review of nokia e50
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Review of GSM-Smartphone Nokia E50
Live photos of Nokia E50
Sales package:
Smartphone
Li-Ion 970 mAh battery (BL-5C)
Charger
USB-cable
User Guide
CD with software
Mono-headset
Charger adapter
Nokia E50 was introduced in summer, 2006 as an addition to the enterprise line-up goingby the name of Eseries, the announcement itself went without any needless fuss, though,and against all gossips and expectations, the E50 came alone back then without being
accompanied by two other Eseries-branded devices, meaning that the companys tradition
to unveil three offerings at a time, like it had done it at Nseries conferences, was broken.
Back then, neither the handsets design, nor its functionality generated much of a stir afew can be blown away nowadays with a 1.3 Mpix camera and a 2-inch big QVGA
display. Bluntly speaking, there was no flavor in this offering, nothing that would have
drawn the crowds attention.
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Here I would like to devote a couple of words to the very philosophy of the Eseries line-up in general why it was established, what are its prerequisites for further development
and what the future holds for it. The niche of enterprise-smartphones and communicators
has been around for quite a while, but was filled up with proposals based off Windows
Mobile, mainly HTC-branded solutions and Research In Motion (RIM) very ownBlackberry. Devices running Symbian operating system didnt have any solid
representation till the 2Q of 2006. Back in the days of first Eseries models release
(9300/9500 never made it to mass products category) the situation got turned over.There was something good about them, something bad as well, but they fulfilled the
mission they were endowed with and secured initial loyalty of consumers, even though
their sale rates (except for the E70, the most highly tailored device) are still revolvingaround pretty low, yet stable figures. The pricing policy applied to these handsets may be
described with this: enterprise solutions at affordable price. Once three pioneers have hit
the market, it is about time to come up with another model that should become theranges best selling device owing to several reasons we will be breaking down below.
Summing everything up for Eseries, I would like to say that competition within the
companys range is minimal after all, the gap separating Eseries and Nseries
positioning-wise is considerable, at the same time Nseries devices are placed higher inthe Nokias charts, have not-so-long lifecycle and more frequent announcements of
newcomers to the line-up.
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Having done away with this little digression, we are getting back to the E50. What newdoes it bring to the table and what its trumps in the competition are?
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Our forum saw some intriguing debates on so called the line of succession between the
iconic Nokia 6310i and the E50. Honestly, I had pretty much the same thoughts mostly
due to the following reasons: similar positioning of the devices (both are aimed atbusiness-users); akin dimensions (with the bottom getting thinner, which allows both
phone to fit in hands nicely); missing camera (E50-2) and finally, not the least of the
factors, battery life. The last point we mentioned can be barely called similar for thesehandsets, but still, among smartphones, the E50 is one of the longest lasting offerings.
To me, what didnt happed with the 6230 and the E60 that were dubbed as the successors
to the 6310i, has finally become a reality with the advent of E50 the handset got an
inheritor that fits the needs of the 6310is audience in terms of both looks and positioning,and suite of features. While these models designs prove to be resembling to some extent,
there is no way we could call them similar it is all about the feeling itself here.
Model E50 is rivaled, though strange it might sound, by a handset made by Nokia itself,
specifically Nokia 6233 you will surely notice a ton of similarities between them should
you take the position of an ordinary consumer, including dimensions- and display-related
ones (the E50 is a tad thinner and taller). But the 6233 is much more multimedia-heavy,packing a 2 Mpix camera with VGA video recording and stereo-speakers at a lower price,
though. Maybe this is the reason why the gap between the sale rates of these models is
gigantic the 6233 is thirty times more demanded.
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Now onto the handset itself. Nokia E50 utilizes the candy-bar form-factor with the
external antenna being shaved off and is positioned as the most portable Eseriessmartphone (113x43.5x15.5 mm). Nokia, as always, is as honest about dimensions of its
offerings, as only possible, so that 15.5 mm is the utmost limit of thickness on this
handset, while the bottom part is a tad slimmer, measuring up at about 12 mm. Thus the
E50 turns out to be the Finnish manufacturers slimmest smartphone around, and one ofits ranges thinnest offerings.
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The handsets casing is made of high-grade (so it feels) black plastic with the edging on
the sides varying from white glossy plastic or black, perfectly matching the sides color
scheme. The battery cover is made of metal, just like the framings on the face around thedisplay and beneath the keypad are. So markets will soon see third trim - Metal black,
which comes in sole black.
The only complaint about the build quality of the E50 and the materials used thephones top end, specifically the power button doubling as a profile switcher. It utilizes
pretty soft type of rubber that easily draws scratches from your nails and on top of that
once pressed the button gets back to its initial position in a somewhat sluggish way, so
that after some time you might encounter a sticky button problem.
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Apart from this, the E50 is clear of gripes actually it is one of the few Nokias devices
released lately that doesnt creak, has all details finely attuned, as well as the batterycover firmly fixed dont tell us there is a gap, as it is the most improbable thing we have
ever heard thank to the material used and a tight latch.
The keypad is made of metal-look-alike plastic. The keys offer you good tactile feelings
and are big enough in spite of the E50 being quite tiny width-wise. Dedicated buttonsMenu and C are, bluntly speaking, squeezed into the set of function keys, so due to
sporting minor size, they might cause a couple or more accident presses. The E50s
joystick is small and very tough, meaning that this handset is more likely to go missingon the short-lists of gamers. The joysticks design is totally opposite to what we see on
Sony Ericsson-branded devices, in other words you cant manage it by holding your
finger pad on its top on the contrary, it has to be in motion, lean it at certain angles. Wewont make any judgments here, but insted will strongly recommend to play around with
the joystick on the E50 a bit more before going for this phone.
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The light indicator can be hardly called a novelty (dont confuse it with ambient light
sensor) we have already seen it with such Nokias products as the E61, N80, but in the
E50s case it circles the joystick. The indicators color cannot be changed, though it isalways green, and starts flashing, once one of the four events (found in the settings) has
taken place. This approach is fetching, indeed and in future we would really like to seeexpansions of the indicators usability more triggers, various colors, but this might be
something superfluous for an enterprise-solution.
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All keys are lit in blue while the numberpad has even backlighting, the function keys
are a bit out of focus, while hand up key has no lights coming from beneath at all.
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Already familiar to you Pencil key was moved to the right side of the handset, which
makes more sense than Nokias N91 side-mounted menu button press rates are
incomparable in my opinion. Next to the Pencil is dedicated contacts/voice functionsbutton (running a few steps forward I want to note that voice tags recognition boasts high
quality of implementation errors are rare guests here). But we were really disappointed
to find out that this button can be assigned to no other application. On the left you willfind volume rocker switch, nothing special about it. Ambient light sensor present on
senior models is missing on the E50, so that expect the backlighting to turn on during
daylight as well.
Overall, the keypad feels very good we have no real gripes with it, everything lives upto the makers name.
The display is topped by a grill-covered earpiece, whose volume is just enough for mostsituations. The bottom end is occupied by interface socket Pop-Port and the now standard
slim charger clot. Removing the battery cover reveals hot swap-enabled microSD
memory expansion slot. The battery coming included with the E50 is Li-Ion 970 mAh(BL-5C) unit. As the manufacturer claims, it can keep the handset up and running up to 9
days in standby mode and 6.8 hours in talk mode. You should bear it in mind though, that
these figures can be achieved only in ideal conditions and will never end up at the users
disposal.
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On average load (about 30 minutes of web surfing, 15-20 snaps, 1,5 hours of calls and apair of SMS messages), the handset lasted two days, which is not bad at all for a
smartphone. Should you be easier on its phone functionality and get your talk time to 30
minutes, the E50 will put up a bit more than 3 days of operation. You can also turn yoursight to a more capacious battery BL-6C (1100 mAh), but for that you will need a special
battery cover or have to remove the cover found inside the default cover. With the BL-6C, as its owners say, Nokia E50 stays alive for about 4 days on comparable load. It takesthe phone about two hours to charge up from empty to full.
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Nokia E50s display measures 2.0 diagonally, and looks smaller than the rest of the
Nokia-branded smartphones screens because of being narrower, whereas the height is
equal. This display boasts QVGA resolution (240x320 pixels), making the picture smoothand almost free of pixel grid. Colors are vivid, at maximum brightness level your eyes
will hurt, so be ware the finest value, as I see it, is 70 percent for the screens
brightness. According to Nokia the display shows up to 262 K colors, which is not as bigas the senior models figures are. However you might even not notice this difference
they all have more than just satisfactory displays. The E50 behaves in the sun in the same
way other Nokias smartphones do, but due to tiny size the E50s screen falls short of, for
example, Nokia N73, but this doesnt make all the difference.
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At such physical screen size, tiny fonts are always a pain occasionally you will have to
peer at the display to make out what is written on it.
Handsets highlights
Smartphone Nokia E50 is a typical S60 3rd edition-based device, so we have nothing todo but redirect you to dedicated articles on the features of Eseries handsets and standard
functionality of the platform.
Software features of Nokia Eseries
S60 3d Edition Feature Pack 1 Description Nokia Web Browser S60 (OSS Browser)
Compared to the software Nokia Eseries smartphones come pre-installed with, this very
phone lacks office documents editing ability viewing only. Even though you can
seamlessly deal with it by installing, for example, Office Suite, many just dont get it why
the company would need to bring about such restrictions. Screen rotation is alsounavailable on the menu.
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One of the major highlights of the E50, distinguishing it from other Eseries-branded
offerings, as well as Nokias smartphones, is the revamped active standby mode, packing
even more functionality and ease-of-use. The modifications are as follows: now thestandby mode settings contain a list featuring those functions, whose notifications may be
taken to the display. At a glance, there is nothing very special about it, but still it does
make some difference. You are also at liberty to leave only shortcuts on the desk, withoutany notes.
Another novelty, which is quite handy among all other things, is Search application the way it works can be seen on the screenshots. As long as you have the search line
unfilled, the app will return you information on amount of messages, contacts, calendar
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events, notes, tasks and other files. With the release of the E50 this applications made it
to the mass market meaning that it is now available for other S60 3rd edition powered
smartphones for no fee.
Extra applications include Adobe PDF, Zip (handles corresponding archives) and Read
messages, which presents you with the functionality its name implies. By the way, textis read out quite legibly.
The device also fits for music playback sound quality achieved with the help of AD-41
or AD-46 adapter and good headphones proves to be reasonable and falls only marginally
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short of, for example, the N73. The way the music players interface is laid out is nothing
new compared to other Nokia-labeled handsets, lacking music-heavy positioning.
Other differences from the rest of Eseries include missing Wi-Fi and 3G/UMTS, whichmakes the E50 the only handset in the range (saving for the E62, tailored for the North
American market) that cant show off these functionalities. To some extent, the E50 stepsonto the scene as a replacement for the E60, since it will take a while for us to wait for its
true successor, and from this point of view, the fact that the senior solution is armed withfeatures that have went missing on the E50 is quite a letdown.
The handsets performance is about average, with the figures being more or less
comparable with Nokia N73 the gap is not something tremendous. To put it simply, the
phone is pretty sluggish, which will repulse a part of potential buyers; nonetheless formost the difference in interface speed between the E50 and ordinary handsets wont be
that crucial. On top of that, the phones abilities partly make up for its being somewhat
slow.
JBenchmark 1 JBenchmark 2 JBenchmark 3D
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Version 1.1.1
Total Score: 3359
Details:
Text 918
2D Shapes 835
3D Shapes 366
Fill Rate 193
Animation 1047
Screen Width 240Screen Height 234
Color Screen true
Number ofColors
16777216
Double
Buffertrue
Total Memory 819200
Free Memory 397588
MicroEdition
ConfigurationCLDC-1.1
MicroEdition
Profiles:MIDP-2.0
Microedition
Platform:
Nokia 50-
1/06.27.1.0
Microedition
Encoding:ISO-8859-1
Version 2.0.1
Total Score: 297
Details:
ImageManipulation
244
Text 340
Sprites 341
3D Transform 558
User Interface 144
Screen(canvas)
Width
240
Screen(canvas)Height
234
Color Screen true
Number of
Colors16777216
JPEG Supporttrue
Transparency(Alpha Level)
256
Double
Buffertrue
Total Memory 819200
Free Memory 398284
MicroEdition
ConfigurationCLDC-1.1
MicroEditionProfiles:
MIDP 2.0
Perfomance
Jbenchmark3D HQ: 123
Jbenchmark3D LQ: 228
Triangles ps: 38469
kTexes ps: 1295
Version: 3.1.0
Screen(canvas)width: 240
Screen(canvas)height: 320
3D Subsystem:
M3G Version: 1.0
Antialaising: false
True color: false
Dithering: false
Mipmapping: true
Perspective
correction:true
Local cameralighting:
false
Max lights: 8
Max Viewport
dimensions:
1024
Max TextureDimensions:
256
Max Sprite Crop
Dimensions:256
Max Transforms PerVertex:
4
Number of Texture
Units:2
Other propertiesColor Screen true
Number of colors 16777216
Transparency (alpha
level)256
Double buffer true
Total memory: 819200
Free memory: 301560
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Camera. Here we should make a note that in fact there are two editions of the handset
Nokia E50-1 and the E50-2, boasting a 1.3 Mpix camera onboard. The E50 is only
second Eseries solution to feature a camera, as previously it was the E70 alone,nevertheless both resolution- and quality-wise the reviewed unit is inferior to the
abovementioned senior model, which comes as no surprise, though. Another point of
interest is that the upcoming Eseries announcement will bring three camera-equippedhandsets along. The concept of a camera-less enterprise solution has already become a
thing of the past, so that now it is the market that rules the roost. This doesnt mean,
however, that we are not going to see more of the camera-less models coming, apparentlythe best thing to do is release two editions, which would be milestones from the
standpoint of positioning and sales, just like in Nokia E50s case.
A flash and a self-portrait mirror are absent on the handset. While handling the E50s
camera you can witness a curious effect when trying to snap the best shot playingaround with the viewfinder, colors look somewhat unnatural and blurry, but once you hit
the trigger, the picture literally gets a new life injected into it, as lines get sharp again.
Whether it is an issue we should attribute to the firmware or our unit, or the way the
camera works we do not know.
All photos look splendid on the smartphones screen thanks to the displays resolution
and top-notch quality; however on-PC-screen experience is not so great, as the quality
leaves much to be desired. The matrix utilized by the E50 is one of the cheapest out there,
to say the least. Green tint of the lens indicates that it home company is Samsung.
Self-time function (10, 20, 30 seconds) is available with the E50, as well as night mode,
multi shot and three overlays black-and-white, negative, sepia. Speaking of the new
things to the Eseries, we cannot overlook white balance settings (auto, sunny, lamplight,fluorescent light).
Below you can familiarize yourself with the quality of the snaps taken with the E50:
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(+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG (+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG
(+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG (+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG
(+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG (+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG
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(+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG (+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG
(+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG (+) maximize, 1280960, JPEG
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Video can be captured in two resolutions 176x144 and 128x96 pixels. The quality is
mediocre; however it is not camera or video recording what the E50 is all about.
Video sample (3gp, 300 Kb)>>>
Impressions
This handset has no problems in terms of network reception quality, sound in loudspeaker
is pretty good, person whom youre speaking to will hear you well. The silent alert isquite strong be sure you will feel it in your jackets pocket. While the speaker is a bit
different from what we saw on other Eseries-branded models, it outputs just enough of
volume to not let you down in most situations.
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Over the time I had the pleasure of using this device, I got an interesting feeling: while
the E50 was so unsophisticated on the face of it, I had a really good time managing it. I
cant say what exactly made me think this way maybe the nice feeling of metalemployed in the casing and combined with slim and elegant design, maybe crisp display
and handy keypad, or some other aspects at the end of the day this doesnt change the
fact that I had almost no gripes with the handsets operation. I dont want to say the E50has no shortcomings the thing is, for its target audience they are minor.
This model can be recommended to people looking for a handy, slim and light handset
packing good functionality. And this is what Nokia E50 is about.