Howz E50? Asking from E50 User!

ive been using a se p800, upgraded to se p910, to nokia 6630, nokia 9300 communicator, and finally to e50, if you need a small do it all phone, then e50 is for you, it got 235 mhz processor faster than any symbian phone i have ever used, although ram is quite small (around 12 megs after booting up) but its sufficient to listen mp3 while browsing and writing a message, its not a fancy fone, no 3g,

Vicky wrote:I just want to know about E50 howz it among the other Series 60 Economy Range . I am using Nokia 6233 as my Secondary Phone but want to swap to E50.
Is it really worthful ?
Camera is not at all a problem. (This features don't matter me.)
I want to know about the e50 Sound output
howz it like as compare to Nokia 6680 or N70 or any other example.

Can't say as i don't have it myself but Ed over at e-series.org has a few posts about his experience with the E50 as a week-end phone: http://www.e-series.org/archives/category/nokia-e50/

Note that E does not stand for "Economy" but for "Enterprise". The E-series phones are business phones, not economy phones 😉

Sound is just fine - its a great phone.

Yes, quite a good one, but it does have its share of issues. The latest firmware fixed some of them so I am listing the ones that are a problem for me. Of course, the entire UI of s60 is much slower than that of s40 and the 6233 is a fast phone.

1. Slow contacts app, especially if you have more than 200+ contacts.
2. Speakerphone crash bug. Sometimes if you pick up a call too soon using the green call key, it switches to speakerphone and hard crashes the phone. Only removal of battery will help.
3. Earpiece heating up somewhat after a few minutes.
4. I am having some glitches with my memory card and some java apps, but maybe it is my cheap mmc *shrug*.

Otherwise it is a pretty slick / slim s60 phone with quite decent battery life, quite VFM.

What do you want to know about the sound output? From the speaker? Voice quality? Music quality? Speaker is just about useful for the speakerphone which is ok. Voice quality is good, but not the loudest out there. Music quality is good and I have to listen at 20-40% volume.

The e50 will only be useful if you want to use more s60 software/apps.

I was thinking of getting this phone with a 2 Gig mem card and 3.5mm headphone adapter to use in the car, would that be a good idea to double it as a music phone too?

I think it'll work well because of its longer battery life and slim dimensions...

Yes, no problem. It has the standard s60v3 music player and through music library, it sorts all the tracks by album/artist, etc. The battery life on paper seems long, but it is the same as my 7610 - 2-2-1/2 days at best with BT off. If you start running apps, music, camera, etc. the battery runs out pretty fast.

Many people have had success retrofitting the bl6c (thicker) battery by removing the plastic padding under the batter cover.

sandeep108 wrote:
Many people have had success retrofitting the bl6c (thicker) battery by removing the plastic padding under the batter cover.

I went ahead and bought the phone 😊

According to Nokia we can upgrade to a bigger battery by changing battery covers, so you're saying your mentioned technique does so without changing covers (Any links or photos etc...).

Speaking of covers I haven't been able to take off the battery cover and am having a really hard time trying to get the cover off. I even played the flash demo to see if I was doing anything wrong. Are the E50 battery covers hard to take off??

Lets hope I'm doing something wrong ...

RadicalSatDude wrote:I went ahead and bought the phone 😊

According to Nokia we can upgrade to a bigger battery by changing battery covers, so you're saying your mentioned technique does so without changing covers (Any links or photos etc...)....

If you want to use the BL-6C, remove that wide soft rectangular pad which is highlighted in pic below. You will also need to shave a millimetre of plastic from just the corners of the BL-6C battery itself. The BL-5C also will fit in there fine without the pad, no shaking. But dont threw the pad away, you can reattach it with light glue if you feel like it.

RadicalSatDude wrote:
Speaking of covers I haven't been able to take off the battery cover and am having a really hard time trying to get the cover off. I even played the flash demo to see if I was doing anything wrong. Are the E50 battery covers hard to take off??
Lets hope I'm doing something wrong ...

To remove cover:
- hold phone as shown, go lightly with the fingers of left hand.
- Using the right hand, push that middle button with your fingernail only rather than the whole finger.
- Battery cover will then pop out and you can grasp or pull it off with the fingers of the left hand

Above is just method that was easiest to photograph. There are many other ways. Easiest IMO is to hold phone similar to pics but in palm of right hand with right hand fingers pulling weight of phone into palm. Right finger also still pushes button and left hand just guides.

The BL-6C will only give you about 10-15% more mAh i.e, it won't dramatically expand life of the phone vs the BL-5C. But it does make a noticeable difference.

Yeah, I sort of saw no point in giving away my BL-5C at half the cost and buying a new BL-6C. As and when I need to replace, I will buy a BL-6C.

skagen , Thanks for the excellent explanation, and Sandeep makes a valid point, too, my phone will be mostly used as a car or portable media player, hardly any talk... So I think I should be all set.

Any other personal tips for this (me) first time Symbian user?