Nokia E55 Review

The Nokia E55 is compact, stylish and designed with messaging in mind. It’s is geared towards the business men and women out there, and as it’s a Nokia phone it should be quite easy to use.

  The Nokia E55

What’s In The Box?

• Nokia E55 handset
• Nokia Charger AC-10
• Nokia Charger Adapter CA-146C
• Nokia Battery BP-4L (1500mAh)
• Nokia Stereo headset HS-48
• Nokia Connectivity Cable (CA-101) supports charging
• Nokia 2 GB microSD card (MU-37) inside device
• User Guide
• Nokia PC Suite (v7.2) in microSD card

See also Matt’s Nokia E55 unboxing video.

Nokia E55 Specification:

• Dimensions: 116 x 49 x 9.9mm
• Weight: 98g
• Talk Time: 480 mins
• Standby Time: 672 hrs
• Display: 320 x 240 pixels/2.4 inch
• Network: GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band)
• Camera: 3.2 mega-pixels (auto-focus)
• Video: Hi-Resolution VGA Video Recording
• Music: Supported formats: MP3, AAC, eAAC+ & WMA
• FM Stereo Radio (RDS)
• Nokia Music Store
• Messaging: SMS / MMS (with video)
• E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, MS Exchange)
• Memory: 100MB (internal) / microSDHC (external)
• microUSB
• Nokia 3.5mm AV connector
• Bluetooth (2.0)
• Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11g)
• AGPS
• Nokia Maps
• Flash Lite 3.0 Support

General:

Front – First of all there is the 2.4 inch QVGA screen. Next are the left and right soft keys. Below these keys are the home, calendar, messaging and back button shortcut keys. Next are the send/receive (or call/hang up) buttons.

In the middle of this is the D-pad for navigation through the phone. In the centre of this is the select button.

Nokia E55 – front view

Keyboard – Compact QWERTY keyboard

Nokia E55 – keyboard view

Top – There is a 3.5mm headphone/handsfree connection and power button on the top of the phone.

Nokia E55 – top view

Bottom – All there is here is the microphone is and the hole for a lanyard/wrist strap.

Nokia E55 – bottom view

Left – There isn’t much on the left side except for the sync/charge connection.

Nokia E55 – left-hand side view

Right – From the left you can see the dedicated camera button, then there is the up/down rocker buttons with a voice control button placed between them.

Nokia E55 – right-hand side view

Back – The battery, sim card and microSD card are housed under the back cover. You can also see the 3.2MP camera and flash. Under this is the loud speaker.

Nokia E55 – back view

Highlights:

• Stylish design
• Light weight
• Good in-call sound quality
• Great battery life

Lowlights:

• Camera quality is disappointing
• The compact QWERTY keyboard take a lot of getting used to

General:

The Nokia E55 is Slim and stylish. It’s lightweight yet feels robust and of good quality. Battery cover is metal with a discrete pattern on it which provides a bit of extra grip. 
As far as I’m aware the E55 is available in two colours. This black and chrome one that I’m reviewing, and a plain chrome one.

The Nokia E55

The screen display is bright and sharp It can sometimes be slightly difficult to view the screen in bright sunlight, but this can be expected with most phones.

In-call sound quality is quite good. It’s active noise reduction helps to eliminate background noise. I made and received a few calls on this phone and I’ve not complaints on the call quality.

The button between the up/down volume keys on the right side of the phone acts as a mute button when on a call. As this phone is directed towards the business market you can imagine that this is quite idea having the mute button so accessible.

The compact QWERTY keyboard was definitely not my cup of tea. I’m just not used to it. Takes quite a bit of getting used to and feels very awkward to use at first because of this. Liking/disliking the keyboard on the E55 will just come down to personal preference though so best to make up your own mind on this.

The Nokia E55 has Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 OS. The home screen can be switched between and business and personal profile/mode so you can set up shortcuts on the home screen to suit. Then you can just toggle between the two modes. The home screen can look quite cluttered. Of course this has been thought of. So, you can select a basic theme which will provide you with a clean home screen.

Although it’s aimed at business users Nokia have still provided N-Gage support so that you can access the vast range of games, and with the 3.5mm headphone jack you can use your own headphones if you want. I normally prefer to use my own headphones so the 3.5mm jack is a plus point here for me.

The Nokia headset/handsfree that comes with the phone has pretty good sound quality too. You do sometimes find that headsets that are packaged with phones can lack quality – not in this case. So, when playing games and listening to music you can make the most of the great audio quality. What’s more – the Nokia E55 has an impressive battery life which means you will get a generous number of hours out of it.

There are quite a few handy applications on the phone . For example, Nokia’s Ovi maps, FM radio, video player, Calendar, etc.

One change from other Nokia handsets is the Mobile Office package. You would normally expect to pay extra in order to be able to edit documents. With the E55 you immediately have the capability to edit documents straight out of the box. It even supports the Office 2007 file formats. This is definitely a phone that means business! 

The E55 also includes a pre-installed dictionary. The English language pack is provided by default but you can download other languages from the Nokia website.

For connectivity, the Nokia E55 offers 3G, WIFI, GPS, Bluetooth and USB connections.
Emailing and messaging seems pretty straightforward. If you use Gmail all you have to do is enter your Gmail user name and password and the phone does the rest for you. It’s simple to navigate through and I would be even better is I could just get used to the compact QWERTY keyboard! The email client also supports other personal and corporate email types such as, IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo! mail, etc.

The browser is not too bad but it can’t compete with the likes of Safari, or Google’s browser. But this is a candy bar style phone so I wouldn’t expect it to be brilliant. It is adequate enough though. It even supports Flash Lite which means that some flash content can be displayed.

As you can probably imagine, the camera on the E55 isn’t one to write home about. But, the phone is designed with business and messaging in mind. It is a 3MP camera and has an LED flash. There is no auto-focus and the pictures taken with the camera are not brilliant. In good lighting you can get a decent picture from it though.

Video recording isn’t any better with the E55. But again, the phone wasn’t designed for this.

Conclusion:

The Nokia E55 is a great looking phone. Amazingly slim and light, yet still feels pretty robust.

The battery life is excellent and the sound quality for media and calls is great.
As marketed, this phone is designed for messaging. I would definitely agree. It’s simple to use and navigate through. Of course, if texting/messaging is something you do a lot the compact QWERTY keyboard will definitely be a big decision maker if you’re considering this phone.

Reviewed by: Emma