If you are an executive in the market for a cell phone, Nokia’s E series offers the best bang for the buck. The E51 has a superb 2-inch display capable of 16 million colours. The resolution of 240 x 320 is very high for a small screen, so fonts appear sharp and crisp. In direct sunlight, the screen is completely legible-even at half the maximum  rightness! As compared to the E50, the new phone has a completely revised keypad with dedicated keys for contacts, Calendar, E-mail, and Home.This approach has its advantages: you can directly access essential information at thetouch of a button. The soft menu keys, however, are a pain to use-they are too small for comfort. The keypad is a delight to use-good tactile feedback, and the key spacing is immaculate. The rubberised keys for volume up down, push to talk, and the power switch are hard to operate, and require some serious poking to work. The E51 is peppy-it uses the same processor as the flagship N95 model. With 130 MB of memory onboard, you can do lot of multitasking without the phone getting slow, and the memory can be expanded to 4 GB via the microSD slot. The E51 runs on Symbian OS S60, and crams in a lot of additional features. For example, the Advanced Call Manager lets you manage incoming and outgoing calls more efficiently. WorldMate, an application meant for frequent fliers, comes bundled too. The Nokia E51 has an abundance of connectivity options. It’s a 3G quad-band phone with HSDPA, WiFi (802.11g), Bluetooth, Micro USB, as well as infrared (just in case). The WiFi locator feature helps a great deal in searching for nearby WiFi hotspots. Multimedia features include an MP3 player (it sounds good), a 2MP camera with still and video shooting, and FM radio. The phone performed admirably during our tests; signal reception was good, and so was the voice clarity. Internet browsing was fast as compared to the E50 or E61, thanks to the revised Web browser. The pictures from the camera were above average, but not in low light. The speakerphone is clear, with little or no echo on the recipient’s side. The speaker is placed on the anterior side of the phone, and though it’s loud  enough, when it’s placed on softer surfaces such as a bed or sofa, the ringer volume gets muffled. Battery life is good-we got around three days with nominal usage and a terrific seven days of standby.

The N81 marks Nokia’s entry into music-related services similar to that offered by Apple (as in iTunes). Like the N73 and N95, the N81 comes in two editions-Standard and Music. The former has a memory card slot, while the latter has 8 GB of flash memory and no memory slot. The N81 is handsome-rounded edges, black lustrous finish, and you’ll notice the use of contrasting brushed silver on the edges. Build quality is excellent, and though the body has a plastic feel to it, it’s rugged, and should take the rigours of everyday life. The slider mechanism is taut, but we’ve seen better ones on Samsung phones (and lately, the Sony Ericsson W910i). The front facia is dominated bya huge,  arklingly-clear 2.4-inch display. The screen equals that on the N95 (which has the best among cell  phones).Just below the screen is a whole new navigational console. The directional pad (D-Pad) now also acts like a touch-sensitive scroll wheel, but the keys can also be used like regular keys. Though it works OK, the touch-sensitive scrolling needs refinement. The playback control keys are cramped near the D-pad and are frustrating. The alphanumeric keypad isn’t quite what we expected from Nokia; it is flat, hard, and frustrating to use. The music player is similar to that on the N95 and other Symbian-based phones. However, the Navi-scroll gives it an edge in terms ofusability. We’d like to see Nokia ironing out the  chinks in the touch-sensitive UI. Eight GB ofmemory means enough space to pack in your entire collection. Transfer times are reasonably fast. Audio quality is good, and nearly equalsthat of the N95; what we liked was the placement of the 3.5 mm jack-it’s on the top. The bundled earphones are good, but we liked our music with the Bose in-ear plugs. The camera is a complete let down, be warned:  just 2 megapixels doesn’t cut it anymore-at least not on a high-end phone. Three games come preinstalled-all of them demos. The games are based on the Ngage platform, and gaming is fun thanks to two additional keys and the excellent display. Internet browsing is great-thanks largely to the Web browser which is the best you’ll get on a handheld today. The Nokia N81 8 GB retails at Rs 19,400. That price is reasonable, but we feel the N95 is a much better overall device-we’d recommend it over the N81.

As much as common sense tells us to avoid slider phones for obvious reasons as in moving parts, wear and ear-they’re hot! The E65 is red-hot (literally), and it’s available in mocha, too. The entirely matte-finished body offers good grip, and it manages to also look classy. Red-russet brown really-might not appeal to all, but the soft contours are nice. With Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, EDGE, and more, the E65 is a business-oriented device with some artistic flair. The number keypad is well-laid-out with raised demarcations on each key, similar to the N95-but remember there’s no QWERTY. Keypad backlighting is good. The 2MP camera and the music player are pretty ordinary. Pop the hood and it’s a symbian S60 9.1 device. Quick Office has been provided, but it’s Word and Excel editing at its barest (document creation is out of the question). GPS software is bundled: it’ll work with any Bluetooth GPS device. There’s also a pretty nifty text-to-speech module that will read out data whose menus are placed in the Voice Aid folder.   Contacts can be read out, as can phone numbers, recent calls, and the time. You also get a voice assist while dialling, which will help in the event of miss dialling while in a hurry (only if you remember the number). Still, we think the software needs a lot of work to be decently functional. The phone is slow, though, especially while using the voice functions  which bespeaks low memory. Call quality is good, but not on par with some of the other Nokia phones  I have tested. Calls disconnect easily when signal strength is at one tower. At Rs 16,800, the E65 isn’t the definitive business phone that the E series label might indicate. A phone with very similar specifications and functions with a cheaper price tag comes to mind-the N80. But then all new phones are costly, and a couple of price.

The successor to the acclaimed N95, this new incarnation just got better all round. The navigational console has been completely revamped. The oblong buttons are easy to use, and the directional pad is much better than that on the N95. The extra chrome on the buttons could have been avoided, we think-it picks up finger smudges and is likely to peel off. The number keypad is well-laid-out, but the hard-touch keys, combined with the slightly raised surface, makes finger-pad touch-typing a pain. The music player is feature- rich-you can shuffle and repeat tracks,there’s a functional equaliser, and a visualization function too. Audio quality seems to have improved over the N95. Music quality is decent on the supplied earplugs, and this phone is just great with better earphones! Sony Ericssonstill rules the game with their Walkman series of phones, though. The 5MP camera is another first-great image quality and a good flash unit. However, like all cell phone cameras, the zoom is useless. The lens cover you see on the N95 has been dropped in this new incarnation-and that’s not something we approve of. Image quality is similar to that on the N95. The camera performs admirably outdoors; colour saturation is perfect, and so is the exposure.Indoors, in low-light conditions, the focus tends to hunt for a while, and tonal accuracy suffers as well. The phone comes with 160 MB of internal memory, which is well-supplemented by 8 GB of flash memory. No expansion is   available for memory cards, but it’s not required. There’s a fully-functional GPS application inbuilt. This works well in conjunction with a GPRS connection.WiFi (g) is inbuilt, as is the mandatory Bluetooth (version 2.0, now with A2DP), and the jurassic infrared. For the radio fan, the N95 8 GB Incorpo rates FM radio. The new N95 8GB comes with higher-capacity batteries that extend its life by two hours over the N95. With nominal use, we got around two days of battery (45 minutes of talking, 2 hours of listening  to music, and intermittent GPRS use). In conclusion, the Nokia N95 8 GB is a superb convergent device. Be it music, camera, GPS, or Internet connectivity, it just does everything better than most devices on the market.