Nokia E65 part two: the good bits

I have had the Nokia E65 for three days now and have really dug into setting up as many features as I can and personalising it to my tastes. A few standout features have hit home already-

Email and messaging

Setting up access to my remote server took about two minutes and was so easy that even I did not screw it up (or have need to phone Neil and ask his advice)! Manually synchronising seemed slightly slower than on the v1605 but not to the point that it would cause concern. All in all I found the remote access side highly professional and Nokia have done a good job of making it workable on such a small device.

I have since had an issue trying to make my server ‘push’ email to me and have still not resolved this. GoodSync does push email fine but not Mail for Exchange which I believe to be a Nokia issue. There are ways around it such as having your provider add an ‘APNIAS’ SOC number to your account but it should not be needed.

Battery

The battery life may not be as good as some people expected if they have been used to less well featured phones but for anyone coming from a PDA phone it will seem like an eternity between charges. At the moment I do not use WiFi and thus have not experienced how well the battery copes with it but I understand that it is a big drain compared to most of the other features. Having said that I am confident it copes with the WiFi better than other devices I have used (v1605 being an obvious contender).

In the past three days I have installed a variety of applications, left the phone section on all of the time and also have 3G running continuously. I have mail for exchange set up to automatically grab updates, over 40 photos have been taken and a few videos as well. At the moment the battery is showing about 50% which is more than adequate for most people’s needs- for the first charge this is very impressive and one of the reasons why I am struggling with the v1605.

Last Friday I made and received 47 calls by 1pm and the battery was at 30%. Admittedly I am a very heavy voice user due to my job but it does mean continually worrying about the battery every afternoon and at least one charge per day is required, and it’s not a short charge time either.

UPDATE: First full day’s use at work with 3G enabled took the battery down to one bar by 4pm. hmmm…

Camera

The camera is a double edged sword for me. Without doubt it whoops the pants off all of the Windows Mobile devices I have used and is markedly better than any Treo camera, the shutter speed is good and for quick snaps it is what I would expect of a ‘camera’ phone. I am not someone who will jump at the opportunity of owning a 5 megapixel camera phone because I still prefer a real camera for proper photos but I’m not totally convinced of this one. It is good in daylight and the images look good if you want to view them on the phone but when transferred to a PC they can looked washed out with poor colour definition. Despite that I would rate this as a good phone camera and one worthy of inclusion.

Display

No complaints about the screen because it works well in direct sunlight with no screen protector attached and gives, like most other non touch screens, a clearer and brighter display. Being quiet a small screen but still QVGA obviously sharpens things up as well. Strangely I had no issue reading an eBook on the screen or watching a movie. It is right on the edge of being too small but I have good eyesight so can cope, not sure this will be acceptable to everyone though. GPS is an interesting experience using a screen so small I can tell you.

Performance

No resets at all yet and no slow downs in performance. The available memory does seem enough to cope with most things you can throw at it. TomTom Navigator 6.0 chugs along at a fair old rate as well which is a bonus. Interesting story with Navigator on this device- my copy of Navigator is registered to the v1605 and the Treo 680 so of course it cannot be used on another device. I took my miniSD from the v1605 and stuck it into the E65 to view some photos and TomTom started up. It asked if I wanted to activate it so I chose to using the automatic service and hey presto it worked? It is now working on three devices and is a genuine copy of the software. I’m not complaining but it is a quirk.

All in all I am pleased with the overall stability and speed of the E65 and can see this being a stable workhorse for anyone who just wants to get through the day without tweaking a phone all of the time.

Tomorrow I will look at the software, voice features and other bits (good and bad).