Lets Talk of the Specifications First:

>General

Network GSM 850 / GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
Announced 2006, May
Status Available

>Size

Dimensions 113 x 43.5 x 15.5 mm, 70 cc
Weight 104 g

>Display Type

TFT, 256K colors
Size 240 x 320 pixels, 31 x 42 mm
- Five-way scroll key
- Downloadable themes

>Ringtones Type

Polyphonic, Monophonic, MP3, True Tones
Customization Download
Vibration Yes

>Memory

Phonebook Yes
Call records Yes
Card slot microSD (TransFlash), hotswap, buy memory
- 70 MB shared memory for applications, SMS, MMS, ringtones

>Data

GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD Yes
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G No
WLAN No
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0
Infrared port Yes
USB Yes, v2.0, Pop-Port

>Features

OS Symbian OS 9.1, S60 3rd edition
Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Games Pro Tour Golf + Java downloadable, special offer
Colors Silver
Camera 1.3 MP, 1280 x 960 pixels, video(QCIF), also available without camera
- Push to talk
- Java MIDP 2.0
- MP3/AAC/video player
- Document viewer
- Blackberry connectivity
- T9
- Voice command/memo
- PIM including calendar, to-do list
- Integrated handsfree

>Battery

Standard battery, Li-Ion 970 mAh (BL-5C)
Stand-by Up to 215 h
Talk time Up to 6 h 40 min
Extended battery, Li-Ion 1150 mAh (BL-6C)
Stand-by Up to 240 h
Talk time Up to 8 h

Complete Hand 0n Review:

Nokia E50 is another Series 60 Symbian 9.1 smartphone from the famous Finnish manufacturer. It’s the small sizes and ergonomic shape that attract most of the attention. The new quad-band handset has connectivity features like Infrared, Bluetooth, USB, GPRS and EDGE. As it comes at a low price, it will be a phone with many fans. Packed with features in small dimensions, coming at the right price, E50 is surely a bright addition on the GSM phones’ market shelves.

>Design & Looks:

The design of E50 is rather conservative. It is mostly silver and black which merge in some areas and create a pretty ergonomic impression. The phone is not flat and the keypad part is positioned lower than the rest of the body. This leads to a significant ease when writing. The joystick bulks in front of everything and smashes to pieces the nice impression of the otherwise perfect design of the phone.
The phone’s size can be very well understood when compared to other phones. We have made such comparisons for our readers with N93 and E70. You can see that E50 is smaller, narrower and thinner than both phones. All three smartphones run on the same Symbian OS with Series 60 user interface.

Nokia E50 is flawless in terms of construction. We could only mention the On/Off button which is made as part of a plastic cap, situated on the top of the phone. It’s quite sure that after some time of use this plastic cap will have scars from the user’s nails. Nokia could have thought about that. Besides this minor issue, we must say that the rest of the construction elements are absolutely perfect. No creeks were produced, every part stays in its place and the phone seems unbreakable.

>O/S:

Symbian 9.1 with Series 60 user interface was by far an expensive toy. With this latest addition on the smartphone shelve, Nokia have unlocked the door for everybody. We have done several reviews of other phones with S60 interface running on Symbian 9.1 so we might use some extracts from previous reviews as they stand correct for E50 also.
The active stand-by display is made of 6 icons of frequently used applications. Below this row is a list of calendar events, currently played songs, missed calls or received messages. If none of this events occur, the list is empty and displays “No cal. entries for today”. The top part of the stand-by display is for the signal strength bar, the date and time, the operator name, and battery level bar.

Active stand-by display

>Camera:
The camera in Nokia E50 is a 1.3 megapixel one. It produces quite nice pictures and has interesting settings. Exposure compensation is not present, which is essential, but White balance is available. Self-timer, color tone settings and image size adjustments are available also. As E50 is not a camera phone, it shoots in vertical mode only.

Video can be recorded in QCIF resolution but the result is disastrous. Picture quality is very poor and the frame rate is very low. The sound is even worse than the picture.

>Connectivity:
No 3G or Wi-Fi
Quad-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE, Blackberry, USB, Bluetooth and Infrared are available in Nokia E50. However, there is no 3G networks support or Wi-Fi connectivity. Considering the low price of the handset, this is easily explained. PC synchronization is seamless using USB, Bluetooth or Infrared. Using the PC Suite (you can download it for free from the Nokia website) you can copy you calendar, phonebook and messages into your computer or counter wise.

Connectivity menu

>Music & Business altogether:
The phone has the new Nokia music player, used in other Symbian smartphones from the latest Series 60 user interface. The player is very intuitive and even has a built-in equalizer which can be manually adjusted. When a song is played in background, the name and artist are shown on the active stand-by display.
The music quality is comparable to that of the rest of the recent Nokia smartphones. The Music player does play in stereo but in an effort to keep the price of the phone down Nokia has included only a mono in the retail package is mono, so obviously if you want to listen to stereo music you have to buy a stereo headset separately.
E50 supports the most common music file formats. It can also play some video clips. However, the display is not that good to display videos with good quality. The phone lacks FM radio.


New Music Player Menu