Nokia E55 Review – GSM Arena
Introduction
Sometimes, a phone is nearly perfect, except for that one small thing you want to change. If you felt that way about Nokia E52, the E55 claims to have the answer. Don’t get us wrong – the E52 has killer looks and specs. And the E55… well, like we told you, it’s the same phone save for that one little thing.
Nokia E55 official photo Nokia E55 official photo Nokia E55 official photo Nokia E55 official photo Nokia E55 official photo
Nokia E55 official photos
If QWERTY keyboards are for heavy texters where does half-QWERTY fit? Some would say it’s the same target but different goal. You know, like heavy texting is a bad habit and half-QWERTY is the therapy. Now, now, no need to be too smart. But does it really make typing faster or slower, and how hard it is to learn the new layout? We ran a test to find out.
But more on that later. Thanks to the excellent connectivity options and Office editing out of the box, the E55 keeps your office at arm’s length – whether you’re out to lunch or out of town. Emails, presentations, spreadsheets, memos – you can bring all that everywhere you go. But hey, we’re not saying you should. Thanks to Modes, switching between Business and Personal homescreens makes sure you don’t have to bring work home.
Texting and email go without saying, but the Nokia E55 is one of the best-equipped Symbian devices around. Here’s the rundown:
Key features
* Compact metallic body and extra slim girth (9.9mm)
* Quad-band GSM support
* 3G with HSDPA 10.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps
* half-QWERTY keyboard
* 2.4″ 16M-color display of QVGA resolution
* Symbian OS, S60 UI with FP2
* 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB RAM
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, DLNA support
* Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS support, digital compass
* Accelerometer for screen auto-rotation and turn-to-mute
* One-touch shortcut keys mean “business”
* 3 megapixel enhanced fixed focus camera with LED flash
* Secondary videocall camera
* 60 MB of internal memory, microSD expansion, ships with a 2GB card
* microUSB v2.0
* Standard 3.5mm audio jack
* Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
* FM radio with RDS
* Class-leading audio output quality
* N-Gage gaming support
* Ovi Maps preinstalled with trial turn-by-turn navigation license (10 x 1 days, to be used within 3 months) and lifetime City Explorer license
* User-friendly Mode Switch for swapping two homescreen setups
* Office document editor (with free MS Office 2007 update)
* Remote lock/wipe over-the-air
* Comfortable keypad
* Smart dialing
* Great battery life
Main disadvantages
* Disappointing camera features and performance
* Video recording maxes out at VGA@15fps
* No DivX or XviD support (can be installed, possibly requiring a purchase)
* No TV-out functionality
* Keyboard takes some time getting used to (not too long though)
The Nokia E55 has something of a split personality. The business features are complete but wait till you see what it offers for recreation. N-Gage support gives you access to a host of games, the audio quality is up there with dedicated music players and the huge battery won’t run out of juice until after hours of games and music.
The weekend getaway is also covered – just punch in your destination into Nokia Maps, and the E55 will take you there. It’ll even suggest a list of local attractions.
Unboxing: a little more than E52
Instead of the 1GB card you get with the E52, the E55 comes with a 2GB one of external storage. Everything else in the box is exactly the same. The big bonus over the E52 isn’t in the box really, it’s the lifetime Nokia Maps City Explorer license, complete with 3D landmarks, detailed descriptions, weather forecasts and pedestrian navigation.
We’ve seen better retail packages in the Eseries
The microUSB cable is of the long ones and there’s a one-piece handsfree. There’s of course the mandatory charger, along with an adapter to use with old chargers. There’s also a user manual and this time the computer sync software is supplied on the memory card (you can download it off the company website too).
Nokia E55 360-degree spin
Nokia E52 stands at 116 x 49 x 9.9 mm and has a volume of 54 cc – the exact measurements of the E52. It is extremely pocketable and remarkably comfortable to handle. Gone are the glory days of the Nokia E71, now it’s neck and neck for the title of slimmest smartphone on the market – Nokia E52 / E55 and Toshiba TG01 are the current competitors but more are coming.
Even with such a slim body, the Nokia E55 is just 2 grams under a hundred, which gives it a really pleasant solid feel. The extensive use of metal is the main cause for that and we are pretty happy Nokia chose to continue this trend with yet another Eseries handset.
Design and construction: same phone, different keypad
We’re glad we got the black variety of the E55, otherwise it would’ve been a bit too much of a déjà vu. Yes, the phones are identical. And no, the half-QWERTY keyboard doesn’t make the E55 any less attractive than the E52. We guess enough users will find the keyboard a big improvement over the E52. It doesn’t make it any less obvious though which one is the niche and which one is the mass device. Either way, we’re talking two absolutely stunning lookers.
The metal accents on the handset’s body are a nice thing too see, and they boost both looks and durability. This time even the keys below the display are metal for an extra nice feel to navigating the handset.
The E55 is available in three different colors – Black Aluminium, White Aluminium and Red. Again, our unit in Black Aluminium looks great, the rear being especially classy.
The grooved surface of the rear cover has quite a raw and industrial feel which gives the otherwise slim and refined handset a bit of extra solidity. The front is keen to reply with a glossy silvery frame enclosing the black navigation deck and numpad.
The earpiece of Nokia E55 is placed at the top of the front panel, flanked by the ambient light sensor and the video-call camera.
The etched earpiece has a stylish metallic frame • The metal accents look great
Below is the 2.4″ 16M-color QVGA display. Its quality is quite pleasing with great contrast and brightness for a really vibrant image. In QVGA terms that is – the E55 is hardly up to scratch with high-res displays that are becoming more and more common. Yet, it’s quite hard to find a bigger, higher-res display in a bar-shaped handset in this segment.
The Nokia E55 screen offers uncompromised sunlight legibility, which is a company trademark. No matter how bright the sun outside, you can always read the display comfortably.
Continuing our journey down the front of the handset we come upon the metallic D-pad. It’s large and comfortable enough to use, just like the 8 keys surrounding it. They all offer nice tactile feedback and the metallic finish on most of them is an added bonus.
Essentially, the D-pad and two rocker-styled controls nicely project over a brushed metallic deck that accommodates the two soft keys and the Call and End buttons. The rockers host the menu key and backspace, along with the two typical Eseries one-touch shortcut keys. The latter can be used as shortcuts to four applications of your choice – two handled by short presses, the other two by a press and hold. Their default function is visualized by an icon.
Even some of the keys are metallic this time
Next is the half-QWERTY keyboard. Initially we had some concerns about it – it certainly isn’t the most common type. If you’re not familiar with this type of arrangement, here’s the gist – imagine a regular QWERTY keyboard but group the keys by two, so they form pairs like QW, ER, TY and so on. The numbers are arranged in the typical way on the middle three columns, making dialing a number a familiar experience.
Despite having 8 more keys than the E52, the keyboard is very comfortable and the keys are reasonably big. The rows are tangibly terraced for very good touch orientation. Still, there are some key combinations, which are awkward, like Shift + M for example. It takes some time before you stop bumping your thumbs.
The keypad is very comfortable and the buttons are big enough
For typing, you have two options – predictive input on and off. With text prediction turned off, one tap of a key enters the first character, while subsequent taps alternate between the characters assigned to that key. There’s a shift key which works in two ways – a tap switches between modes (lower case, all caps, prediction on and off) or you can press and hold it, which works exactly like on a computer keyboard.
There’s also a function key, which is used to access the alternative symbols (punctuation and digits), a double tap on it locks this behavior until you press it a third time. A symbol key is also here to let you pick less common symbols from a pop-up chart.
Prediction works a bit like T9, it’s just that you have two letters per key rather than three or four, which makes the guessing the correct word more likely. The symbol key can be used to alternate between the listed suggestions. There’s also word completion, which can greatly speed up typing.
Going through the drill
We did a little typing test to compare the speed of the E55 keyboard against a regular 12-key keypad. Initially, we had to look for each letter, but in no time we were beating our previous times. Here are the results:
Training E55 keyboard Standard 12-key keypad % faster, E55 over standard keypad
First time use 2:53 min. 1:34 min. - 84%
15 minutes of use 1:17 min. 1:27 min. 12%
1 day, moderate use 0:55 min. 1:05 min. 15%
As you can guess, we used one and the same text sample for each of the tests. Here’s the sample we chose:
I bought a new phone – it’s great. My new number is 12345678. I’ll be late for the meeting on Monday, so start without me.
It’s a message that covers some of the basic typing hurdles – punctuation, switching between letter and number mode, repeated letters, capital letters, and letters that share keys on both the Nokia E55 keyboard as well as on the standard 12-key one.
We used a person with rusty texting skills for the test, so the first result is very near a “no training” result. Sure, they won’t qualify for an SMS typing competition but what’s important here is the learning curve – it’s not that steep as expected at all.
Design and construction (continued)
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. The white backlighting is strong and pleasing to make the E55 perfect to handle in the dark.
The backlighting is nice and even
The 3.5mm standard audio jack and the power button are at the top of the Nokia E55. This time we are talking a normal button (it’s a bit small though), rather than the unfortunate red knob on the Nokia E71 and E66.
The 3.5mm standard audio jack and the power key on top
On the right side of the Nokia E55 we come upon the two volume keys, the voice command key and the dedicated shutter key. They are all a bit small for our taste but with a nice press. The voice command key is sunk a bit too low though. Back in Nokia E51 there was no dedicated camera key at all, so we welcome its addition here.
The Eseries trademark three key combo and the shutter key are on the right side
The microUSB port is on the left side of the handset. It has no protective cover (unlike the E71) to prevent it from getting dust in. By the way the audio jack is exposed too.
There’s no protection for the microUSB slot • There’s hardly anything going on at the bottom
The steel back cover of Nokia E55 is a certainly one of its best parts. It is perfectly immune to fingerprints and we have to say it looks great in black.
Rearside we find the 3 megapixel fixed-focus camera lens, along with a LED flash. The specs alone hint that imaging is yet again bottom of the Eseries priority list but we will get back to that in more detail later on.
The E55 looks a treat from the back • The 3MP shooter and loudspeaker grill
A nice little latch at the base of the battery cover allows you to release it quickly and easily. The all-metal part pops out gently and is locked back into position without any hassle. Under the cover we find the microSD card slot and the massive 1500 mAh Li-Po BP-4L battery. With a power plant like this one, the Nokia E55 is said to last 672 hours of stand-by or 8 hours of talk time and that’s more than impressive.
Pressing this button releases the battery cover • An impressive battery by all means
Forgive us for stating the obvious – the Nokia E55 is flawlessly built just like the E52. The phone looks great and working with it is a pleasure. Typing sure takes a bit of time to get to speed but the wonderfully ergonomic keys are duly appreciated. The best thing about the handset is the rare choice of keypad doesn’t compromise the looks and ergonomics, which did impress us big time on the E52. All in all, we’ve got an almost complete replica here and if you’re to consider any of the two handsets your choice will boil down to the type of keypad. The commendable ergonomics, durability and impressive styling are always part of the deal.
User interface: S60 3rd is the Eseries game
So, as it turns out the only hardware difference between Nokia E52 and Nokia E55 is the half-QWERTY keyboard. So, we guess we can safely go on with the software. Which means we can sit back and relax – we’ve done our homework already with the E52. And there are no differences at all.
Nokia E55 runs on Symbian 9.3 OS with the Series60 3rd Edition user interface. It has Feature Pack 2 like the E52 and the E75 side-slider or the upcoming E72.
More importantly though, the Nokia E55 is powered by the same 600 MHz CPU as the E52. In Symbian terms, that’s a lot, not even Nokia’s current flagship – the N97 – can match it.
Nokia E55 and its sibling the E52 run on Symbian S60 3.2 much like Nokia E75
The E55 comes with the new S60 icons for a pinch of 5th edition (touch) styling. The interface can freely rotate to landscape mode thanks to the accelerometer, which also offers silencing calls and snoozing the alarm by flipping your phone over.
The accelerometer sensor has a number of settings
The phone’s main menu has two view modes: a 4 x 3 grid of icons and a list. However, with the E55 you cannot opt for having animated icons like on some other Nokia phones. This is probably just another way of reiterating the business focus of the phone. At least the font size is widely configurable depending on your preferences.
The main menu has two view modes
Inside the main menu, the circle next to the icon of a running application is a well known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications that are still running in the background.
Almost every bit of the interface has a landscape mode too
The active stand-by mode goes without saying on the Nokia E55. This is a convenient way to add shortcuts to all your favorite applications on the homescreen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access.
In addition you can bring up to 14 different kinds of notifications on the homescreen: email boxes and voice mail, through calendar and to-dos, to the currently running track in the Music player and FM radio. How many of those 14 get displayed is completely up to you.
Basic homescreen, active stand-by or talking theme
Each of the one-touch keys (messaging and calendar) can be customized to access any feature (actually two per key) of choice. The two soft keys functions are user-configurable too.
If for some reason the active stand-by mode isn’t your cup of tea you can use the basic theme or switch to the talking theme instead. The basic theme leaves the screen pretty bare and lets you assign shortcuts to the D-pad while the talking theme…well, talks. It brings four shortcuts to your homescreen and tells you what the currently selected one is.
Once you enter any of the menus, it tells you which menu you have opened and sometimes gives you some extra useful information about it. For example, when you enter the clock application, it tells you the current time. It would even read out the names of the contacts.
The talking theme has its own clock application
This talking theme is pretty handy to use when you can’t look at the phone. It might be a good idea to activate it while driving for example so you don’t need to actually look at the phone should you need it for something.
Another handy feature of recent Eseries handsets allows you to toggle between two different phone setups – the so-called Mode Switcher. Each of them can be customized with its own theme and homescreen applications for maximum usability. This way you can have both a leisure and a business profile and switch between them with a single click.
The built-in memory is 60MB, which is a decent amount. The included 2GB microSD memory card comes in very handy for extending it, but higher capacity cards up to 16GB are supported.
As we managed to confirm, Nokia E55 has no problem handling a 16GB microSD card. Accessing applications or any other files on the memory card is quick and you probably won’t notice any difference compared to accessing data in the phone memory.
As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It is launched by the dedicated key on the right side of the E55 and does a good job. It’s fully speaker-independent and recognizes a very high percentage of the user commands.
And finally, there’s a nice security feature known as Remote Lock. If your Nokia E55 gets stolen or lost, you simply send a coded SMS message to remotely lock the phone. After three unsuccessful attempts to unlock it, it wipes itself clean of all personal or sensitive info. You might not get your Nokia E55 back, but at least nobody will get your personal data either.
The out-of-the box customization options for the user interface of the Nokia E55 are a modest count, to suit the handset’s business slant. There are three themes preinstalled on the handset, each in two flavors – business and personal. You can assign a different theme to each of the modes – the preinstalled ones have subtle differences, just enough to indicate which mode you’re in.
So if you are into changing those icons and colors you will have to download new ones online….but don’t worry, there’s plenty to choose from out there.
Great Symbian phonebook
The phonebook of the Nokia E55 does a tremendous job, offering storage space for a virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields with all the available memory potentially usable for that purpose. We can’t imagine anyone managing to fill that up. You are also treated to as many fields for each contact as you like and some other nice extras, so there’s very little reason to complain.
Welcome to the phonebook
Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name, and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any name. You can pick whether you want the SIM contacts, the service numbers or the phone memory contacts to be displayed or alternatively show them all at the same time.
Some of the available settings
Predictive search, contact list back-up as well as grouping are also available. The final nice extra is the setting to search for contacts on a remote server (Mail for Exchange or Intellisync).
Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you are able to think of any. Personal ringtones and video can also be assigned. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give a specific ringtone to each group.
Good luck trying to find a field that Nokia missed * you can even rename a label
The Call log application can hold up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key in standby.
Detailed info of your past communications is to be found in the call log
If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. You can even filter the entries (by contact or by type), a useful feature if you’re looking for a specific call.
Telephony: no worries
With Nokia E55 you are extremely unlikely to experience any reception issues. Sound during calls is very clear and free of any interferences. It’s not too loud at the loudest setting but it will do great unless you’re in a very noise environment. Like quite a number of Nokia handsets, the E55 features advanced noise cancelling, which usually works quite nice to filter background noise.
Nokia E55 also has a Smart dialing feature, which helps you quickly find a contact straight on the standby screen.
Smart dial
Nokia E55 features the advanced Communication Manager out of the box. With this quite useful application you can opt for various settings – accepting only calls from your contacts, from all non-private numbers or from anyone. You can create your own filters with quite extensive settings – including rejecting a call with SMS.
In addition you can set up different ringing profiles that can be scheduled to activate at a given time (hour and day). You can even enable an option to have the E55 say the name of the caller.
The advanced communication manager
The Nokia E55 also has support for VoIP calls – you just enter your account details and you are all set.
We conducted our traditional speakerphone test with Nokia E55 and it achieved an average result. Here is how it compares to same of the other handsets we have tested. You can find information on the actual testing process, along with the full list of tested devices here.
The business of messaging
E-series devices are mostly about messaging and connectivity so we are not surprised that they got this part right. The E55 is a wiz at all sorts of messages and won’t shy away from viewing and even editing attached office documents.
On the whole, E55’s great email client and the ability to view and edit office documents will really help keep you up to date while you’re away from the office. Just like E75 and E52, E55 also comes with the Nokia Messaging software preloaded along with a lifetime service subscription.
There are three message editors aboard: SMS and MMS share the first one, audio and e-mail have their own. The SMS editor is the familiar application for all Symbian S60 smartphones.
It goes without saying that a delivery report can be activated. The reports pop up on screen, once the message reaches the addressee and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu.
When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts you to either save it to the Drafts folder or discard it.
The audio message, albeit technically a type of MMS, was obviously deemed worthy of a dedicated editor. It allows you to either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.
The new email client (first featured on E75) has better looks and better messaging organization than the ones in the past. Each of the folders of your mailbox can now be sorted by whatever filters you might like and can then be searched if necessary.
You can also set what the folders preview should look like, i.e. how many lines should be given to each entry, whether title dividers should be applied etc.
The email client supports a wide range of personal and corporate email standards such as IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail etc.
Encryption is also enabled, as well as mobile VPN support for connecting to secure corporate Intranets.
Quite naturally, the Nokia E55 supports the ultra easy email setup we’ve been treated to recently. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start enjoying email-on-the-go. The Nokia E55 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.
Image gallery: Nseries feel, Eseries method
The image gallery was a pleasant surprise – it’s the same as the one found in Nseries phones and looks great. The speed of photo browsing increases if you press and hold the direction buttons on the D-pad. This allows quick skipping of tons of files if you’re not in the habit of sorting out your memory card regularly.
Unlike, say, the Nokia N85, zooming here is very speedy, thanks to the zippy 600MHz processor. It does slow down a bit when you get over 100% but it will go up to 400% zoom. Zooming is done in small increments (about 10%) and panning is quite fast too.
The gallery offers a nice slide show with customizable effects and delay between slides. You can also choose the direction of the slideshow – forward or backward from the currently selected photo and the track to go with it. Music can also be switched off if you prefer.
The gallery also has a very good picture tagging system. In addition to geotagging, which is automatically handled by the camera, you can add as many tags as you like to each photo and then use them as filters. There’s also the option to organize photos in Albums.
Music player: Symbian regular
Full-featured music ability is not supposed to make or break a business device but the music player of the Nokia E55 is still pretty decent and we set our hopes for good audio quality high when we saw that standard 3.5mm audio jack.
The lack of dedicated music keys is easily overcome by the smooth D-pad control. There is a huge number of audio formats supported including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. M3U playlists are also managed seamlessly and transferred files are added to the music library trouble-free by choosing the refresh option.
Filtering tracks by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available.
The player comes with five equalizer presets, bass booster and stereo widening effect. You can also create new equalizer presets if the preloaded ones won’t do.
Finally, being one of Nokia’s best equipped phones, the Nokia E55 naturally also includes support for the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which allows listening to music on a Bluetooth stereo headset.
Decent video player
The Nokia E55 features Real player for playing your video clips. The video player works in portrait or fullscreen landscape mode. The softkey functions are hidden in full screen so they don’t get in the way, and they only pop up when a key is pressed.
The relatively big screen and the MP4 video clips support add up to a passable video watching experience but you will probably resort to another player anyway. The reason for this is quite simple – the E55 lacks DivX and XviD support out of the box. Luckily, finding applications for the S60 3.2 that support those codecs is a fairly easy task (though they can be paid).
FM radio with RDS
The Nokia E55 sports stereo FM radio with RDS, controlled by the well known radio app. Upon starting, the app asks about your location in order to set up the proper frequencies for your area.
The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. Scanning for alternative frequencies when traveling can also be set to automatic. You can save up to 50 radio stations and the option to play through the loudspeaker is available.
Unsurprisingly, the audio quality of the Nokia E55 is an a perfect match to that of the E52. The Finnish company has once again demonstrated that there is no reason why the users should be made to choose between business functionality or good audio .
We can safely say that the two most recent bar phones – E52 and E55 are the best performer in terms of audio quality that the Eseries have ever seen, overtaking even the E75. They have better frequency response, stereo crosstalk and distortion levels than their side-sliding sibling and that seems enough to us to announce it as the new Eseries lead-singer.
Camera: not a priority
The Nokia E55 means business but imaging is not part of its job description. The 3 megapixel camera has only a LED flash and sadly, no autofocus. “Enhanced fixed focus” is here to cater for close-ups but as our tests have confirmed in the past, the new Nokia “catch-phrase” doesn’t really mean you’re getting more sharpness in close-ups or shorter minimal shooting distance.
Actually, the camera user interface is the only good part of the E55 snapper. Using our favorite tabbed interface, the camera offers extensive settings: from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects which are labeled color tones.
The camera user interface is pretty familiar
A gridline can also be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing you photos using the photographic rule-of-thirds. Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic.
The sequence mode and self-timer are nothing new. The flash can be set to four positions: automatic, always on, red-eye reduction and always off.
Small font tooltips are displayed to help you understand what the phone is doing at each specific moment (processing image, for example).
You can also customize the toolbar deciding on shortcuts to display for which settings and in what order.
Image quality
The image quality of E55 is decent, albeit hardly spectacular. Contrast is good, but the dynamic range is not on par and colors are somewhat dull. Noise levels are low, but that is achieved through noise-reduction that smears away fine details and textures. The sharpening algorithm on the other hand is way too harsh and produces visible artifacts in the photo.
We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia E55. You can check out what that test is all about here.
Here’s a comparison of the camera on the E55 and the one on the E52. The E55 has an edge in resolved detail. Its processing seems better even though this time the images are slightly oversharpened, instead of slightly too soft. Maybe the next time they will get it perfect?
Video recording
Video recording doesn’t improve our impressions of the E55. The business-minded handset manages VGA videos at 15 fps, which is far from stellar but is certainly better than what E71 and E66 offered.
The quality of the recorded video is not very good and even if 15 fps is acceptable to you, the E55 is not a camcorder. There’s a fair bit of detail captured until of course it is periodically smeared by heavy compression.
Here is a sample video for you to check out.
Connectivity: back to the A-list
It’s time to check out the connectivity options. This is a morale booster indeed for the E55 and it sure takes advantage.
The E55 is truly on fire where data transfer is in question – it just has it all: from Bluetooth v2.0 and USB v2.0 to Wi-Fi and 3G. Furthermore, the 3G comes with HSPA support for the fastest network data transfers – up to 10.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink.
A microSD card slot is also on board, under the battery cover. It might just be the quickest and most convenient way of transferring data.
The standard 3.5mm audio jack is also there and the only thing missing that we can think of is TV-out functionality.
Web browser agrees with YouTube
Browsing the internet on a Nokia smartphone is definitely a positive experience. The E55 is no exception with its excellent page rendering – most web pages look like they do on a desktop computer.
The virtual mouse cursor is easy to control and generally works great. The D-pad control is not as comfortable as Samsung’s optical joystick (think Samsung i7110, for instance) or BlackBerry’s trackball but still does the job.
Browsing GSMArena.com on the E55
A mini-map can be activated and it even appears by itself when you scroll longer, which helps you navigate complex websites without excessive scrolling. The zoom level is also easily adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses. The web browser also offers fullscreen view mode.
Along with the usual key shortcuts, the browser in E55 offers a toolbar, which can be launched by pressing 1 or long pressing on the center key on an empty area of the page. You can customize which shortcuts are on the toolbar – up to seven shortcuts like “Subscribe to feeds” or “Bookmark manager”.
The new toolbar
The Nokia E55 browser features built-in full Flash support. It handled many of the Flash sites we threw at it, but chocked on others (games most often). Flash content for version 9 and up seem to be the culprit.
Flash video handled seamlessly
Flash video is mostly not a problem for the E55 web browser – you can watch video on the full-featured versions of YouTube, DailyMotion and the like. Not all however, Vimeo didn’t work, for instance.
Top-notch PIM and Office 2007 support
Time-management is another business phone virtue. There’s no wonder then that the Nokia E55 has one of the most elaborate organizer packages we’ve seen. There are a lot of nice applications, all very user-friendly and functional.
The trip starts with the calendar. It has four different types of view – to-do, weekly, daily and agenda as well as five types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Meeting request, Memo, Anniversary and To-do.
Setting up an event
The agenda view mode is relatively new to Nokia handsets and is really nice – it allows the dates of the month and the events for the selected day to appear simultaneously on the screen.
Day, week and agenda views
Mobile office is also duly covered, with seamless handling of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Furthermore, unlike most other Nokia handsets out there, editing documents is supported right out of the box.
With the Nokia E55 you won’t need to pay extra for editing your office documents. And there’s another thing you get for free – support for Office 2007 documents (.docx, etc.)
The E55 also supports document editing out of the box
A PDF reader is also part of the Nokia E55 preinstalled content and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.
A PDF reader is also available • ZIP manager
The other pre-bundled organizing and time-management applications are: a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough.
The ActiveNotes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes.
Some of the other organizer apps: unit converter, calculator and ActiveNotes
The Nokia E55 alarm clock application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name and start time. You can also customize the snooze time from the settings menu.
The E55 allows dozens of alarms to be set simultanelously
The useful “Search” application is also present on the Nokia E55. Its reserved space in the active stand-by menu no longer comes as a surprise. After all, an application this useful really deserves to be conveniently placed.
The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia based on a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and results are then listed.
If it’s on the phone the Search app will find it
Finally, the Nokia E55 features a dictionary with a really rich database. English comes pre-installed but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website.
The dictionary has a rich database
The World Traveler app helps you when visiting a new city – it’ll display weather forecast, it also offers a world clock, info on foreign currency, flights and even a 3D globe that marks your home and current location.
The traveler app can be quite helpful when travelling abroad
Thanks to the wireless presenter you can handle presentations straight from your phone
GPS does well
The Nokia E55 comes complete with a built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS and Ovi Maps preinstalled. Voice-guided navigation comes at a price, however, you get 10 1-day drive licenses that come with the phone (must be used within 3 months after purchasing the handset) and walk navigation is completely free for the owners of E55.
The preinstalled version of the Ovi Maps is 3.0 and as usual it’s pretty nice to work with. It has really detailed map coverage of a huge number of countries and a lot of extras such as traffic information, city guides and so on. Sadly, the extra features need to be purchased separately, as must the voice-guidance after the trial period has expired.
Nokia maps has four different view modes
The app also has very decent looks and easily customizable route planning algorithms. Our favorite feature is the 3D view mode, which unfortunately has to be turned on every time you restart Maps – that’s an odd one, no doubt about that.
Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and simply use the phone as an electronic map. The nice thing about it is that you can actually preload the map content, so you don’t need to access the wireless network to download that on the go.
Nokia E55 also features a digital compass. In order for it to work, you need the map zoomed on your current GPS position. The compass (a magnetometer sensor) is turned on by default, but it doesn’t work while turn-by-turn navigation is engaged. It’s quite useful while making your way around on foot though, as it rotates the map to match even your slightest change of direction.
If you don’t fancy using Nokia Maps, you can opt for any of the numerous third-party applications available on the market, there’s no shortage of those.
The overall impression of the Nokia E55 GPS functionality is positive, with the GPS sensitivity pretty acceptable. It is good enough for most users’ needs and won’t make too many people look for alternatives.
Classic and N-Gage gaming
The Nokia E55 comes with two games preinstalled, both of which are pastime classics.
The first one, called Block Cascade Fusion is a variety of Tetris, in which color also comes into play – instead of just making lines, you have to line up 5 or more blocks of the same color horizontally or vertically. The changes in the rules take some time getting used to – the lines of 5 or more same-color blocks disappear only during the fusion… blocks are dropping frantically, while you’re trying to figure out what the point is. It is part of the fun, so we won’t spoil it.
Block Cascade Fusion
The other option is Top Hit Solitaires bringing 15 types of solitaire, with classics such as Klondike and Freecell (if you ever owned a PC you’ve played them).
Top Hits Solitaires
While it doesn’t come preinstalled, you can install N-Gage on the Nokia E55, just head to www.ngage.com and follow the instructions. Strangely for a business-minded phone, there’s full N-gage support. No need to tell you, there was no free activation code in our retail box.
Final words
The Nokia E55 is a limited edition E52. The good thing is the half-QWERTY handset is not limited in any way compared to its mainstream sibling. OK, save perhaps in terms of demand. But Nokia must be aware of that and know their market well enough. We guess it makes sense to duplicate a great package that’s likely to sell very well just to test a concept, which the company is trying for the first time. Who knows, they may’ve struck gold with the half QWERTY keyboard. And if they didn’t, it’s no big deal. The extra R&D costs are perhaps close to zero and they still have two great phones, at least one of which will sell.
Not the least, the Eseries fleet is growing stronger. The E55 is closing the gap between Eseries candybars and devices like E71, E72 and E75, so there is a smartphone for each and every user. Eseries have always aspired to be the ultimate in business phones and now they’re also trying to be the most flexible. There are handsets for heavy texters (E71, E72, E75, etc.) and heavy talkers (E51, E52). The E55 is headed to the stores and trying to bridge both worlds.
So, the E55 has a very special place in the Eseries lineup and in a way its fate is less in the hands of the competition, and more in the hands of its own kind. We don’t think a half-QWERTY keyboard is a liability in a phone of great build quality, excellent features and outstanding exterior. But some users may be asking themselves why they should choose the E55 over an E71 or an E72.
As to competition, the E55 seems to outclass the likely rivals, especially when it comes to looks. The Eseries pedigree guarantees top class business performance too, but there are still a number of handsets that can hope to steal some of the E55 market. Those who don’t like Symbian will perhaps want to check out the WinMo based Samsung B7320 OmniaPRO and the newly announced B7330 OmniaPRO, which we just previewed. RIM’s BlackBerry Curve 8520 is another viable option and recent enough to get the attention of users. Neither of those messengers has the Eseries charisma but decent spec sheets, alternative OS and – not the least – full QWERTY keyboards give them a bit of a weight.
To wrap it up, the Nokia E55 and E52 are the same handset, so E for excellence goes both ways. E for massive earnings we’re not so sure about. But that doesn’t mean a half-QWERTY keyboard has let down an excellent device. The E55 is as capable, user friendly, solidly built and absolutely gorgeous as the E52. Which one is yours?
This is the full review from http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e55-review-396p10.php
Sometimes, a phone is nearly perfect, except for that one small thing you want to change. If you felt that way about Nokia E52, the E55 claims to have the answer. Don’t get us wrong – the E52 has killer looks and specs. And the E55… well, like we told you, it’s the same phone save for that one little thing.
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Nokia E55 official photos
If QWERTY keyboards are for heavy texters where does half-QWERTY fit? Some would say it’s the same target but different goal. You know, like heavy texting is a bad habit and half-QWERTY is the therapy. Now, now, no need to be too smart. But does it really make typing faster or slower, and how hard it is to learn the new layout? We ran a test to find out.
But more on that later. Thanks to the excellent connectivity options and Office editing out of the box, the E55 keeps your office at arm’s length – whether you’re out to lunch or out of town. Emails, presentations, spreadsheets, memos – you can bring all that everywhere you go. But hey, we’re not saying you should. Thanks to Modes, switching between Business and Personal homescreens makes sure you don’t have to bring work home.
Texting and email go without saying, but the Nokia E55 is one of the best-equipped Symbian devices around. Here’s the rundown:
Key features
* Compact metallic body and extra slim girth (9.9mm)
* Quad-band GSM support
* 3G with HSDPA 10.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps
* half-QWERTY keyboard
* 2.4″ 16M-color display of QVGA resolution
* Symbian OS, S60 UI with FP2
* 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB RAM
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, DLNA support
* Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS support, digital compass
* Accelerometer for screen auto-rotation and turn-to-mute
* One-touch shortcut keys mean “business”
* 3 megapixel enhanced fixed focus camera with LED flash
* Secondary videocall camera
* 60 MB of internal memory, microSD expansion, ships with a 2GB card
* microUSB v2.0
* Standard 3.5mm audio jack
* Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
* FM radio with RDS
* Class-leading audio output quality
* N-Gage gaming support
* Ovi Maps preinstalled with trial turn-by-turn navigation license (10 x 1 days, to be used within 3 months) and lifetime City Explorer license
* User-friendly Mode Switch for swapping two homescreen setups
* Office document editor (with free MS Office 2007 update)
* Remote lock/wipe over-the-air
* Comfortable keypad
* Smart dialing
* Great battery life
Main disadvantages
* Disappointing camera features and performance
* Video recording maxes out at VGA@15fps
* No DivX or XviD support (can be installed, possibly requiring a purchase)
* No TV-out functionality
* Keyboard takes some time getting used to (not too long though)
Nokia E55 live shots
The Nokia E55 has something of a split personality. The business features are complete but wait till you see what it offers for recreation. N-Gage support gives you access to a host of games, the audio quality is up there with dedicated music players and the huge battery won’t run out of juice until after hours of games and music.
The weekend getaway is also covered – just punch in your destination into Nokia Maps, and the E55 will take you there. It’ll even suggest a list of local attractions.
Unboxing: a little more than E52
Instead of the 1GB card you get with the E52, the E55 comes with a 2GB one of external storage. Everything else in the box is exactly the same. The big bonus over the E52 isn’t in the box really, it’s the lifetime Nokia Maps City Explorer license, complete with 3D landmarks, detailed descriptions, weather forecasts and pedestrian navigation.
We’ve seen better retail packages in the Eseries
The microUSB cable is of the long ones and there’s a one-piece handsfree. There’s of course the mandatory charger, along with an adapter to use with old chargers. There’s also a user manual and this time the computer sync software is supplied on the memory card (you can download it off the company website too).
Nokia E55 360-degree spin
Nokia E52 stands at 116 x 49 x 9.9 mm and has a volume of 54 cc – the exact measurements of the E52. It is extremely pocketable and remarkably comfortable to handle. Gone are the glory days of the Nokia E71, now it’s neck and neck for the title of slimmest smartphone on the market – Nokia E52 / E55 and Toshiba TG01 are the current competitors but more are coming.
Even with such a slim body, the Nokia E55 is just 2 grams under a hundred, which gives it a really pleasant solid feel. The extensive use of metal is the main cause for that and we are pretty happy Nokia chose to continue this trend with yet another Eseries handset.
Design and construction: same phone, different keypad
We’re glad we got the black variety of the E55, otherwise it would’ve been a bit too much of a déjà vu. Yes, the phones are identical. And no, the half-QWERTY keyboard doesn’t make the E55 any less attractive than the E52. We guess enough users will find the keyboard a big improvement over the E52. It doesn’t make it any less obvious though which one is the niche and which one is the mass device. Either way, we’re talking two absolutely stunning lookers.
The metal accents on the handset’s body are a nice thing too see, and they boost both looks and durability. This time even the keys below the display are metal for an extra nice feel to navigating the handset.
The E55 is available in three different colors – Black Aluminium, White Aluminium and Red. Again, our unit in Black Aluminium looks great, the rear being especially classy.
The grooved surface of the rear cover has quite a raw and industrial feel which gives the otherwise slim and refined handset a bit of extra solidity. The front is keen to reply with a glossy silvery frame enclosing the black navigation deck and numpad.
The earpiece of Nokia E55 is placed at the top of the front panel, flanked by the ambient light sensor and the video-call camera.
The etched earpiece has a stylish metallic frame • The metal accents look great
Below is the 2.4″ 16M-color QVGA display. Its quality is quite pleasing with great contrast and brightness for a really vibrant image. In QVGA terms that is – the E55 is hardly up to scratch with high-res displays that are becoming more and more common. Yet, it’s quite hard to find a bigger, higher-res display in a bar-shaped handset in this segment.
The Nokia E55 screen offers uncompromised sunlight legibility, which is a company trademark. No matter how bright the sun outside, you can always read the display comfortably.
Continuing our journey down the front of the handset we come upon the metallic D-pad. It’s large and comfortable enough to use, just like the 8 keys surrounding it. They all offer nice tactile feedback and the metallic finish on most of them is an added bonus.
Essentially, the D-pad and two rocker-styled controls nicely project over a brushed metallic deck that accommodates the two soft keys and the Call and End buttons. The rockers host the menu key and backspace, along with the two typical Eseries one-touch shortcut keys. The latter can be used as shortcuts to four applications of your choice – two handled by short presses, the other two by a press and hold. Their default function is visualized by an icon.
Even some of the keys are metallic this time
Next is the half-QWERTY keyboard. Initially we had some concerns about it – it certainly isn’t the most common type. If you’re not familiar with this type of arrangement, here’s the gist – imagine a regular QWERTY keyboard but group the keys by two, so they form pairs like QW, ER, TY and so on. The numbers are arranged in the typical way on the middle three columns, making dialing a number a familiar experience.
Despite having 8 more keys than the E52, the keyboard is very comfortable and the keys are reasonably big. The rows are tangibly terraced for very good touch orientation. Still, there are some key combinations, which are awkward, like Shift + M for example. It takes some time before you stop bumping your thumbs.
The keypad is very comfortable and the buttons are big enough
For typing, you have two options – predictive input on and off. With text prediction turned off, one tap of a key enters the first character, while subsequent taps alternate between the characters assigned to that key. There’s a shift key which works in two ways – a tap switches between modes (lower case, all caps, prediction on and off) or you can press and hold it, which works exactly like on a computer keyboard.
There’s also a function key, which is used to access the alternative symbols (punctuation and digits), a double tap on it locks this behavior until you press it a third time. A symbol key is also here to let you pick less common symbols from a pop-up chart.
Prediction works a bit like T9, it’s just that you have two letters per key rather than three or four, which makes the guessing the correct word more likely. The symbol key can be used to alternate between the listed suggestions. There’s also word completion, which can greatly speed up typing.
Going through the drill
We did a little typing test to compare the speed of the E55 keyboard against a regular 12-key keypad. Initially, we had to look for each letter, but in no time we were beating our previous times. Here are the results:
Training E55 keyboard Standard 12-key keypad % faster, E55 over standard keypad
First time use 2:53 min. 1:34 min. - 84%
15 minutes of use 1:17 min. 1:27 min. 12%
1 day, moderate use 0:55 min. 1:05 min. 15%
As you can guess, we used one and the same text sample for each of the tests. Here’s the sample we chose:
I bought a new phone – it’s great. My new number is 12345678. I’ll be late for the meeting on Monday, so start without me.
It’s a message that covers some of the basic typing hurdles – punctuation, switching between letter and number mode, repeated letters, capital letters, and letters that share keys on both the Nokia E55 keyboard as well as on the standard 12-key one.
We used a person with rusty texting skills for the test, so the first result is very near a “no training” result. Sure, they won’t qualify for an SMS typing competition but what’s important here is the learning curve – it’s not that steep as expected at all.
Design and construction (continued)
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. The white backlighting is strong and pleasing to make the E55 perfect to handle in the dark.
The backlighting is nice and even
The 3.5mm standard audio jack and the power button are at the top of the Nokia E55. This time we are talking a normal button (it’s a bit small though), rather than the unfortunate red knob on the Nokia E71 and E66.
The 3.5mm standard audio jack and the power key on top
On the right side of the Nokia E55 we come upon the two volume keys, the voice command key and the dedicated shutter key. They are all a bit small for our taste but with a nice press. The voice command key is sunk a bit too low though. Back in Nokia E51 there was no dedicated camera key at all, so we welcome its addition here.
The Eseries trademark three key combo and the shutter key are on the right side
The microUSB port is on the left side of the handset. It has no protective cover (unlike the E71) to prevent it from getting dust in. By the way the audio jack is exposed too.
There’s no protection for the microUSB slot • There’s hardly anything going on at the bottom
The steel back cover of Nokia E55 is a certainly one of its best parts. It is perfectly immune to fingerprints and we have to say it looks great in black.
Rearside we find the 3 megapixel fixed-focus camera lens, along with a LED flash. The specs alone hint that imaging is yet again bottom of the Eseries priority list but we will get back to that in more detail later on.
The E55 looks a treat from the back • The 3MP shooter and loudspeaker grill
A nice little latch at the base of the battery cover allows you to release it quickly and easily. The all-metal part pops out gently and is locked back into position without any hassle. Under the cover we find the microSD card slot and the massive 1500 mAh Li-Po BP-4L battery. With a power plant like this one, the Nokia E55 is said to last 672 hours of stand-by or 8 hours of talk time and that’s more than impressive.
Pressing this button releases the battery cover • An impressive battery by all means
Forgive us for stating the obvious – the Nokia E55 is flawlessly built just like the E52. The phone looks great and working with it is a pleasure. Typing sure takes a bit of time to get to speed but the wonderfully ergonomic keys are duly appreciated. The best thing about the handset is the rare choice of keypad doesn’t compromise the looks and ergonomics, which did impress us big time on the E52. All in all, we’ve got an almost complete replica here and if you’re to consider any of the two handsets your choice will boil down to the type of keypad. The commendable ergonomics, durability and impressive styling are always part of the deal.
User interface: S60 3rd is the Eseries game
So, as it turns out the only hardware difference between Nokia E52 and Nokia E55 is the half-QWERTY keyboard. So, we guess we can safely go on with the software. Which means we can sit back and relax – we’ve done our homework already with the E52. And there are no differences at all.
Nokia E55 runs on Symbian 9.3 OS with the Series60 3rd Edition user interface. It has Feature Pack 2 like the E52 and the E75 side-slider or the upcoming E72.
More importantly though, the Nokia E55 is powered by the same 600 MHz CPU as the E52. In Symbian terms, that’s a lot, not even Nokia’s current flagship – the N97 – can match it.
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Nokia E55 and its sibling the E52 run on Symbian S60 3.2 much like Nokia E75
The E55 comes with the new S60 icons for a pinch of 5th edition (touch) styling. The interface can freely rotate to landscape mode thanks to the accelerometer, which also offers silencing calls and snoozing the alarm by flipping your phone over.
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The accelerometer sensor has a number of settings
The phone’s main menu has two view modes: a 4 x 3 grid of icons and a list. However, with the E55 you cannot opt for having animated icons like on some other Nokia phones. This is probably just another way of reiterating the business focus of the phone. At least the font size is widely configurable depending on your preferences.
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The main menu has two view modes
Inside the main menu, the circle next to the icon of a running application is a well known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications that are still running in the background.
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Almost every bit of the interface has a landscape mode too
The active stand-by mode goes without saying on the Nokia E55. This is a convenient way to add shortcuts to all your favorite applications on the homescreen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access.
In addition you can bring up to 14 different kinds of notifications on the homescreen: email boxes and voice mail, through calendar and to-dos, to the currently running track in the Music player and FM radio. How many of those 14 get displayed is completely up to you.
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Basic homescreen, active stand-by or talking theme
Each of the one-touch keys (messaging and calendar) can be customized to access any feature (actually two per key) of choice. The two soft keys functions are user-configurable too.
If for some reason the active stand-by mode isn’t your cup of tea you can use the basic theme or switch to the talking theme instead. The basic theme leaves the screen pretty bare and lets you assign shortcuts to the D-pad while the talking theme…well, talks. It brings four shortcuts to your homescreen and tells you what the currently selected one is.
Once you enter any of the menus, it tells you which menu you have opened and sometimes gives you some extra useful information about it. For example, when you enter the clock application, it tells you the current time. It would even read out the names of the contacts.
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The talking theme has its own clock application
This talking theme is pretty handy to use when you can’t look at the phone. It might be a good idea to activate it while driving for example so you don’t need to actually look at the phone should you need it for something.
Another handy feature of recent Eseries handsets allows you to toggle between two different phone setups – the so-called Mode Switcher. Each of them can be customized with its own theme and homescreen applications for maximum usability. This way you can have both a leisure and a business profile and switch between them with a single click.
The built-in memory is 60MB, which is a decent amount. The included 2GB microSD memory card comes in very handy for extending it, but higher capacity cards up to 16GB are supported.
As we managed to confirm, Nokia E55 has no problem handling a 16GB microSD card. Accessing applications or any other files on the memory card is quick and you probably won’t notice any difference compared to accessing data in the phone memory.
As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It is launched by the dedicated key on the right side of the E55 and does a good job. It’s fully speaker-independent and recognizes a very high percentage of the user commands.
And finally, there’s a nice security feature known as Remote Lock. If your Nokia E55 gets stolen or lost, you simply send a coded SMS message to remotely lock the phone. After three unsuccessful attempts to unlock it, it wipes itself clean of all personal or sensitive info. You might not get your Nokia E55 back, but at least nobody will get your personal data either.
The out-of-the box customization options for the user interface of the Nokia E55 are a modest count, to suit the handset’s business slant. There are three themes preinstalled on the handset, each in two flavors – business and personal. You can assign a different theme to each of the modes – the preinstalled ones have subtle differences, just enough to indicate which mode you’re in.
So if you are into changing those icons and colors you will have to download new ones online….but don’t worry, there’s plenty to choose from out there.
Great Symbian phonebook
The phonebook of the Nokia E55 does a tremendous job, offering storage space for a virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields with all the available memory potentially usable for that purpose. We can’t imagine anyone managing to fill that up. You are also treated to as many fields for each contact as you like and some other nice extras, so there’s very little reason to complain.
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Welcome to the phonebook
Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name, and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any name. You can pick whether you want the SIM contacts, the service numbers or the phone memory contacts to be displayed or alternatively show them all at the same time.
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Some of the available settings
Predictive search, contact list back-up as well as grouping are also available. The final nice extra is the setting to search for contacts on a remote server (Mail for Exchange or Intellisync).
Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you are able to think of any. Personal ringtones and video can also be assigned. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give a specific ringtone to each group.
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Good luck trying to find a field that Nokia missed * you can even rename a label
The Call log application can hold up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key in standby.
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Detailed info of your past communications is to be found in the call log
If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. You can even filter the entries (by contact or by type), a useful feature if you’re looking for a specific call.
Telephony: no worries
With Nokia E55 you are extremely unlikely to experience any reception issues. Sound during calls is very clear and free of any interferences. It’s not too loud at the loudest setting but it will do great unless you’re in a very noise environment. Like quite a number of Nokia handsets, the E55 features advanced noise cancelling, which usually works quite nice to filter background noise.
Nokia E55 also has a Smart dialing feature, which helps you quickly find a contact straight on the standby screen.
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Smart dial
Nokia E55 features the advanced Communication Manager out of the box. With this quite useful application you can opt for various settings – accepting only calls from your contacts, from all non-private numbers or from anyone. You can create your own filters with quite extensive settings – including rejecting a call with SMS.
In addition you can set up different ringing profiles that can be scheduled to activate at a given time (hour and day). You can even enable an option to have the E55 say the name of the caller.
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The advanced communication manager
The Nokia E55 also has support for VoIP calls – you just enter your account details and you are all set.
We conducted our traditional speakerphone test with Nokia E55 and it achieved an average result. Here is how it compares to same of the other handsets we have tested. You can find information on the actual testing process, along with the full list of tested devices here.
The business of messaging
E-series devices are mostly about messaging and connectivity so we are not surprised that they got this part right. The E55 is a wiz at all sorts of messages and won’t shy away from viewing and even editing attached office documents.
On the whole, E55’s great email client and the ability to view and edit office documents will really help keep you up to date while you’re away from the office. Just like E75 and E52, E55 also comes with the Nokia Messaging software preloaded along with a lifetime service subscription.
There are three message editors aboard: SMS and MMS share the first one, audio and e-mail have their own. The SMS editor is the familiar application for all Symbian S60 smartphones.
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An SMS automatically turns into an MMS when you insert some multimedia content
It goes without saying that a delivery report can be activated. The reports pop up on screen, once the message reaches the addressee and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu.
When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts you to either save it to the Drafts folder or discard it.
The audio message, albeit technically a type of MMS, was obviously deemed worthy of a dedicated editor. It allows you to either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.
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The three types of messages
The new email client (first featured on E75) has better looks and better messaging organization than the ones in the past. Each of the folders of your mailbox can now be sorted by whatever filters you might like and can then be searched if necessary.
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Composing an email on the E55 is as easy as it gets
You can also set what the folders preview should look like, i.e. how many lines should be given to each entry, whether title dividers should be applied etc.
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You can sort your email much like on a desktop computer email client
The email client supports a wide range of personal and corporate email standards such as IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail etc.
Encryption is also enabled, as well as mobile VPN support for connecting to secure corporate Intranets.
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The Message reader can read your messages while you’re driving
Quite naturally, the Nokia E55 supports the ultra easy email setup we’ve been treated to recently. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start enjoying email-on-the-go. The Nokia E55 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.
Image gallery: Nseries feel, Eseries method
The image gallery was a pleasant surprise – it’s the same as the one found in Nseries phones and looks great. The speed of photo browsing increases if you press and hold the direction buttons on the D-pad. This allows quick skipping of tons of files if you’re not in the habit of sorting out your memory card regularly.
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Browsing the image gallery
Unlike, say, the Nokia N85, zooming here is very speedy, thanks to the zippy 600MHz processor. It does slow down a bit when you get over 100% but it will go up to 400% zoom. Zooming is done in small increments (about 10%) and panning is quite fast too.
The gallery offers a nice slide show with customizable effects and delay between slides. You can also choose the direction of the slideshow – forward or backward from the currently selected photo and the track to go with it. Music can also be switched off if you prefer.
The gallery also has a very good picture tagging system. In addition to geotagging, which is automatically handled by the camera, you can add as many tags as you like to each photo and then use them as filters. There’s also the option to organize photos in Albums.
Music player: Symbian regular
Full-featured music ability is not supposed to make or break a business device but the music player of the Nokia E55 is still pretty decent and we set our hopes for good audio quality high when we saw that standard 3.5mm audio jack.
The lack of dedicated music keys is easily overcome by the smooth D-pad control. There is a huge number of audio formats supported including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. M3U playlists are also managed seamlessly and transferred files are added to the music library trouble-free by choosing the refresh option.
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The music player is pretty straightforward
Filtering tracks by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available.
The player comes with five equalizer presets, bass booster and stereo widening effect. You can also create new equalizer presets if the preloaded ones won’t do.
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The available equalizer presets * creating a new one
Finally, being one of Nokia’s best equipped phones, the Nokia E55 naturally also includes support for the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which allows listening to music on a Bluetooth stereo headset.
Decent video player
The Nokia E55 features Real player for playing your video clips. The video player works in portrait or fullscreen landscape mode. The softkey functions are hidden in full screen so they don’t get in the way, and they only pop up when a key is pressed.
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The E55 Video center * the video player has very few controls
The relatively big screen and the MP4 video clips support add up to a passable video watching experience but you will probably resort to another player anyway. The reason for this is quite simple – the E55 lacks DivX and XviD support out of the box. Luckily, finding applications for the S60 3.2 that support those codecs is a fairly easy task (though they can be paid).
FM radio with RDS
The Nokia E55 sports stereo FM radio with RDS, controlled by the well known radio app. Upon starting, the app asks about your location in order to set up the proper frequencies for your area.
The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. Scanning for alternative frequencies when traveling can also be set to automatic. You can save up to 50 radio stations and the option to play through the loudspeaker is available.
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The FM radio app
Impressive audio quality
Unsurprisingly, the audio quality of the Nokia E55 is an a perfect match to that of the E52. The Finnish company has once again demonstrated that there is no reason why the users should be made to choose between business functionality or good audio .
We can safely say that the two most recent bar phones – E52 and E55 are the best performer in terms of audio quality that the Eseries have ever seen, overtaking even the E75. They have better frequency response, stereo crosstalk and distortion levels than their side-sliding sibling and that seems enough to us to announce it as the new Eseries lead-singer.
Camera: not a priority
The Nokia E55 means business but imaging is not part of its job description. The 3 megapixel camera has only a LED flash and sadly, no autofocus. “Enhanced fixed focus” is here to cater for close-ups but as our tests have confirmed in the past, the new Nokia “catch-phrase” doesn’t really mean you’re getting more sharpness in close-ups or shorter minimal shooting distance.
Actually, the camera user interface is the only good part of the E55 snapper. Using our favorite tabbed interface, the camera offers extensive settings: from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects which are labeled color tones.
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The camera user interface is pretty familiar
A gridline can also be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing you photos using the photographic rule-of-thirds. Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic.
The sequence mode and self-timer are nothing new. The flash can be set to four positions: automatic, always on, red-eye reduction and always off.
Small font tooltips are displayed to help you understand what the phone is doing at each specific moment (processing image, for example).
You can also customize the toolbar deciding on shortcuts to display for which settings and in what order.
Image quality
The image quality of E55 is decent, albeit hardly spectacular. Contrast is good, but the dynamic range is not on par and colors are somewhat dull. Noise levels are low, but that is achieved through noise-reduction that smears away fine details and textures. The sharpening algorithm on the other hand is way too harsh and produces visible artifacts in the photo.
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Nokia E55 camera sample photos
Synthetic resolution
We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia E55. You can check out what that test is all about here.
Here’s a comparison of the camera on the E55 and the one on the E52. The E55 has an edge in resolved detail. Its processing seems better even though this time the images are slightly oversharpened, instead of slightly too soft. Maybe the next time they will get it perfect?
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Nokia E55 resolution chart photo * 100% crops
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Nokia E52 resolution chart photo * 100% crops
Video recording
Video recording doesn’t improve our impressions of the E55. The business-minded handset manages VGA videos at 15 fps, which is far from stellar but is certainly better than what E71 and E66 offered.
The quality of the recorded video is not very good and even if 15 fps is acceptable to you, the E55 is not a camcorder. There’s a fair bit of detail captured until of course it is periodically smeared by heavy compression.
Here is a sample video for you to check out.
Connectivity: back to the A-list
It’s time to check out the connectivity options. This is a morale booster indeed for the E55 and it sure takes advantage.
The E55 is truly on fire where data transfer is in question – it just has it all: from Bluetooth v2.0 and USB v2.0 to Wi-Fi and 3G. Furthermore, the 3G comes with HSPA support for the fastest network data transfers – up to 10.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink.
A microSD card slot is also on board, under the battery cover. It might just be the quickest and most convenient way of transferring data.
The standard 3.5mm audio jack is also there and the only thing missing that we can think of is TV-out functionality.
Web browser agrees with YouTube
Browsing the internet on a Nokia smartphone is definitely a positive experience. The E55 is no exception with its excellent page rendering – most web pages look like they do on a desktop computer.
The virtual mouse cursor is easy to control and generally works great. The D-pad control is not as comfortable as Samsung’s optical joystick (think Samsung i7110, for instance) or BlackBerry’s trackball but still does the job.
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Browsing GSMArena.com on the E55
A mini-map can be activated and it even appears by itself when you scroll longer, which helps you navigate complex websites without excessive scrolling. The zoom level is also easily adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses. The web browser also offers fullscreen view mode.
Along with the usual key shortcuts, the browser in E55 offers a toolbar, which can be launched by pressing 1 or long pressing on the center key on an empty area of the page. You can customize which shortcuts are on the toolbar – up to seven shortcuts like “Subscribe to feeds” or “Bookmark manager”.
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The new toolbar
The Nokia E55 browser features built-in full Flash support. It handled many of the Flash sites we threw at it, but chocked on others (games most often). Flash content for version 9 and up seem to be the culprit.
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Flash video handled seamlessly
Flash video is mostly not a problem for the E55 web browser – you can watch video on the full-featured versions of YouTube, DailyMotion and the like. Not all however, Vimeo didn’t work, for instance.
Top-notch PIM and Office 2007 support
Time-management is another business phone virtue. There’s no wonder then that the Nokia E55 has one of the most elaborate organizer packages we’ve seen. There are a lot of nice applications, all very user-friendly and functional.
The trip starts with the calendar. It has four different types of view – to-do, weekly, daily and agenda as well as five types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Meeting request, Memo, Anniversary and To-do.
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Setting up an event
The agenda view mode is relatively new to Nokia handsets and is really nice – it allows the dates of the month and the events for the selected day to appear simultaneously on the screen.
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Day, week and agenda views
Mobile office is also duly covered, with seamless handling of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Furthermore, unlike most other Nokia handsets out there, editing documents is supported right out of the box.
With the Nokia E55 you won’t need to pay extra for editing your office documents. And there’s another thing you get for free – support for Office 2007 documents (.docx, etc.)
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The E55 also supports document editing out of the box
A PDF reader is also part of the Nokia E55 preinstalled content and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.
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A PDF reader is also available • ZIP manager
The other pre-bundled organizing and time-management applications are: a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough.
The ActiveNotes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes.
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Some of the other organizer apps: unit converter, calculator and ActiveNotes
The Nokia E55 alarm clock application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name and start time. You can also customize the snooze time from the settings menu.
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The E55 allows dozens of alarms to be set simultanelously
The useful “Search” application is also present on the Nokia E55. Its reserved space in the active stand-by menu no longer comes as a surprise. After all, an application this useful really deserves to be conveniently placed.
The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia based on a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and results are then listed.
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If it’s on the phone the Search app will find it
Finally, the Nokia E55 features a dictionary with a really rich database. English comes pre-installed but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website.
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The dictionary has a rich database
The World Traveler app helps you when visiting a new city – it’ll display weather forecast, it also offers a world clock, info on foreign currency, flights and even a 3D globe that marks your home and current location.
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The traveler app can be quite helpful when travelling abroad
Thanks to the wireless presenter you can handle presentations straight from your phone
GPS does well
The Nokia E55 comes complete with a built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS and Ovi Maps preinstalled. Voice-guided navigation comes at a price, however, you get 10 1-day drive licenses that come with the phone (must be used within 3 months after purchasing the handset) and walk navigation is completely free for the owners of E55.
The preinstalled version of the Ovi Maps is 3.0 and as usual it’s pretty nice to work with. It has really detailed map coverage of a huge number of countries and a lot of extras such as traffic information, city guides and so on. Sadly, the extra features need to be purchased separately, as must the voice-guidance after the trial period has expired.
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Nokia maps has four different view modes
The app also has very decent looks and easily customizable route planning algorithms. Our favorite feature is the 3D view mode, which unfortunately has to be turned on every time you restart Maps – that’s an odd one, no doubt about that.
Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and simply use the phone as an electronic map. The nice thing about it is that you can actually preload the map content, so you don’t need to access the wireless network to download that on the go.
Nokia E55 also features a digital compass. In order for it to work, you need the map zoomed on your current GPS position. The compass (a magnetometer sensor) is turned on by default, but it doesn’t work while turn-by-turn navigation is engaged. It’s quite useful while making your way around on foot though, as it rotates the map to match even your slightest change of direction.
If you don’t fancy using Nokia Maps, you can opt for any of the numerous third-party applications available on the market, there’s no shortage of those.
The overall impression of the Nokia E55 GPS functionality is positive, with the GPS sensitivity pretty acceptable. It is good enough for most users’ needs and won’t make too many people look for alternatives.
Classic and N-Gage gaming
The Nokia E55 comes with two games preinstalled, both of which are pastime classics.
The first one, called Block Cascade Fusion is a variety of Tetris, in which color also comes into play – instead of just making lines, you have to line up 5 or more blocks of the same color horizontally or vertically. The changes in the rules take some time getting used to – the lines of 5 or more same-color blocks disappear only during the fusion… blocks are dropping frantically, while you’re trying to figure out what the point is. It is part of the fun, so we won’t spoil it.
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Block Cascade Fusion
The other option is Top Hit Solitaires bringing 15 types of solitaire, with classics such as Klondike and Freecell (if you ever owned a PC you’ve played them).
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Top Hits Solitaires
While it doesn’t come preinstalled, you can install N-Gage on the Nokia E55, just head to www.ngage.com and follow the instructions. Strangely for a business-minded phone, there’s full N-gage support. No need to tell you, there was no free activation code in our retail box.
Final words
The Nokia E55 is a limited edition E52. The good thing is the half-QWERTY handset is not limited in any way compared to its mainstream sibling. OK, save perhaps in terms of demand. But Nokia must be aware of that and know their market well enough. We guess it makes sense to duplicate a great package that’s likely to sell very well just to test a concept, which the company is trying for the first time. Who knows, they may’ve struck gold with the half QWERTY keyboard. And if they didn’t, it’s no big deal. The extra R&D costs are perhaps close to zero and they still have two great phones, at least one of which will sell.
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Nokia E52
Not the least, the Eseries fleet is growing stronger. The E55 is closing the gap between Eseries candybars and devices like E71, E72 and E75, so there is a smartphone for each and every user. Eseries have always aspired to be the ultimate in business phones and now they’re also trying to be the most flexible. There are handsets for heavy texters (E71, E72, E75, etc.) and heavy talkers (E51, E52). The E55 is headed to the stores and trying to bridge both worlds.
So, the E55 has a very special place in the Eseries lineup and in a way its fate is less in the hands of the competition, and more in the hands of its own kind. We don’t think a half-QWERTY keyboard is a liability in a phone of great build quality, excellent features and outstanding exterior. But some users may be asking themselves why they should choose the E55 over an E71 or an E72.
As to competition, the E55 seems to outclass the likely rivals, especially when it comes to looks. The Eseries pedigree guarantees top class business performance too, but there are still a number of handsets that can hope to steal some of the E55 market. Those who don’t like Symbian will perhaps want to check out the WinMo based Samsung B7320 OmniaPRO and the newly announced B7330 OmniaPRO, which we just previewed. RIM’s BlackBerry Curve 8520 is another viable option and recent enough to get the attention of users. Neither of those messengers has the Eseries charisma but decent spec sheets, alternative OS and – not the least – full QWERTY keyboards give them a bit of a weight.
Samsung B73320 OmniaPRO Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO BlackBerry Curve 8520
Samsung B7320 OmniaPRO • Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO • BlackBerry Curve 8520
To wrap it up, the Nokia E55 and E52 are the same handset, so E for excellence goes both ways. E for massive earnings we’re not so sure about. But that doesn’t mean a half-QWERTY keyboard has let down an excellent device. The E55 is as capable, user friendly, solidly built and absolutely gorgeous as the E52. Which one is yours?
Related posts:
- Nokia E72 Review – WCCtech
- Nokia E71 Review Synopsis
- Nokia E71 Review – ZDNET
- Nokia E72 Review – Slashgear
- Nokia E61 Review – iMobile
