Nokia E52 Review: A smartphone for all seasons

When the Nokia E52 presented itself for a review, we were surprised at the chassis’ compactness. This was a smartphone that did not look like one due to its comparatively less bulky form factor. But what we really wanted to know was whether the E52 could offer a competent level of performance as compared to similar offerings available in the market. From packing in internet connectivity, QWERTY keypads and touchscreens to name a few, handsets have gone beyond the simple call making and receiving devices they once were. In other words, phones have got smarter and manufacturers have unimaginatively started classifying them as ‘smartphones’. Now imagine a smartphone without a QWERTY keypad or touchscreen. Nokia obviously had these things in mind while building their E series of handsets like the E51, E55 and E52. We’ve come across very few examples of no-nonsense business smartphones apart from the aforementioned.

The next thing that hit us about the phone’s appearance was its conservative candy-bar style design. White on black is the color scheme that runs throughout the keypad’s surface. The silver accents on the front and back panel didn’t do much to alleviate its starkness. The keypad adopts the standard 12-key layout found in regular feature phones unlike the E55. We had to give this gizmo a hard look to spot any difference between its exterior and that of the E55. The latter comes equipped with a 20-key compact QWERTY keypad and that’s just about all that distinguishes both phones from each other. Nokia’s offering the E52 in metal gray, golden white and black colors. We didn’t have to trouble ourselves with the poor alphabet and number visibility issues that users of the metal gray-themed version might have to face since we inspected the black colored variant.

The phone’s edges are sprinkled with a power on/off button, a standard 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port and camera key. The volume controls and Voice Activate button huddle together on the right side of the device’s edges. The abrasive black aluminum panel that hides the battery and SIM card is embossed with the words ‘Nokia Eseries’ in silver and offers a firm grip over the phone. Though it gives an impression of being a hardy business-centered phone, it’s good to know that we won’t need to test out its robustness by dropping it due the misfortune of sporting butterfingers. A menu button and an exit button align the bottom of the 2.4” display that can be rotated to portrait or landscape mode. A button for accessing the calendar/getting to the homescreen, an e-mail/cancel button, a button for making calls and one for canceling them sit below the aforesaid keys.

Our slightly sore thumbs harness a grouse against the D-pad that’s split into a center button surrounded by a wire mesh border. Since every task engages this button, we were left yearning for a touchpad in its place, especially after browsing through web pages for an hour-long stretch. A word on the packaged contents, there was a microUSB charger, a pair of 3.5mm headphones, a microUSB cable, a warranty card and a user guide. The supplied charging adapter allows the phone to be compatible with small and large pin chargers. An Ovi manual and Ovi Music Voucher offering 25 tracks for free were thrown in. Also accompanying the phone was a Nokia Holder Easy Mount HH-20 and CR-114/115.

Since the E52 is advertised a business-centered phone, the e-mailing and messaging functions were what we decided to test out first. We won’t be surprised if a handful of those bent on buying a new smartphone excluded this handset from their wish-list. People used to a QWERTY keypad may not really want to deal with the increased number of button presses necessitated by the traditional keypad layout. On the other hand, consumers looking to upgrade from the average feature phone to a business-class smartphone may consider this Nokia offering. It’s easy to type out e-mails or messages on the fairly large buttons that compose the keypad. Gmail setup is simple and the folders in the inbox may be sorted by preferred filters and even searched. Lotus Notes Traveler, Mail for Exchange, HTML e-mail, Microsoft ActivSync and Nokia e-mail 2.0 are the supported e-mail clients. Just like being able to switch from business to personal mode and vice versa, organizing as well as creating new folders is an effortless process on this handset.

Nokia’s stuck to the conventional interface when it comes down to the messaging function. We managed to set up and sign into IM in a surprisingly short span of time. A mind-boggling array of utilities perfect for the bustling businessman are packed into this gizmo right from Nokia Office Tools, support for pdf and zip files, a file manager that houses content transferred from a PC via the microUSB cable, Dictionary, Active Notes and more. Though this Symbian-run handset connects speedily to the internet over Wi-Fi, the web browsing experience is not the best ever. The main issue is that we had to go through each page part by part since the full-page view renders the displayed content way too miniscule to be perused at all. This task requires labor-intensive thumb work as mentioned before. If we could take this last-mentioned hurdle out of the equation, internet browsing would be much more fun. Shortcuts to zooming in or out of web pages, reloading them, saving them as bookmarks and more can be accessed by pressing down on the ‘5’ key.

The E52 comes equipped with two cameras including a 3.2MP main camera cum camcorder and a front facing VGA version. We can’t help pointing out that the VGA video recording at 15fps is not the best bargain users can get out of a smartphone. The photo browser lets you go through albums smoothly and even speed up the process by pressing down on the D-pad continuously. There are a number of image editing options including white balance modes, color tone modes, support for USB PictBridge printing, in-built flash and much more. The E52 may not make a great photographer out of you, but it does have some fun editing tools. We were satisfied with the vivid visuals rendered by the 240 x 320p QVGA screen when it came to viewing videos, photos or the plain old widgets. Speaking of which, the phone settings can be tweaked through the Control Panel and Ovi Files, games, PTT, Windows Live Messenger, GPS and similar apps may be accessed through the Applications widget.

Those who live and love for music should check out the E52’s music player. The speaker sings out loud and clear and the 3.5mm headphones even more so. Since we don’t like being tethered to a phone with a cord that gets knotted up every time we look the other way, we took advantage of the Bluetooth A2DP profile to groove to our favorite tracks over a stereo Bluetooth headset. The phone also comes with FM radio, internet radio and audio streaming support. Transferring content between PC to handset or vice versa through the Nokia PC Suite interface is a quick process though the supplied 2GB microSD card may fall short of storage space. The GPS features integrate A-GPS with compass, Ovi Maps and free global navigation with Maps SR3. The World Traveler tool made us feel like no hurried arrangements for a trip could ever bamboozle us with the world clock, weather, world map, currencies as well as a ‘coming soon’ flight services and travel plan. The bunch of other utilities that could normally be expected in a phone include alarm clock, calendar, calculator and so on. To sum it all up, the E52 makes for a fetching smartphone that shouts ‘no-nonsense businessman’.

At Rs. 13,809, the Nokia E52 is phone well-worthy of its price tag. It was impressive enough to cadge a 9 out of 10 rating from us.