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Nokia's ESeries devices are known to be professional and reliable devices that feature many applications to let business users be very productive using their phone. Those devices look generally pretty good, without being very design products and thus are not very slim and small. The E55 brings a change here as it is the smallest Nokia device meant for email and professional usage while being light and very classy thanks to its modern design. Offering an extraordinary battery life, the E55 can be used when travelling or during busy work weeks without having to think of charging your phone.
The E55 also has advanced features making both your personal and business your life easier, thanks to its VPN and other professional-oriented functionalities but also its more multimedia assets, like its GPS chip, multimedia player or its big screen that's very convenient to watch movies and videos.
Networks: GSM/EGSM 850/900/1800/1900
Operating System: Symbian S60 v3 2.3
Dimensions: 116 mm x 49 mm x 9.9 mm
Weight: 98 g
Standby time: Up to 28 days
Talk time: Up to 8 hours
Display: 2.4” QVGA (320x240) with 16 million colors
Memory: 60 MB internal memory + MicroSD (2GB in the box)
Camera: 3.2MP with no autofocus
3G capability: HSDPA/HSUPA
WiFi: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS
Radio: Yes, with RDS
Audio connector: 3.5mm, with video output
Colors: Gray and Black
The Nokia E55 is a very small and light device and therefore doesn't really look like a smartphone. Unlike most of Nokia's ESeries devices, this product isn't very wide and is extremely thin, which makes it easy to carry for any businessperson. The only clue that lets you guess pretty easily that the E55 is a smartphone is probably its specific keyboard, making it obvious its designed for emails and business usage.
Not only this device is small and light, it is also looks well designed and very classy. The brushed metal part right under the screen gives the phone a sophisticated appearance and makes it look very nice.
Like most of other ESeries devices, the E55's build quality is excellent. The phone feels very solid, even though it's very compact and should resist a little fall off the table. The screen is also protected by a thick plastic glass and shouldn't be harmed even in the event of a hard shock. The Nokia E55 isn't made out of cheap plastics and there's actually not a lot of them as the back cover is in aluminum. The remaining parts, like the front side, are made out of plastic but they're not the crackling type (not like the N97!) and still feel very solid.
The E55's keyboard is very similar to the one introduced by Research in Motion on some earlier BlackBerry devices. Even though it offers a QWERTY layout, most of the letters actually share the same key with their neighboring character. This layout seems annoying at first, but is pretty OK when you're used to it, as one of the benefits is that the phone is much smaller than full QWERTY phones, like the E71 or E72. What's very odd with this layout is that you have to press a key twice if you want to insert the second letter; however, using T9 makes it much easier and doesn't require you to press the key twice, but we will discuss this in the software part. The major complaint we had about the E55's keyboard is that its space bar was extremely small, making it sometimes annoying to type as you often miss it (until you get accustomed). To finish, keeping in mind the E55 is a professional device, two shortcuts allow you to open your most useful applications to do business: your calendar and the messaging center; the only thing being that those keys are pretty small and generally lead you to press another key.
The E55 is designed as a professional device and therefore only has a single speaker, as multimedia usage is not its main purpose. Surprisingly, this speaker's quality is excellent (it's not Bose, but it's very good) and lets you share your music with your friends. Of course, the phone also has an i ntegrated 3.5mm audio connector that allows you to plug any earphones, headphones or speakers you can think of. However, we have noticed that sound quality isn't good at all when music is being streamed to other audio devices, even to great earphones (c.f. Software part for more details)
This is probably one of this phone's weakest points. Even though ESeries are not designed for a multimedia usage, the E55's camera shouldn't even be called like this. First of all, it has no autofocus, which makes almost all your photos look blurry, as if you deliberately tried to shake the phone while taking the picture. Then, the camera quality itself is really bad and that is the main reason why photos don't look good, as the lens isn't good enough, even though the phone is able to take photos in a 3.2MP resolution.
The GPS chip that's built-in the E55 is simply excellent. We deliberately de-activated all transmission functions on the phone to prevent it from trying to use network-based location or assisted GPS systems and the phone was able to find our position in less than 10 minutes, which would have been impossible with an N97 (and even hard with any other NSeries phone) on which you de-activate network connections.
This is also one of the E55's best points as its battery lasts for more than a week without needing to be charged, even if you're using some WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G.
It uses one of Nokia's most popular batteries, the BP-4L, also found on the N97 and E71. What makes it somehow different from generic batteries is its technology, as it's a Lithium-Ion Polymer battery and not a traditional Lithium-Ion, which makes it last longer than them.
Like any other ESeries product, the Nokia E55 is powered by the well known Symbian S60 operating system. Unlike other Symbian devices, ESeries phones feature extra functionalities, such as an included VoIP system, an on-screen voicemail display, a dedicated energy saving profile or a Windows Mobile style d ialing system that lets you look for a contact by starting to type its name on the screen. Another very useful feature is the homescreen switch icon at the right of the shortcut bar, which allows you to switch between a professional and personal theme and homescreen. This feature allows you to have your professional shortcuts when you're at work but to switch to your favorite applications when you're using your phone as a personal device. It also lets you use another theme, including another wallpaper and ringtones, which definitely helps you using the same device differently depending whether you're at work or not.
Another common point to many ESeries products is that they're very fast. While you have to wait about two seconds when you want to write a new message using an NSeries phone, the application opens instantly with an Eseries product and this is of course the case with the E55. Other applications open very quickly and the phone is able to run many tasks at the same time without slowing down or closing other applications. The device's web browser is also very reactive and doesn't make you wait for too long when loading a web page, which is a very good point for business users willing to browse the web from their phone.
A last point showing the E55 was very reactive is the fact that it was able to instantaneously rotate the screen's orientation after we activated the accelerometer in its settings, when other devices require around 1 or 2 seconds to do so when you turn them to landscape mode.
Not only ESeries phones come with additional features built into Symbian, they are also pre-loaded with many additional paid software that Nokia wants to offer to their business clientele as an asset against the competition. The E55 thus comes with the full version or QuickOffice allowing you to view but also edit and create new Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) directly from your phone, which can be very useful if you don't have a computer in the train for instance, but also when you want to display a PowerPoint presentation on a big screen thanks to the phone's video output. In addition, the Nokia E55 comes with the full version of Adobe's PDF reader which will not limit you in the number of files or days you can use the application, another useful feature to use your phone as a laptop replacement on the go.
The Finnish manufacturer has also included other business applications such as a lifetime license to Nokia Messaging (which automatically replaces the integrated S60 email client), a 60-day Files on Ovi trial and an instant messaging application (Windows Live, Yahoo, Ovi Contacts, OMA and Google Talk). Other professional applications common to all Symbian phones include ZIP Manager and a Dictionary (with many languages and text to speech features).
Finally, Nokia has also included software for your spare time so that you may relax during your business travels as the E55 comes with two games: Block Cascade and Solitaire.
Even though the E55's keyboard is very different from traditional QWERTY keyboards, it is not very difficult to type with it, provided you use the built-in T9 predictive text, which will allow you to press the key once as the phone automatically recognizes words based on the keys you use. However, even with the predictive text on, it is sometimes annoying to type with the E55 as the surrounding words are absolutely not taken into account, which leads the phone to always write the first letter on the key: for example, if you use predictive text and want to say "I", pressing the key once will always insert a "U", but pressing it another time will not transform this U into an I! This becomes much more complicated to type text messages as you generally use the "I" pronoun often. Another annoying thing is that predictive text cannot be used to spell unknown words (unless you add them) and makes you spell the word manually when it's a friend's name for instance.
Except this predictive text bother, using the E55 isn't that bothersome and you can easily type long texts on it. However, don't think that the E55's keyboard is as comfortable to use as the E71's or N97's and you will always type more slowly than with any other full QWERTY device.
ESeries phones are always designed with business usage in mind and are therefore very stable and reliable phones. However, the E55 seems to be an exception as we experienced many software issues and system crashes over our 3 week test. It is true that this trial unit wasn't very clean software-wise, but it seems that even though we resetted the unit when we received it, the system was still not very stable (even though some applications may have remained on the SD Card). Indeed, the phone seemed to love rebooting when listening to music or browsing the web making it very hard to appreciate its usage. Also, we ended up with many white screens when we wanted to unlock the keyboard, which led us to remove its battery every time this happened.
Nevertheless, although these issues are pretty bothersome, it seems the trial E55 unit didn't come with a public release software, and those problems can be easily solved with a software update, especially provided Nokia phones are always kept up to date.
The E55's music player isn't very different from what other Symbian devices offer as it's the regular Nokia Music Player. It therefore offers an artist, album, genre and composer view, supports playlists (and automatically generates recently added, most played and recently played tracks) and displays CD covers. Of course, the music player supports MP3, WMA and OGG files as well as some others. Many enhancement systems are also provided, such as special equalizers, a loudness and a stereo widening feature.
Although these features are excellent and make the E55 provide an excellent sound quality through its main speaker, we were very surprised by the bad sound quality the device offered when we used it with earphones or even a Nokia BH-504 stereo headset. Given the fact that we tested these earphones and headphones with other devices, we concluded that the E55 wasn't able to deliver a good sound quality and that this problem must have been related to its software settings. This is very annoying as even though the music quality was still OK, it wasn't as good as with other devices we're used to using.
The E55 is definitely a great ESeries device: It's small, thin, fast, responsive and can handle multimedia usage (as long as you're not taking photos or looking for a great sound quality). Its great battery life, included software and GPS make it better than any other same size device with the major difference being this phone is powered by Symbian and has a half QWERTY keyboard, which make it even more productive.
| Pros |
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Cons |
| Small and Light |
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Awful Camera |
Nice look
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Bad sound quality with personal earphones/headphones
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Very good GPS
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Not very stable
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Good internal speaker
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Keyboard is sometimes bothersome
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Excellent Battery Life
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Very reactive
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t pas me prof sont dans un autre amphi |
Comments
About E55's sound quality, till now I've always read the opposite:
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e55-review-396p7.php
So, now I don't know what to believe anymore. Because this month I would like to buy this smartphone...
By the way I've tested E72 sound quality with my Sennheiser earphones : it's very clear, it's excellent. And I suppose it has the same chipset just like E55.
I hope your test unit was defective...
I can confirm the sound quality wasn't good with my BH-504. I tried a song I bought from the Nokia Music Store with the E55 and the BH-504 and it was very bad, while it was excellent on my N97 with the same headphones.
However, as you're suggesting, my test unit wasn't in a very good condition when I got it, but it's very weird that the sound quality is bad on both the 3.5 connector and a Bluetooth headset.
My suggestion could be that the software wasn't a public release that caused the phone to behave in an undesired way.
The E55 is still a very good phone though.
However, if you're hesitating between the E72 and the E55, I'd recommend the E72 for its excellent camera and keyboard, unless its a size/budget issue.
It's true that E72 is bigger and I also find E55 sexier (you know, it's a taste condition)
For me the camera is not a priority, and buying it in France the keyboard layout is surely AZERTY which I don't like at all.
On the other hand the sound quality and battery life were really impressing on the E72 unit I've tested.
No you're right, the E55 looks better.
I don't really get why you're talking about AZERTY keyboards, though, I was talking about the E55's half QWERTY keyboard.
Instead, I prefer an E55 with half QWERTY keyboard.
Anyway, you can buy QWERTY devices in France, I generally buy them from Expansys, they're not very expensive but are very reliable!
Cheers!
Hey that's funny, I study in France so I got my test unit from Nokia France. However, it was a half AZERTY and not half QWERTY (and the M wasn't positioned properly).
Anyway, you can buy QWERTY devices in France, I generally buy them from Expansys, they're not very expensive but are very reliable!
Cheers!
In fact, Nokia e72 with QWERTY keyboard is cheaper on Expansys
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