MWC: Nokia E55 is The Thinnest Finnish Smartphone With Lots of Power
Published by Ewan Spence at 9:33 UTC, February 16th 2009
Here comes a month of standby time, with the Nokia E55. Put alongside an incredibly thin profile and Nokia's new compact keyboard, placing two letters on each physical key, the E55 is aiming for those travellers with “a business state of mind.” Expected availability will be in the summer for around 265 Euros Sim free. More thoughts, details and pictures live from MWC after the break.
The Nokia E55, announced at MWC has been targeted to the business users, and has built on the success of the E71. The obvious inheritance is in the slimness of the device with the E55 managing to slim down to only 9.9 mm thick (so the designers met the sub 10mm target I presume they were given). The battery life on the E55 is incredibly high, with up to 28 days of standby time or 8 hours talk time available on the GSM version.
Key Hardware Features of the Nokia E55
- System: WCDMA 850/1900/2100 or GSM/EGSM 850/900/1800/1900
- User Interface: S60 platform, version 3, feature pack 2.
- Dimensions: 116 mm x 49 mm x 9.9 mm
- Volume: 54 cc
- Weight: 98 g
- Standby time: Up to 28 days (GSM), up to 19 days (WCDMA)
- Talk time: Up to 8 hours (GSM), up to 6 hours (WCDMA)
- Main display: 2.4” QVGA (320x240), up to 16 million colors
- Battery: BP-4L, 1500 mAh, Li-Po
- Memory: Up to 60 MB internal memory, 2GB microSD in sales box, support for up to 16GB microSD memory card
The keys are regular keys and the unit decides which letter to show using predictive methodology.
3.5mm headphone jack - that;s good news!
The obvious new hardware feature is the keys - by adding in two letters on each key, the component count has been reduced, and I suspect this is one area which has allowed the dimensions of the device ro be reduced below 10mm. Whether the users will appreciate the dual keys remains to be seen. It has been attempted on a number of devices in the past with varying levels of success. I'm sure Rafe will comment on this once he gets some time with the device in Barcelona.
Key Software Features of the Nokia E55
- Predictive engine that suggests word completions, error corrections and automatically learns new words.
- Full Email, Calendar and Contacts experience.
- Multiple business and personal Email accounts in a single device with enhanced UI.
- Improved company name search, remote company directory lookup, create and receive meeting requests.
- Superior voice quality with noise cancellation.
Note the additions to the S60 home screen...
Mail for Exchange and Gmail showing up as separate services.
Clearly targeted at business users, the built in mobile VPN will aide the mobile road warrior to stay in touch with the office, while the IT Security department will be happy to see data encryption for both the microSD card and the built in memory available. It's also hardware accelerated, which should mean little impact on the perceived speed of the E55 in use.
The Nokia E55 is a bold device. For all the talk of of growing out of the E71 and customer feedback it is taking a number of risks in the design (such as the keyboard), while at the same time exploring new areas such as encryption and mobile VPN access. I think it could do very well, but all that depends on just how good the predictive software technology works in practice.
-- Ewan Spence, Feb 2009.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Platforms: S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
As much as I love Nokia, I hate them for officially discontinuing support for E51. If this is the way forward for Nokia, I might have to stop myself from upgrading to a E55 or E90 (i'd never spend as much on a smartphone) and instead move over to Blackberry proper.
Hallelujah! Finally Nokia has seen the light!
The E75 too!
nice spec too though, I'm interested.
I wonder how nokia could leave the Nseries and provide the Eseries with these facility!
could you please inform us more on the hardware acceleration ?
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
From the full tech specs page: "Micro-USB connector support charging".
Hallelujah! Finally Nokia has seen the light! |
Wouldn't mind to trade some of the thickness for a 5mp camera with xenon, though. If a device came like that I would be in phone heaven!
Once I learnt that I haven't missed Enter key so much.
I like to use GTD and as much as I love my n95 over my Palm Centro, the Palm wins hands down for organising my life.
Will we ever see such things built in and synchronising with Notes/Outlook etc?
I really like the E55 but would like it a whole lot more if it did such things.
It's hardly rocket-science from a programming point of view either
Categories? Almost certainly no ('full calendar' is marketing puff). People have been moaning about categories (and the S60 PIM in general) for years. Nokia doesn't seem to care and the third party offerings are weak.
In my epxerience the M600i I had was the best keybaord experrience ever on a phone, making a sideways querty irrelevant. So this is no experiment or bold step by Nokia - actually every phone on earth should have ahd this keybaord for ages - the old phone keybaord is outdated.
Moreover, Nokia could easily have stuck this keybaord on the E75 and then they wouĝldnt need the slid-out keybaord at all. This one produces very high typing rates after your first week with the phone.
Unless I missed it in the article, this E55 omits the GPS unit though, which is a gas face. With GPS it would make the E75 redundant at birth!!
Really like the device, and will probably buy it, but I can't help to wonder how long it will take until we see a thin N82 in the E-series? :tongue: That would be my ultimate device for many years to come :cool:
I would really like to see how you type a number on the standby screen, as it does not have a Contacts key anymore I suppose it has some Standby search or something like T9nav. Can someone enlighten me? :D
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Originally Posted by djplus
The best thing on this phone for emailing has got to be the enter key. I really struggle to email without it on a T9 phone. I'm sure the new software will help too!
nice spec too though, I'm interested. |
The interface is less streamlined than Handy Calendar or the built in Calendar but it does allow categories on appointments and todo's.
The other unfortunate issue is that PC Suite doesn't sync the categories so you will end up with duplicates if you sync with your PC. The best way to get round that is to use MailForExchange to sync with an Exchange server or the built in Sync client with a syncml server in the cloud.
dj