Product Reviews

As long as you buy them on contract, smartphones are now just as cheap as normal mobile phones. Even though a normal mobile can send and receive emails and browse the internet, a smartphone is vastly more powerful in almost every way. Nokia's E50 is its latest business smartphone to be available for free on contract.

The E50's slim design is reminiscent of the business user's favourite, the Nokia 6230. Its black and silver finish is smart, and the handset is very comfortable to hold. The numeric keypad's buttons are large and are raised in the centre for easy typing. The clear button is quite close to the hang-up button, so often you find yourself going back to the home screen by accident. Call quality is good, but there is a slight background hiss.

The phone runs Nokia's latest Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition operating system. This supports higher screen resolutions than the previous version, so the E50's display has a reasonable 240x320 pixels compared to the 176x220 on older Nokia smartphones. The screen is bright with good contrast, but text on the home screen is very small. The home screen has short cuts to common functions such as

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contacts, calendar and messaging, and shows any upcoming appointments in your calendar.

Like all Nokia smartphones, the E50 can send and receive email using a POP3 or IMAP4 server. The phone also has the excellent Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition web browser, which renders full-size webpages perfectly and uses a pointer to navigate. You can have several webpages open at once, and switch between them using the page preview screen which displays a thumbnail of each page.

Unfortunately, the handset doesn't support 3G data, so you're stuck with GPRS.

The E50 also has a number of extra applications for business users. You can view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, and PDFs. The file manager can also read Zip archives. There is even a program that reads out your texts. The handset comes with Nokia's PC Suite synchronisation software, which synchronises painlessly with Outlook over Bluetooth or the supplied USB cable. If you don't have Outlook, PC Suite has a built-in contacts editor.

Series 60 3rd Edition has integrated video and audio players, which play 3gp and MP4 video, and MP3, AAC and WMV audio files. As it's a business handset, the E50 is supplied with a mono hands-free kit and not stereo headphones. There's also no camera.

Nokia's E50 is a good-looking smartphone that's perfect for business users. It's a shame it has no 3G data, as this handicaps the excellent web browser. If you're serious about the mobile web we'd recommend Nokia's E61, but otherwise the E50 is an excellent choice.

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