Nokia E51 review: Connecting business

At the movies

Nokia E51 features a Real player for playing your video clips. The video player can be displayed in both portrait and landscape mode and can be switched to fullscreen.

Watching a video clip on a small screen like this is not an earthshaking experience at all. When in full screen, the softkey functions are hidden so that they don't spoil the viewing experience and only pop up when a key is pressed.

Forwarding and rewinding are not among the available options of the player. It's high time those basic functions were included in every Nokia phone's player.

Watching clips in the Real player is OK in Landscape mode only

The Nokia E51 is equipped with FM radio with support for the Visual Radio internet service. It can store up to 50 radio stations.

The Visual radio application can download the radio stations in your area and save them to the handset with their names if an internet connection is present. We would have preferred RDS support, though not having it isn't really that much of a disappointment.

The Visual radio and some of its options

Gallery boring

The gallery of Nokia E51 is as modest as in any other E series phone. It offers few options and is not intended for intensive image handling.

Image viewer is not ample at all

Otherwise, no changes are to be seen here in terms of features - pictures can be viewed in both portrait and landscape mode and zoomed in up to 2x.

Zooming in a photo

The gallery's functionality is basically doubled by the file manager, which is at hand too. There is an application manager to take care of the installed applications on Nokia E51. Its functionality boils down to providing details about installed applications, removing them and keeping a log of movements in both directions.

File manager and application manager are the same well known applications

The useful "Search" application is also present in Nokia E51. The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia containing a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and all results are then shown. If you have a vast base of files, located on both the built-in memory, and the memory card, this application will get much appreciated.

The search application sifts through every bit of data on your phone

"...The two megapixel camera in Nokia E51 has no autofocus, nor flash. There isn't even a mirror for self portraits though 4x digital zoom is available. You won't find a dedicated key, either. The camera can apply some basic settings including night mode, sequence mode, self timer, white balance and color tone..."

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It's equipped with a 2 megapixel camera

Nokia E51 is meant for business, and its 2 megapixel camera is more of an accessory than a main feature. It can still do a job for you in case you need to take some shots.

The camera main view with the options menu

The two megapixel camera in Nokia E51 has no autofocus, nor flash. There isn't even a mirror for self portraits though 4x digital zoom is available. You won't find a dedicated key, either. The camera can apply some basic settings including night mode, sequence mode, self timer, white balance and color tone.

Image quality is defined in three steps - normal, basic and high. Users can choose between two image resolutions - 640x480 and 1600x1200 pixels. Apart from the quite usual camera settings, a nice touch is the optional toolbar. It provides three shortcuts for quick access to video, night and sequence modes, while the last key is responsible for closing the toolbar.

Some of the available settings and camera options

The images captured with the camera look undoubtedly greenish, which is unusual for Nokia cameras. It sticks out a mile, when compared to another two megapixel unit, or in our case the not quite deservingly bashed iPhone camera.

Again, as the EXIF data is very scarce, we can only interpret the results relying on our experience with phone cameras. So, looking at details the first thing to stand out is the excessive sharpness. This is a recurring problem of phone cameras - in an attempt to capture fine detail, the extreme sharpening actually distorts it, though the slight improvement in contours makes people believe the images look better than they would have with moderate sharpening.

That's what you get with the iPhone camera, where detail is smoother. Intense sharpening has other disadvantages, such as artifacts and high noise level, as you can see in the E51 images, especially in the clouds and sky.

Nokia E51 camera photos

Have a look at the sample shots taken with Nokia E51 and iPhone.

Quick 2 megapixel camera test: Nokia E51 vs. iPhone cameras

The video camera of E51 is capable of capturing video in MPEG-4 format and in QVGA resolution at 15 fps only. Zooming while recording is possible, but that doesn't give any boost to the overall low camera scoring.

Here is a sample video, taken with Nokia E51 camera.