Nokia E65 review: Business beauty

Music player

The music player has remained untouched, which does not mean anything bad at all, by the way. In several Nokia models already it has been given the highest possible mark. Music tracks can be shown all together, ordered by artist, genres, albums, or composers. Volume levels are sufficient, with the highest ones being almost unusable. What could make the sound better, though, is the acquisition of better audio accessories. For the very moment the only officially supported accessory is the mini-speakers Nokia Mini Speakers MD4.

The music player keeps running when minimized too. In such case the name of the played file appears on the main display, from where it is also possible to adjust volume. When a call is coming, the player mutes gradually; once the call has been ended, the payback is resumed. Incoming calls ringtones can be heard in the earphone.

Media folder • music player • context menu • equalizer

Video records can be played either in standard size, or in a full-screen mode. The latter is pretty handy at boring moments due to the horizontal positioning of the display.

RealPlayer • player setup • standard video... • ...and in fullscreen mode

Nokia E65 offers 50 MB of internal memory. Our advice for multimedia fans is to extend existing memory by purchasing an additional memory card.

Time management

What to accentuate more in a manager’s phone if not its organizing functions. The most common, of course, is the Calendar. Here you can open a month, week, or day view as well as choose among three types of events. If you place your selection on a day marked with an event in the month or the week view, a bubble containing details on that particular event pops out. If you start to type while you are viewing the calendar, a new Meeting item is automatically created and the description being entered is visualized inside it.

Month view at the calendar • context menu • editing • day view

Tasks are located separately or as a part of the calendar. They are shown in both locations according to the date they are due. Tasks not accomplished on their due date are automatically snoozed till the moment they are marked-off as accomplished. Export from the calendar and the task list is a basic function of the active stand-by mode.

If we had to nominate the worst Symbian function in smartphones, then this will doubtlessly be the alarm clock. It has survived years without a single improvement: no repetition, no option for setup of more than one alarm time, nothing at all. It will wake you up, but that’s all. Let’s hope that better times are to come with the release Feature Pack 1, in whose standard features the alarm clock may finally live to experience so-longed functions. Here are several other standard organizing functions present in Nokia E65: notes, calculator, unit converter, and an elementary file manager.

Alarm clock • calculator • unit converter • File manager

A piece of news in this Symbian version is the application Teams. It is basically a state-of–the-art analogue of the call groups. Here the phone does not filter incoming calls; it is you who should provide the filtering. The application is based on a simple principle: you need to create a team, in which you subsequently insert any number of contacts. Should you need to later contact all members of such a team, you just mark it in the list and chose the means of communication: call, SMS, web address, Push-to-talk, or conference call.

Main display • context menu • settings

A bit of everything

Nokia E65 features one especially exquisite application – “Search”. We did miss this one in mobile phones. Here is how it works: with the time items in you phone start to pile and you start to slowly lose your grip. Thanks to “Search” you do not have to delete some of them in order to organize your agenda. “Search” helps you browse all your messages, emails, events in your calendar, your contacts, other files, tasks and notes, or even a random combination of the above mentioned items. Even though phone’s content is not indexed anywhere, searching takes no more than a few seconds before you are offered a satisfying result.

Browsing • the application Location • Navigator

Of course, Flash Lite is also present for work with flash animations and applications. What’s more, Nokia E65 features software support for external GPS modules connectable through Bluetooth. There are three pre-installed products for GPS – Space with up-to-date information from the closest environment, Navigator, and Description points for localization of device position.

Another innovation is the option to export the display to an external device. It might sound insignificant for common users, but for businessmen this option is a true savior during corporative meetings and conferences. All files can be sent from the phone to a compatible printer via Wi-Fi.

Difficult dilemma

Were you looking forward to purchasing the new Nokia E65 as soon as it appeared in the Internet stores? Poor you … The phone doesn’t differ much from its forerunners, and especially from Nokia E60. It is not even worth mentioning that newly implemented applications can easily be insalled in older Nokia models thanks to Nokia’s liberal approach. All in all, our expectations of more innovations have not been met. What might make Nokia E65 a successfully selling phone is its solid construction, elegant design and the slider form factor.

In any case one thing is for sure: by choosing Nokia E65 you get a high-class elegant office helper together with all pros and cons of a Nokia – Symbian cooperation.