (punctuation and digits), a double tap on it locks this behavior until you press it a third time. A symbol key is also here to let you pick less common symbols from a pop-up chart.

Prediction works a bit like T9, it’s just that you have two letters per key rather than three or four, which makes the guessing the correct word more likely. The symbol key can be used to alternate between the listed suggestions. There’s also word completion, which can greatly speed up typing.

Going through the drill

We did a little typing test to compare the speed of the E55 keyboard against a regular 12-key keypad. Initially, we had to look for each letter, but in no time we were beating our previous times. Here are the results:Training E55 keyboard Standard 12-key keypad % faster, E55 over standard keypad
First time use 2:53 min. 1:34 min. – 84%
15 minutes of use 1:17 min. 1:27 min. 12%
1 day, moderate use 0:55 min. 1:05 min. 15%

As you can guess, we used one and the same text sample for each of the tests. Here’s the sample we chose:

I bought a new phone – it’s great. My new number is 12345678. I’ll be late for the meeting on Monday, so start without me.

It’s a message that covers some of the basic typing hurdles – punctuation, switching between letter and number mode, repeated letters, capital letters, and letters that share keys on both the Nokia E55 keyboard as well as on the standard 12-key one.

We used a person with rusty texting skills for the test, so the first result is very near a “no training” result. Sure, they won’t qualify for an SMS typing competition but what’s important here is the learning curve – it’s not that steep as expected at all.

Design and construction (continued)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. The white backlighting is strong and pleasing to make the E55 perfect to handle in the dark.

The backlighting is nice and even

The 3.5mm standard audio jack and the power button are at the top of the Nokia E55. This time we are talking a normal button (it’s a bit small though), rather than the unfortunate red knob on the Nokia E71 and E66.

The 3.5mm standard audio jack and the power key on top

On the right side of the Nokia E55 we come upon the two volume keys, the voice command key and the dedicated shutter key. They are all a bit small for our taste but with a nice press. The voice command key is sunk a bit too low though. Back in Nokia E51 there was no dedicated camera key at all, so we welcome its addition here.

The Eseries trademark three key combo and the shutter key are on the right side

The microUSB port is on the left side of the handset. It has no protective cover (unlike the E71) to prevent it from getting dust in. By the way the audio jack is exposed too.

There’s no protection for the microUSB slot • There’s hardly anything going on at the bottom

The steel back cover of Nokia E55 is a certainly one of its best parts. It is perfectly immune to fingerprints and we have to say it looks great in black.

Rearside we find the 3 megapixel fixed-focus camera lens, along with a LED flash. The specs alone hint that imaging is yet again bottom of the Eseries priority list but we will get back to that in more detail later on.

The E55 looks a treat from the back • The 3MP shooter and loudspeaker grill

A nice little latch at the base of the battery cover allows you to release it quickly and easily. The all-metal part pops out gently and is locked back into position without any hassle. Under the cover we find the microSD card slot and the massive 1500 mAh Li-Po BP-4L battery. With a power plant like this one, the Nokia E55 is said to last 672 hours of stand-by or 8 hours of talk time and that’s more than impressive.

Pressing this button releases the battery cover • An impressive battery by all means

Forgive us for stating the obvious – the Nokia E55 is flawlessly built just like the E52. The phone looks great and working with it is a pleasure. Typing sure takes a bit of time to get to speed but the wonderfully ergonomic keys are duly appreciated. The best thing about the handset is the rare choice of keypad doesn’t compromise the looks and ergonomics, which did impress us big time on the E52. All in all, we’ve got an almost complete replica here and if you’re to consider any of the two handsets your choice will boil down to the type of keypad. The commendable ergonomics, durability and impressive styling are always part of the deal.

The Nokia E55 is sure to impress and deliver

User interface: S60 3rd is the Eseries game

So, as it turns out the only hardware difference between Nokia E52 and Nokia E55 is the half-QWERTY keyboard. So, we guess we can safely go on with the software. Which means we can sit back and relax – we’ve done our homework already with the E52. And there are no differences at all.

Nokia E55 runs on Symbian 9.3 OS with the Series60 3rd Edition user interface. It has Feature Pack 2 like the E52 and the E75 side-slider or the upcoming E72.

More importantly though, the Nokia E55 is powered by the same 600 MHz CPU as the E52. In Symbian terms, that’s a lot, not even Nokia’s current flagship – the N97 – can match it.

Nokia E55 and its sibling the E52 run on Symbian S60 3.2 much like Nokia E75

The E55 comes with the new S60 icons for a pinch of 5th edition (touch) styling. The interface can freely rotate to landscape mode thanks to the accelerometer, which also offers silencing calls and snoozing the alarm by flipping your phone over.

The accelerometer sensor has a number of settings

The phone’s main menu has two view modes: a 4 x 3 grid of icons and a list. However, with the E55 you cannot opt for having animated icons like on some other Nokia phones. This is probably just another way of reiterating the business focus of the phone. At least the font size is widely configurable depending on your preferences.

The main menu has two view modes

Inside the main menu, the circle next to the icon of a running application is a well known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications that are still running in the background.

Almost every bit of the interface has a landscape mode too

The active stand-by mode goes without saying on the Nokia E55. This is a convenient way to add shortcuts to all your favorite applications on the homescreen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access.

In addition you can bring up to 14 different kinds of notifications on the homescreen: email boxes and voice mail, through calendar and to-dos, to the currently running track in the Music player and FM radio. How many of those 14 get displayed is completely up to you.

Basic homescreen, active stand-by or talking theme

Each of the one-touch keys (messaging and calendar) can be customized to access any feature (actually two per key) of choice. The two soft keys functions are user-configurable too.

If for some reason the active stand-by mode isn’t your cup of tea you can use the basic theme or switch to the talking theme instead. The basic theme leaves the screen pretty bare and lets you assign shortcuts to the D-pad while the talking theme…well, talks. It brings four shortcuts to your homescreen and tells you what the currently selected one is.

Once you enter any of the menus, it tells you which menu you have opened and sometimes gives you some extra useful information about it. For example, when you enter the clock application, it tells you the current time. It would even read out the names of the contacts.

The talking theme has its own clock application

This talking theme is pretty handy to use when you can’t look at the phone. It might be a good idea to activate it while driving for example so you don’t need to actually look at the phone should you need it for something.

Another handy feature of recent Eseries handsets allows you to toggle between two different phone setups – the so-called Mode Switcher. Each of them can be customized with its own theme and homescreen applications for maximum usability. This way you can have both a leisure and a business profile and switch between them with a single click.

The built-in memory is 60MB, which is a decent amount. The included 2GB microSD memory card comes in very handy for extending it, but higher capacity cards up to 16GB are supported.

As we managed to confirm, Nokia E55 has no problem handling a 16GB microSD card. Accessing applications or any other files on the memory card is quick and you probably won’t notice any difference compared to accessing data in the phone memory.

As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It is launched by the dedicated key on the right side of the E55 and does a good job. It’s fully speaker-independent and recognizes a very high percentage of the user commands.

And finally, there’s a nice security feature known as Remote Lock. If your Nokia E55 gets stolen or lost, you simply send a coded SMS message to remotely lock the phone. After three unsuccessful attempts to unlock it, it wipes itself clean of all personal or sensitive info. You might not get your Nokia E55 back, but at least nobody will get your personal data either.

The out-of-the box customization options for the user interface of the Nokia E55 are a modest count, to suit the handset’s business slant. There are three themes preinstalled on the handset, each in two flavors – business and personal. You can assign a different theme to each of the modes – the preinstalled ones have subtle differences, just enough to indicate which mode you’re in.

So if you are into changing those icons and colors you will have to download new ones online….but don’t worry, there’s plenty to choose from out there.

Great Symbian phonebook

The phonebook of the Nokia E55 does a tremendous job, offering storage space for a virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields with all the available memory potentially usable for that purpose. We can’t imagine anyone managing to fill that up. You are also treated to as many fields for each contact as you like and some other nice extras, so there’s very little reason to complain.

Welcome to the phonebook

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name, and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any name. You can pick whether you want the SIM contacts, the service numbers or the phone memory contacts to be displayed or alternatively show them all at the same time.

Some of the available settings

Predictive search, contact list back-up as well as grouping are also available. The final nice extra is the setting to search for contacts on a remote server (Mail for Exchange or Intellisync).

Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you are able to think of any. Personal ringtones and video can also be assigned. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give a specific ringtone to each group.

Good luck trying to find a field that Nokia missed * you can even rename a label

The Call log application can hold up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key in standby.

Detailed info of your past communications is to be found in the call log

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. You can even filter the entries (by contact or by type), a useful feature if you’re looking for a specific call.
Telephony: no worries

With Nokia E55 you are extremely unlikely to experience any reception issues. Sound during calls is very clear and free of any interferences. It’s not too loud at the loudest setting but it will do great unless you’re in a very noise environment. Like quite a number of Nokia handsets, the E55 features advanced noise cancelling, which usually works quite nice to filter background noise.

Nokia E55 also has a Smart dialing feature, which helps you quickly find a contact straight on the standby screen.

Smart dial

Nokia E55 features the advanced Communication Manager out of the box. With this quite useful application you can opt for various settings – accepting only calls from your contacts, from all non-private numbers or from anyone. You can create your own filters with quite extensive settings – including rejecting a call with SMS.

In addition you can set up different ringing profiles that can be scheduled to activate at a given time (hour and day). You can even enable an option to have the E55 say the name of the caller.

The advanced communication manager

The Nokia E55 also has support for VoIP calls – you just enter your account details and you are all set.

We conducted our traditional speakerphone test with Nokia E55 and it achieved an average result. Here is how it compares to same of the other handsets we have tested. You can find information on the actual testing process, along with the full list of tested devices here.
Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overal score
Nokia E75 64.8 60.7 65.9 Below Average
Nokia E63 64.6 62.1 69.0 Below Average
Nokia E51 67.0 65.7 71.2 Average
Nokia E55 66.5 62.1 74.6 Average
Nokia E52 66.6 64.6 75.7 Average
Nokia E71 68.0 66.5 76.2 Good
Nokia 5320 XpressMusic 74.3 66.6 78.3 Very Good
Nokia 6500 classic 74.7 75.7 83.8 Excellent

The business of messaging

E-series devices are mostly about messaging and connectivity so we are not surprised that they got this part right. The E55 is a wiz at all sorts of messages and won’t shy away from viewing and even editing attached office documents.

On the whole, E55’s great email client and the ability to view and edit office documents will really help keep you up to date while you’re away from the office. Just like E75 and E52, E55 also comes with the Nokia Messaging software preloaded along with a lifetime service subscription.

There are three message editors aboard: SMS and MMS share the first one, audio and e-mail have their own. The SMS editor is the familiar application for all Symbian S60 smartphones.

An SMS automatically turns into an MMS when you insert some multimedia content

It goes without saying that a delivery report can be activated. The reports pop up on screen, once the message reaches the addressee and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu.

When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts you to either save it to the Drafts folder or discard it.

The audio message, albeit technically a type of MMS, was obviously deemed worthy of a dedicated editor. It allows you to either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.

The three types of messages

The new email client (first featured on E75) has better looks and better messaging organization than the ones in the past. Each of the folders of your mailbox can now be sorted by whatever filters you might like and can then be searched if necessary.

Composing an email on the E55 is as easy as it gets

You can also set what the folders preview should look like, i.e. how many lines should be given to each entry, whether title dividers should be applied etc.

You can sort your email much like on a desktop computer email client

The email client supports a wide range of personal and corporate email standards such as IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail etc.

Encryption is also enabled, as well as mobile VPN support for connecting to secure corporate Intranets.

The Message reader can read your messages while you’re driving

Quite naturally, the Nokia E55 supports the ultra easy email setup we’ve been treated to recently. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start enjoying email-on-the-go. The Nokia E55 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.
Image gallery: Nseries feel, Eseries method

The image gallery was a pleasant surprise – it’s the same as the one found in Nseries phones and looks great. The speed of photo browsing increases if you press and hold the direction buttons on the D-pad. This allows quick skipping of tons of files if you’re not in the habit of sorting out your memory card regularly.

Browsing the image gallery

Unlike, say, the Nokia N85, zooming here is very speedy, thanks to the zippy 600MHz processor. It does slow down a bit when you get over 100% but it will go up to 400% zoom. Zooming is done in small increments (about 10%) and panning is quite fast too.

The gallery offers a nice slide show with customizable effects and delay between slides. You can also choose the direction of the slideshow – forward or backward from the currently selected photo and the track to go with it. Music can also be switched off if you prefer.

The gallery also has a very good picture tagging system. In addition to geotagging, which is automatically handled by the camera, you can add as many tags as you like to each photo and then use them as filters. There’s also the option to organize photos in Albums.

Zooming in • you can add tags to photos

Music player: Symbian regular

Full-featured music ability is not supposed to make or break a business device but the music player of the Nokia E55 is still pretty decent and we set our hopes for good audio quality high when we saw that standard 3.5mm audio jack.

The lack of dedicated music keys is easily overcome by the smooth D-pad control. There is a huge number of audio formats supported including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. M3U playlists are also managed seamlessly and transferred files are added to the music library trouble-free by choosing the refresh option.

The music player is pretty straightforward

Filtering tracks by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available.

The player comes with five equalizer presets, bass booster and stereo widening effect. You can also create new equalizer presets if the preloaded ones won’t do.

The available equalizer presets * creating a new one

Finally, being one of Nokia’s best equipped phones, the Nokia E55 naturally also includes support for the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which allows listening to music on a Bluetooth stereo headset.
Decent video player

The Nokia E55 features Real player for playing your video clips. The video player works in portrait or fullscreen landscape mode. The softkey functions are hidden in full screen so they don’t get in the way, and they only pop up when a key is pressed.

The E55 Video center * the video player has very few controls

The relatively big screen and the MP4 video clips support add up to a passable video watching experience but you will probably resort to another player anyway. The reason for this is quite simple – the E55 lacks DivX and XviD support out of the box. Luckily, finding applications for the S60 3.2 that support those codecs is a fairly easy task (though they can be paid).
FM radio with RDS

The Nokia E55 sports stereo FM radio with RDS, controlled by the well known radio app. Upon starting, the app asks about your location in order to set up the proper frequencies for your area.

The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. Scanning for alternative frequencies when traveling can also be set to automatic. You can save up to 50 radio stations and the option to play through the loudspeaker is available.

The FM radio app
Impressive audio quality

Unsurprisingly, the audio quality of the Nokia E55 is an a perfect match to that of the E52. The Finnish company has once again demonstrated that there is no reason why the users should be made to choose between business functionality or good audio .

We can safely say that the two most recent bar phones – E52 and E55 are the best performer in terms of audio quality that the Eseries have ever seen, overtaking even the E75. They have better frequency response, stereo crosstalk and distortion levels than their side-sliding sibling and that seems enough to us to announce it as the new Eseries lead-singer.

Cutting to the point – here go the results so you can see for yourselves.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Nokia E55 +0.05, -0.23 -83.6 83.3 0.013 0.033 -84.3
Nokia E52 +0.05, -0.22 -85.3 85.0 0.014 0.034 -85.4
Nokia E75 +0.11, -0.91 -91.6 91.4 0.012 0.462 -73.3
Nokia E63 +2.63, -2.38 -75.0 75.3 0.018 0.102 -74.9
Nokia E71 +0.74, -1.26 -74.5 74.7 0.016 0.097 -75.8
Nokia E66 +0.74, -0.84 -72.3 72.5 0.021 0.102 -72.9
Nokia N78 +0.30, -1.59 -76.1 76.1 0.014 0.548 -72.7
Nokia N81 +0.39, -1.13 -86.6 95.8 0.041 0.040 -69.9
Samsung i550 +0.74, -0.76 -90.8 86.9 0.0024 0.033 -89.1
Sony Ericsson W980 +0.31, -1.25 -86.0 89.4 0.037 0.828 -86.3
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0

Nokia E55 vs Apple iPhone 3GS frequency response graphs

Camera: not a priority

The Nokia E55 means business but imaging is not part of its job description. The 3 megapixel camera has only a LED flash and sadly, no autofocus. “Enhanced fixed focus” is here to cater for close-ups but as our tests have confirmed in the past, the new Nokia “catch-phrase” doesn’t really mean you’re getting more sharpness in close-ups or shorter minimal shooting distance.

Actually, the camera user interface is the only good part of the E55 snapper. Using our favorite tabbed interface, the camera offers extensive settings: from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects which are labeled color tones.

The camera user interface is pretty familiar

A gridline can also be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing you photos using the photographic rule-of-thirds. Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic.

The sequence mode and self-timer are nothing new. The flash can be set to four positions: automatic, always on, red-eye reduction and always off.

Small font tooltips are displayed to help you understand what the phone is doing at each specific moment (processing image, for example).

You can also customize the toolbar deciding on shortcuts to display for which settings and in what order.

Image quality

The image quality of E55 is decent, albeit hardly spectacular. Contrast is good, but the dynamic range is not on par and colors are somewhat dull. Noise levels are low, but that is achieved through noise-reduction that smears away fine details and textures. The sharpening algorithm on the other hand is way too harsh and produces visible artifacts in the photo.

Nokia E55 camera sample photos
Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia E55. You can check out what that test is all about here.

Here’s a comparison of the camera on the E55 and the one on the E52. The E55 has an edge in resolved detail. Its processing seems better even though this time the images are slightly oversharpened, instead of slightly too soft. Maybe the next time they will get it perfect?

Nokia E55 resolution chart photo * 100% crops

Nokia E52 resolution chart photo * 100% crops
Video recording

Video recording doesn’t improve our impressions of the E55. The business-minded handset manages VGA videos at 15 fps, which is far from stellar but is certainly better than what E71 and E66 offered.

The quality of the recorded video is not very good and even if 15 fps is acceptable to you, the E55 is not a camcorder. There’s a fair bit of detail captured until of course it is periodically smeared by heavy compression.

Here is a sample video for you to check out.
Connectivity: back to the A-list

It’s time to check out the connectivity options. This is a morale booster indeed for the E55 and it sure takes advantage.

The E55 is truly on fire where data transfer is in question – it just has it all: from Bluetooth v2.0 and USB v2.0 to Wi-Fi and 3G. Furthermore, the 3G comes with HSPA support for the fastest network data transfers – up to 10.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink.

A microSD card slot is also on board, under the battery cover. It might just be the quickest and most convenient way of transferring data.

The standard 3.5mm audio jack is also there and the only thing missing that we can think of is TV-out functionality.

Web browser agrees with YouTube

Browsing the internet on a Nokia smartphone is definitely a positive experience. The E55 is no exception with its excellent page rendering – most web pages look like they do on a desktop computer.

The virtual mouse cursor is easy to control and generally works great. The D-pad control is not as comfortable as Samsung’s optical joystick (think Samsung i7110, for instance) or BlackBerry’s trackball but still does the job.

Browsing GSMArena.com on the E55

A mini-map can be activated and it even appears by itself when you scroll longer, which helps you navigate complex websites without excessive scrolling. The zoom level is also easily adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses. The web browser also offers fullscreen view mode.

Along with the usual key shortcuts, the browser in E55 offers a toolbar, which can be launched by pressing 1 or long pressing on the center key on an empty area of the page. You can customize which shortcuts are on the toolbar – up to seven shortcuts like “Subscribe to feeds” or “Bookmark manager”.

The new toolbar

The Nokia E55 browser features built-in full Flash support. It handled many of the Flash sites we threw at it, but chocked on others (games most often). Flash content for version 9 and up seem to be the culprit.

Flash video handled seamlessly

Flash video is mostly not a problem for the E55 web browser – you can watch video on the full-featured versions of YouTube, DailyMotion and the like. Not all however, Vimeo didn’t work, for instance.
Top-notch PIM and Office 2007 support

Time-management is another business phone virtue. There’s no wonder then that the Nokia E55 has one of the most elaborate organizer packages we’ve seen. There are a lot of nice applications, all very user-friendly and functional.

The trip starts with the calendar. It has four different types of view – to-do, weekly, daily and agenda as well as five types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Meeting request, Memo, Anniversary and To-do.

Setting up an event

The agenda view mode is relatively new to Nokia handsets and is really nice – it allows the dates of the month and the events for the selected day to appear simultaneously on the screen.

Day, week and agenda views

Mobile office is also duly covered, with seamless handling of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Furthermore, unlike most other Nokia handsets out there, editing documents is supported right out of the box.

With the Nokia E55 you won’t need to pay extra for editing your office documents. And there’s another thing you get for free – support for Office 2007 documents (.docx, etc.)

The E55 also supports document editing out of the box

A PDF reader is also part of the Nokia E55 preinstalled content and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.

A PDF reader is also available • ZIP manager

The other pre-bundled organizing and time-management applications are: a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough.

The ActiveNotes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes.

Some of the other organizer apps: unit converter, calculator and ActiveNotes

The Nokia E55 alarm clock application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name and start time. You can also customize the snooze time from the settings menu.

The E55 allows dozens of alarms to be set simultanelously

The useful “Search” application is also present on the Nokia E55. Its reserved space in the active stand-by menu no longer comes as a surprise. After all, an application this useful really deserves to be conveniently placed.

The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia based on a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and results are then listed.

If it’s on the phone the Search app will find it

Finally, the Nokia E55 features a dictionary with a really rich database. English comes pre-installed but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website.

The dictionary has a rich database

The World Traveler app helps you when visiting a new city – it’ll display weather forecast, it also offers a world clock, info on foreign currency, flights and even a 3D globe that marks your home and current location.

The traveler app can be quite helpful when travelling abroad

Thanks to the wireless presenter you can handle presentations straight from your phone.

WiPresenter is also here

GPS does well

The Nokia E55 comes complete with a built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS and Ovi Maps preinstalled. Voice-guided navigation comes at a price, however, you get 10 1-day drive licenses that come with the phone (must be used within 3 months after purchasing the handset) and walk navigation is completely free for the owners of E55.

The preinstalled version of the Ovi Maps is 3.0 and as usual it’s pretty nice to work with. It has really detailed map coverage of a huge number of countries and a lot of extras such as traffic information, city guides and so on. Sadly, the extra features need to be purchased separately, as must the voice-guidance after the trial period has expired.

Nokia maps has four different view modes

The app also has very decent looks and easily customizable route planning algorithms. Our favorite feature is the 3D view mode, which unfortunately has to be turned on every time you restart Maps – that’s an odd one, no doubt about that.

Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and simply use the phone as an electronic map. The nice thing about it is that you can actually preload the map content, so you don’t need to access the wireless network to download that on the go.

Nokia E55 also features a digital compass. In order for it to work, you need the map zoomed on your current GPS position. The compass (a magnetometer sensor) is turned on by default, but it doesn’t work while turn-by-turn navigation is engaged. It’s quite useful while making your way around on foot though, as it rotates the map to match even your slightest change of direction.

If you don’t fancy using Nokia Maps, you can opt for any of the numerous third-party applications available on the market, there’s no shortage of those.

The overall impression of the Nokia E55 GPS functionality is positive, with the GPS sensitivity pretty acceptable. It is good enough for most users’ needs and won’t make too many people look for alternatives.
Classic and N-Gage gaming

The Nokia E55 comes with two games preinstalled, both of which are pastime classics.

The first one, called Block Cascade Fusion is a variety of Tetris, in which color also comes into play – instead of just making lines, you have to line up 5 or more blocks of the same color horizontally or vertically. The changes in the rules take some time getting used to – the lines of 5 or more same-color blocks disappear only during the fusion… blocks are dropping frantically, while you’re trying to figure out what the point is. It is part of the fun, so we won’t spoil it.

Block Cascade Fusion

The other option is Top Hit Solitaires bringing 15 types of solitaire, with classics such as Klondike and Freecell (if you ever owned a PC you’ve played them).

Top Hits Solitaires

While it doesn’t come preinstalled, you can install N-Gage on the Nokia E55, just head to http://www.ngage.com and follow the instructions. Strangely for a business-minded phone, there’s full N-gage support. No need to tell you, there was no free activation code in our retail box.
Final words

The Nokia E55 is a limited edition E52. The good thing is the half-QWERTY handset is not limited in any way compared to its mainstream sibling. OK, save perhaps in terms of demand. But Nokia must be aware of that and know their market well enough. We guess it makes sense to duplicate a great package that’s likely to sell very well just to test a concept, which the company is trying for the first time. Who knows, they may’ve struck gold with the half QWERTY keyboard. And if they didn’t, it’s no big deal. The extra R&D costs are perhaps close to zero and they still have two great phones, at least one of which will sell.

Nokia E52

Not the least, the Eseries fleet is growing stronger. The E55 is closing the gap between Eseries candybars and devices like E71, E72 and E75, so there is a smartphone for each and every user. Eseries have always aspired to be the ultimate in business phones and now they’re also trying to be the most flexible. There are handsets for heavy texters (E71, E72, E75, etc.) and heavy talkers (E51, E52). The E55 is headed to the stores and trying to bridge both worlds.

So, the E55 has a very special place in the Eseries lineup and in a way its fate is less in the hands of the competition, and more in the hands of its own kind. We don’t think a half-QWERTY keyboard is a liability in a phone of great build quality, excellent features and outstanding exterior. But some users may be asking themselves why they should choose the E55 over an E71 or an E72.

Nokia E71 • Nokia E72

As to competition, the E55 seems to outclass the likely rivals, especially when it comes to looks. The Eseries pedigree guarantees top class business performance too, but there are still a number of handsets that can hope to steal some of the E55 market. Those who don’t like Symbian will perhaps want to check out the WinMo based Samsung B7320 OmniaPRO and the newly announced B7330 OmniaPRO, which we just previewed. RIM’s BlackBerry Curve 8520 is another viable option and recent enough to get the attention of users. Neither of those messengers has the Eseries charisma but decent spec sheets, alternative OS and – not the least – full QWERTY keyboards give them a bit of a weight.

Samsung B7320 OmniaPRO • Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO • BlackBerry Curve 8520

To wrap it up, the Nokia E55 and E52 are the same handset, so E for excellence goes both ways. E for massive earnings we’re not so sure about. But that doesn’t mean a half-QWERTY keyboard has let down an excellent device. The E55 is as capable, user friendly, solidly built and absolutely gorgeous as the E52. Which one is yours?

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e55-review-396p10.php 

Nokia E55

The E55 is the latest addition to the business-focussed Nokia Eseries line up, with a twin sister in the form of the Nokia E52. The only significant difference between them is the keyboard – the E52 has a standard 12 key numeric keypad, but the E55 offers a ‘half-QWERTY’ keyboard.

The E55 and E52 are now starting to become available in select markets – the E52 is now available in the UK at a price of £230 and the E55 will become available later this month at a cost of around £250. As usual, availability and pricing will vary from market to market. In general though, the E5x devices are competitive entries into the mid tier business market.

Both the E55 and E52 run on Nokia’s latest Symbian hardware platform. This includes a combined GPS and compass (magnetometer) sensor, and updated cellular radios (quad band GSM and triband WCDMA). There’s 128MB of RAM on board, with about 56MB free after boot up, which should be sufficient even for demanding users. The single CPU is clocked at a rate of 600MHz, but as we’ve mentioned before, looking at pure processor speed is something of a distraction. Nonetheless, in common with other recent Symbian devices, there are no speed concerns. Performance moving around the UI, opening applications and in general operation is very impressive.

Similarly, the software platform is a cutting edge release. The new 7.1 version of the S60 browser is present (previously seen on the N86), as are the usual Eseries tweaks (smart dialling, a business software bundle and updated Contact and Calendar applications) and the phone ships with the latest version of Nokia’s Ovi services including Maps 3.0, N-Gage, and the latest version of Nokia’s email software. There’s some firsts for Eseries too, including Home media, Nokia’s UPnP client/server software.

The Nokia E55 with its twin sister, the E52. Keyboard aside, both devices are virtually identical.

A first glance at the E55 draws the eye immediately to the keypad. This is the first Nokia device with a ‘half-QWERTY’ keyboard, which has 20 individual keys, with most letters sharing a key with another letter. This type of keyboard is not new, the ‘SureType’ keyboards of the Blackberry are the most obvious existing examples, but it is something of a departure for Nokia.

The advantage, over a full sized QWERTY keyboard, is of course that you can fit the keyboard into a smaller space. It is also much easier to use one handed; it is equally comfortable to use in thumb-keyboard or one-handed mode. In a design sense, it is a halfway house between a 12 key numeric keypad and a full QWERTY keyboard, but the overall performance, especially the speed of entry, is much closer to a full QWERTY keyboard than it is to a numeric keypad.

The keyboard can be used in either multi-tap mode or in predictive mode. In predictive mode you hit each key once and the prediction software works out which was the most likely intended letter. It works best if you type a full word as the software uses context (just like T9) to increase the accuracy of the ‘guess’. I found that the vast majority of the time the prediction software was accurate, and, even when it’s not, a correction is a single D-pad press away.

The keyboard itself has been very well designed. The individual keys are angled downwards from the bottom to the top (as on the E75’s cover keypad). This means that the bottom of a key is always slightly higher then the top of the key below it. This helps prevent mis-hits and improves the overall accuracy.

Some will pick up the new style keypad quicker than others and there’s obviously going to be a learning curve. Ultimately, whether you’re comfortable with a half-QWERTY keyboard is a personal decision.

The first thing you notice about the E55 is its half-QWERTY keyboard

As a QWERTY device, messaging is a clearly a key focus of the E55. Nokia have, rightly, been criticised in the past for a poor email software experience on their Eseries devices. The main fault lay in the Messaging application UI, but there was also some missing functionality. However, in recent software releases, as first seen on the E75, Nokia have made very significant improvements. There’s a whole new email client UI, an improved Microsoft Exchange client (includes sub-folder and HTML email support), and, through Nokia Messaging, the ability to get a virtual push-email service for any existing POP3 or IMAP account. The purchase prices of the E55 and E52 include a lifetime (of the device) subscription to Nokia Messaging.

Mail for Exchange and Nokia Messaging, together with the excellent email set up wizard, combine together to create a very powerful email solution for the E55. Just as the launch of the E71 saw Nokia improve the Contacts and Calendar software, so the launch of the next generation of Eseries devices – the E52, E55, E72 and E75 – sees a massive improvement in email capabilities.

The E55’s ‘new’ email client (first seen in the E75)

The E55 is a svelte phone; the specifications will tell you that it is 54cc in volume and has dimensions of 116 x 49 x 9.9mm. This compares to the the E51’s volume of 61cc and dimensions of 115 x 47 x 12mm (and bear in mind the E55 has a 0.2 inch bigger screen) and the E75’s volume of 69cc and dimensions of 112 x 50 x 14.4mm. However, without seeing it in person, it’s hard to really appreciate the size.

What’s even more impressive is that Nokia have managed to fit in a 1500mAh battery into the E55. Once you take t he battery out, it is hard to see where Nokia have put all the hardware that’s packed into this phone – it almost seems to defy the laws of physics. Clearly the secret is in the compromises – single speaker, EDOF-based camera, combined radio chipsets and so on, but nonetheless it is a truly impressive achievement.

E55’s BP-4L battery… hard to see where the phone hardware is!
Concluding thoughts

As I mentioned in our N86 review, the current hype around touch tends to obscure some great non-touch devices. The E55 (and its sister the E52) are good examples of this. A combination of skillful industrial design, comprehensive functionality and a price point that is half that of typical high end devices combine to offer a package that is excellent value for money. In the full review, we’ll look at the device’s capabilities in more detail, but in general the only real sacrifice, compared to high end devices, is around the camera and video capabilities, and even these are still reasonable.

Those looking at upgrading from an E51 or similar device will find much to like in the E55. The extra screen size (now 2.4″), smaller volume, thinner design, improved performance, upgraded software and additional multimedia functionality, offer plenty of reasons to upgrade. The choice between traditional keypad (E52) and half QWERTY (E55) is a welcome bonus.

The maturity and functionality of the software is worth highlighting. Symbian and S60 has come in for a lot of criticism recently, primarily as a result of S60 5th Edition. But such criticism tends to ignore S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, which together with Nokia’s service software, offers a best in class experience on non-touch phones. Non-touch phones may not have the same buzz around them as touch phones, but they do remain the dominant interaction mode for mobile phones.

The E5x family of Eseries devices

While the Eseries do have a business focus, the lines between enterprise handsets and consumers handset are not as they once were. The addition of consumer orientated features across the Eseries range, most notably in the area of multimedia support, has helped to blur the lines. With a ‘good enough’ camera, basic video support, a 3.5mm AV jack and a comprehensive range of multimedia software, the E55 has much greater consumer appeal than the earlier Eseries devices. There has also been an increasing realisation that personal and business lives intermingle. Indicative of this is the ‘switch mode’ feature that was introduced in the E71 and is present in the E55.

The multiple colours and half-QWERTY keyboard of the E55 bring to mind the Blackberry Pearl, which was among the first enterprise phones to enjoy crossover success. In the last few years, QWERTY-equipped phones have become more popular amongst consumers, who appreciate their messaging abilities, not for corporate email, but for text messaging, instant messaging, social networking updates and the odd personal email. While the E55’s software bundle remains business-dominated (Quickoffice editing version, Intranet, Advanced Connection Manager, Traveller, WiPresenter), it is notable that Nokia has also included both its own Ovi Contacts IM solution and a version of Microsoft’s Messenger with the E55. Indeed, with the inclusion of software and services like N-Gage, Home media, Photos, Video center and Music store, it’s almost as if the current Eseries approach to differentiation is to give its user everything that the consumers get, and then add in a couple of specifics. The effect of this is to re-inforce the impression of value for money, which we highlighted above.

In positioning terms, the Nokia E55 may find itself squeezed between its Eseries companions. For those looking for the entry level Eseries device, the E52, with its standard keypad, may be a better choice. Those looking for a cheap QWERTY might be tempted by the E63 or the E71 (especially after its price falls after the introduction of the E72).

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E55-first_look_review.php