Nokia E5 Usability Review

Earlier on, we’ve had the unboxing of the Nokia E5 with a brief look on the device itself. Just to recap, the E5 is targeted to a segment of the market that Nokia calls “life-builders”, people who are in their mid 20s who have a young family and are looking for a functional device that can cope with today’s demands but at the fraction of the cost of full-fledged smartphones. So after an extended duration of usage, we share with you our experience with the Nokia E5 and how it performs on a day-to-day use.

Does this diminutive device does what is says on the box? Read on to find out.

First up , let’s take a look at the operating system. The E5 runs on a familiar (and dated) Symbian S60 3rd edition. We’ve used this operating system before and using the E5 feels like walking down in memory lane with some subtle new surprises. The E5 comes with some communication necessities like Mail for Exchange, Quickoffice and even an IM client built in. With all this built-in, the E5 closes the gap with other smartphone rivals in terms of productivity tools.

To add more apps, there’s the Ovi Store which provides a wide choice of applications for your device such as games, social networks, utilities and more. Searching for apps on the Ovi Store is a breeze thanks to its clean layout which even includes screenshots, ratings, reviews and related apps. In our opinion, the Ovi Store is one of the better executions of an app store this side of the Apple App Store. During our usage, we found the operating system to be stable. We could hardly recall any instances where the E5 crashed on hung on us.

Typing

The E5 comes with a QWERTY keyboard that is very similar to the one you get on the E71 and E72 but the the E7x series feeling decidedly more premium. The keyboard took some getting use to but once that is over and done with, we feel that this is among the better mobile keyboards out there. We would even go as far as saying that the keyboard on the E5 is better than that on the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and BlackBerry Torch. BB fans might hate us for this but our fingers prefer the E5’s keyboard to the the ones on the BlackBerry. With the E5, we were able to type faster, made fewer mistakes and felt more comfortable.

The rubbery keys on the E5’s keyboard has a distinct curved tip which provides sufficient feedback telling you that you’ve positively tapped on a key. Users with larger digits might find using the E5 keyboard a challenge as you could be pressing adjacent buttons at the same time on a single press.

The QWERTY keyboard has an overlay of the traditional 12-button keypad on the centre which can be toggled by the bottom left most key. While most screens on the E5 shows the current input type, some apps doesn’t seem indicate them like in Opera Mini, as a result, you have no idea what input mode the keyboard is on in certain applications.

Web Browsing

The default Nokia Browser works just fine and comes assisted with a mini-map display. Despite this, browsing on the 2.36in small screen is still a bit of a chore though the E5 still manages to render even full desktop of web pages with adequately that it doesn’t strain your eyes.

Text rendering on the E5 is sharp and crisp, delivering a rather pleasant reading experience compared to the HTC Wildfire we tested earlier. Surprisingly the browser on the E5 also supports Flash and you can watch YouTube Flash videos directly, but we wouldn’t recommend it for web embedded videos as the playback is jagged. If you must watch YouTube videos, we recommend the mobile version. It loads up loads up just fine and playback is smooth.

We find the E5’s screen to be pretty decent in terms of sharpness, picture quality and colour reproduction despite having a much a much lower 256K colour count than the usual 16.7M colours that we are often used to. The only complaint of the screen is the hyper-sensitive light sensor especially the E5 is used indoors under normal office lighting. Sometimes the brightness gets turned up to the max without notice.

Connectivity
Managing connectivity was an unnecessarily complicated affair on the E5 especially when trying to switch between mobile 3G data and WiFi connection. After playing around with various apps and services, we got confused as some apps were using 3G while others are using WiFi, at the same time. To solve this, we had to set all apps to “Ask for Connection” each time we start an app in order to be really sure which connection to use.

There isn’t really a workaround for this as it is just the way Nokia S60 OS was designed. We would really like to have a much simple interface for this just like the ones you get on the other smartphone OSes where there is a distinctive OFF/ON switch for both WiFi and cellular data. ON the bright side, the E5 wireless connection manager allows you to set connection priority like having your home or office WiFi as the first choice followed by 3G data as the second.

Connectivity aside, the E5 also functions as a great external 3G modem for your laptop on the go. Just like the iPhone and Android tethering feature, you can simply connect the E5 to your laptop with the supplied the micro USB cable and you’re instantly connected. It’s the simplest setup we’ve come across.

While other devices normally require you to download drivers or sync applications before hand, Nokia was clever enough to include the driver on the bundled 2GB microSD. The moment you plug the E5 on Mass Storage mode, your laptop will install the Nokia PC Internet access driver just like 3G USB modems. No complaints on Internet speeds as the E5 supports HSDPA up to 10.2Mbps, which is higher than most 3G modems in the market.

GPS Navigation

GPS Navigation with Ovi Maps was surprisingly good and we managed to get satellites to lock-on to our device in under a minute when we opened the app for the first time. There are multiple displays available such as arrow view, 2D, 3D and route overview. While trying it on the road, we found the guidance volume was more than loud enough to be heard while driving with the radio switched on.

Despite the small screen, we’re quite satisfied with the GPS capabilities of the E5. However for those who like to refer to on screen guidance often, you may find the E5 screen too small for your liking.

During our 1 hour drive with Ovi Maps running, we used up 50% of the total battery life of the device which is something to be expected. If you plan to use the E5’s Ovi Maps for navigation extensively, we suggest that you buy a car charger since it’s not included in the box.

Camera
The 5MP camera on the E5 is nothing to shout about producing rather average looking shots. So if you’re a die hard Twitpic and Facebook photo uploader, then the E5 might not be the best choice for you. There’s a panorama feature which lets you snap consecutive shots of a particular scene which will then be combined into on panoramic image. It’s a nice feature to have but on the E5, it took quite a long time to process one picture. Check out the sample photos below:

Sample #1 (click for original photo)

Sample #2 (click for original photo)

Panorama Sample (click for original photo)

Flanking the 5MP camera on the E5 is an LED flash which also doubles up as a nifty flashlight that is easily switched on by holding the space bar button. In flashlight mode, we find the E5 provided pretty good illumination in sticky situations like when you’re looking for your house keys in the car or when there’s a power outage.

Conclusion

The E5 is worthy upgrade for the existing entry-level Nokia user that’s looking to step up to a full featured device with a QWERTY keyboard. Although the S60 is rather dated, Nokia have included enough updates and improvements to make the OS useful even by today’s standards. It still does its job and we encoutered no issues multitasking apps.

With similar apps like FourSquare, Facebook and WhatsApp available now for Nokia, the S60 isn’t really far behind from its newer smartphone rivals, although the user experience may not be as fluid. Obviously this won’t be a choice for those who’ve have had already used an iPhone or Android device.

Having said that, the E5 has its own benefits even when compared to iPhone and Android devices like a longer battery life. During our test, intensive usage gave us two full days of battery life. Under normal use, we managed to squeeze a respectable 5 days straight worth of usage.

Value wise, even if you were to compare the E5 to a a BlackBerry Curve 8520, the E5 offers faster 3G connectivity and it feels better built. There is however a cheaper Nokia alternative, the C3 but that runs on a S40 OS and without 3G support.

Comparisons aside, there are people out there who just need a basic phone that works but require some occasional smartphone features. For RM830, the E5 is perfect in delivering what it was promised to do.

Screen Shots