E50 Business Device

Nokia E50 The Business Device
Announced in May in 2008, the Nokia E50 got a 1.3 megapixel camera, support microSD memory card for file storage expansion. The Nokia E50 comes with a set of pre-installed business applications that help increase the productivity of mobile profesionals. The Nokia Team Suite, part of the Nokia Office Tools ofering, helps to facilitate conference calls and to initiate push-to-talk sessions with selected team members easily and fast, through a built-in speakerphone. The Nokia E50 also includes a search function enabling fast queries into critical data such as, contacts, emails and mesages. Important business atachments received via email, such as documents, presentations, and spread sheets, can be swiftly accessed via the Quickoffice viewer.

Intorduction :

The Nokia E50 Business Device is a bar-style monoblock quad-band smartphone from Nokia announced May 18, 2006[1] as part of the Eseries, intended primarily for the corporate business market. It includes sophisticated e-mail support for Nokia’s Intellisync Wireless Email, BlackBerry Connect, Visto Mobile, Activesync Mail for Exchange, and Altexia, along with the ability to view Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel attachments, and PDF documents but it cannot be used for editing these. Device to device synchronisation is possible with Data transfer application. Features include EDGE, Bluetooth 2.0, a 1.3 megapixel camera, a MicroSD memory-card slot, and digital music player functionality. This unit does not support UMTS, Wi-Fi, or FM radio.

Design :
As can be seen from above the E50's design is relatively simple. There are not as many keys as on other devices (no multimedia key as on the Nseries, or Messaging key as on the E61). This simplicity reflects the target market, but will also be welcomed by those who feel the high end S60 devices are getting increasingly complex. While targeted as an enterprise, device I'm sure its design, S60 status and size will mean it finds some users outside of larger corporations.

The E50 has good connectivity options, with support for IrDA (IrCOMM, IrOBEX and IRTinyTP), Bluetooth 2.0 (including support for enhanced data rates), and USB (via the ubiquitous Nokia Pop-Port. As a quad band GSM phone the E50 should be useable almost anywhere in the world. For trans-Atlantic travellers who often miss the 850 band from their current phone the E50 should result in a noticeable improvement of coverage when in the US. Data transfer is provided by EDGE and GPRS. Via PC Suite the E50 can be used as a modem. PC Suite also allows for desktop sync, desktop message sending and contacts editing, third party application installation, phone backup and multimedia transfer.

Feature :

The E50 has a QVGA (240 x 320) screen which has a sensor and automatically adjusts its brightness as necessary (this can be user controlled too). The quality of the screen is excellent, even under bright lights, and considerably eases reading of the screen when compared to lower resolution devices. QVGA screens are becoming standard for higher end phones, but are still some what rare in the mid-tier. The QVGA screen also means the E50 is better able to take advantage of the changes (smoother fonts, resizeable UI) in S60 3rd Edition when compared to lower resolution devices. The keyboard, especially when using number keys, is excellent. There are no gaps between the keys, but they are sufficiently large, have good tactile feedback and are ridged such that even those with larger fingers should have no problems. The softkeys, application key, cancel key, and the send and end keys are a little smaller, and took a few moments to get used to, but should present no problems. The joystick was responsive to directional touches (it is a stick, rather than a four way button), was also good and is given plenty of room, which should mean less accidental key presses when navigating through lists and menus.

On the back of the device is an optional 1.3 Megapixels camera. The E50 will come in two variants, one with a camera and one without. This is a result of corporate hostility towards camera phones. Cameraphones are often held up as potential industrial espionage tools, although the reality is that the USB memory stick (or a phone, such as the E50, with a USB mass storage device profile) have a much greater potential to cause problems. The camera captures stills at an unspectacular 1280x960 pixels and video at 176x144 (15 fps). There's a 4x digital zoom and the useful combination of scene modes and colour adjustments in the onboard camera software.

Keyfeatures :

Features of the Nokia E50 include:

• Series 60 3rd Edition Symbian SmartPhone
• 1.3 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom
• Video camera (176 x 144 pixels, 15 frames per second)
• Display: TFT, 262,144 colors, 240 x 320 pixels
• Music Player (MP3/AAC)
• Voice commands (name dialling & application launching)
• Speed dialing
• Speakerphone
• Voice memo recording
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP protocols)
• Attachment viewer for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel (Microsoft Office 2000, XP and 2003)
• Symbian and Java applications
• Caller ID with image
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB & infrared
• Memory: 70 Mbytes plus support for microSD card
• XHTML web browser
• WAP, GPRS, EDGE
• Vibration alert
• Quadband
• Size: 113 x 44 x 15.5 mm
• Weight: 104g
• Talktime: 7 hours
• Battery standby: 215 hours

Problem :
There are, however, numerous problems with the E50. First of all, like many Symbian SmartPhones, its user interface is slow and the software is prone to crashing. Also, like many of our users have commented, the font size is tiny, so it's hard to make use of the advanced features. Given that the target user is likely to be older than average, this is an inexcusable design fault. The Nokia E60 is a much better option.

Solution :

This is a very sleek looking phone and to some extent is packed full of some good features providing that you can apply them to some use or other. Its got a good size and slim enough to fit into shirt pocket. Screen size is adequate and weight is OK but would be even lighter if it didnt have the metale casing for a back. Downside: THIS IS MY SECOND E50 - During a conversation I get told by many people that there is an echo on the line and usually its the person that I am talking to telling me that they can here themselves again. When using it with my Parrot Handfree kit in my car there is a very loud buzzing noise that I can get rid of and it seems intermittant. Occasionally its fine and you can hear a slight humming sound and then other times its so loud that you have to disconnect it from the parrot and talk into the handset. It gets warm when talking. The software in the phone is slow sometimes especially when your trying to navigate the phonebook and when trying to disconnect a call it seems to hang for a short period. The mini joystick is a bit annoying sometimes as it ends up picking the wrong option when navigating the menu. The built in voice command option only works when you are in the voice command option. All in all I give it a 1. I think Nokia might want to rethink this one, Shame really.