The Nokia E52

It is the most popular phone of all time. 7 years after its release, it still commands a high price on resale and auction websites. Built for the business market, this handset sold in its millions, and everyone who still has one will do all they can to keep hold of it. With a battery life second to none, and the ability to hold a signal the way a limpet sticks to a rock, with a good range of features (for its time) and ease of use, nothing came close to this phone. Such a popular handset as this though, has become almost an albatross around the neck of the manufacturer. Try as they might, nothing has come close to replacing this fabled handset. In case you’ve not yet guessed, I’m talking about the Nokia 6310i.

It is hard, despite the popularity of this device, to actually get down in words why the 6310i was, and still remains, a defining handset of the digital age. And it has been hard for Nokia to produce a handset that captures the imagination the way the 6310i did. The 6230, then the 6230i were billed as 6310i successors. Then the Eseries came along, and we got the E60, then the closest to that point of truly taking over the mantle, the Nokia E50. The successor to that handset, the Nokia E51 has been a good seller for Nokia, and it is the successor to that, the Nokia E52, that may finally step forward and take the crown as top business phone.

If you were to take a survey amongst users, the over-riding feature that sits in the top three features for all 6310i owners is battery life. With the 6310i, forgetting your charger whilst away on a weekend didn’t mean spending time out of contact, the battery would just go, and go, and go. With all the new features on phones these days, large colour screen, GPS, high speed data, camera, etc, battery life has suffered. Now, with the E52, we have a phone from Nokia that manages to offer a comparable battery performance, with quoted times of up to 8hrs talktime on a single charge, and up to an amazing 672 hours standby. Now, we all know that quoted manufacturer talk times are to be taken with a pinch of salt, but even so, that is some mightily impressive figures.

Yet, the E52 does not scrimp on the features the modern executive wants in a device of today. The TFT screen on the E52 is QVGA, 16 million colours, measuring 2.4 inches point to point, as good as on most top end Nokia phones these days, and a nice upgrade to the 2.0 inch screen on the E51.The E52 is a nice sized handset, measuring only 9.9mm thick, and weighing in at just 98g.

The E52 boasts the full set when it comes to connectivity, for network and mobile data coverage. Quad band GSM gives access to most every GSM network worldwide, for the business traveller, and for data transfer nothing has been missed out. For those networks that are not yet 3G enabled, the E52 operates on HSCSD, GPRS and EDGE. 3G is boosted by dual band HSDPA, with download speeds of up to 10.2 Mbps and upload speeds of 2 Mbps possible. WiFi 802.11 b/g is included on the device, with support for UPnP technology and Bluetooth 2.0 The Nokia E52 comes with a built in GPS receiver, and also supports aGPS, and will work with Nokia Maps 3.0 and also Google Maps.

One thing that is going to appeal to the mobile traditionalist is the fact that the E52 has a standard 12 key alphanumeric keypad. Messaging is still a main focus on the device, with access to email on the move a priority, but there is no need to suffer a QWERTY keyboard with tiny keys here. The keypad buttons are well spaced out, easy to use and very comfortable for one hand messaging. The only area where the phone may suffer in usability is with the application shortcut keys, which work on a rocker style basis, and precision will be needed to ensure that the wrong option is not selected.

The E52 then is squarely aimed at the mobile professional, who wants a decent, hardworking, traditional style mobile phone. But all work and no play, as we know, makes for a dull life. In this regard the E52 also steps up with some decent media features. The E52 is equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera, with enhanced fixed focus and an LED Flash. Video recording is possible at an acceptable 15 fps. There is a built in MP3 player, which will playback MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA files, and there is also an FM stereo radio with RDS support. A nice feature with the E52 is the inclusion of a 3.5mm audio output jack, so you can use your own headphones with the phone. And of course, being a S60 phone you can add extra features to the phone, by installing third party applications and even games, should you wish.

The Nokia E52 offers everything the mobile professional could want from a mobile phone; nice size, slim, light weight, top feature set, good sized display, proven, stable operating system, easy access to email on the move, high quality web browser, GPS facility, excellent range of data connectivity and one of the best battery performances of a modern mobile phone. Whether the E52 can truly take the crown from the mythical 6310i, only time will tell. But of all the phones to date, it is the best equipped to do so. Expected release date is the second half of 2009.

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