Jørgen Sundgot gets to grips with Nokia's E60 business phone, fully loaded with a high-resolution display that - gasp - does landscape mode, connectivity up the wazoo - and no thumbboard. What's the verdict?
Review summary of the Nokia E60:
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 As a business phone, Nokia's E60 falls short where so many of its siblings do - on poor synchronization support. Nonetheless, the handset is equipped with outstanding connectivity and an utterly brilliant display which, with its high resolution and landscape mode, delivers thoroughly improved document viewing and web browsing. A broad software offering also contributes to a positive impression, but the lack of a thumbboard hampers data entry and document management to the degree that the E60 is rendered best suited for viewing data. Had it not lacked a camera, however, it would have made a stellar 3G phone. Price: $450.
Pros: Outstanding display with landscape support; marvellous connectivity; broad software offering
Cons: Poor synchronization out-of-box; no thumbboard
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Full Nokia E60 Review:
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Apparently, Finland will have turned into Sahara by the time we're impressed by the size of a Nokia handset. Still, at 115 by 49 by 17 mm and 117 g, it's clear that the E60 business phone only appears excessively plank-like due to its elongated and quite angular shape. Cast one eye on its 16M colour display, and such trivialities will swiftly be forgotten; not only does it chalk up the highest resolution for a thumbboard-less business phone to date at 352 x 416 pixels, but also sports excellent, user-adjustable brightness, an ambient light sensor and - in a Nokia first - a highly welcome landscape mode.
An office in your pocket?
Equipped with a generous suite of applications, the E60 does very well at PIM management and messaging - although sadly not groupware, as support for such is not present out-of-box. It does, however, come with a very decent line-up of editors for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents including Bluetooth printing support, yet falls short - as do so many of its Nokia business phone siblings - on the note of local and groupware synchronization. Furthermore, although the backlit keypad and rubber-padded joystick are two of Nokia's best creations as of late, any serious data entry or document management is out of the question due to the lack of a thumbboard.
Pity then, that synchronization won't be an aspect which exploits the E60's stellar connectivity in the shape of tri-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE and 3G for the long haul as well as USB 2.0, Bluetooth 1.2 with a broad range of profiles, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and even Infrared for short-range communication. Still, laptop users will be thrilled by snappy transfer speeds, and the addition of a landscape display mode particularly benefits the included Nokia web browser which lacks mobile layout optimization support. Wireless range and reception proved overall excellent although somewhat limited for Wi-Fi, while the precise speaker independent voice dialing feature dots the i on above-par voice quality.
But wait, there's more
The E60 also comes with several other features worthy of note, such as a decent music player - although sound quality is mediocre out-of-box and memory is limited to 64 MB onboard and a bundled 64 MB card - unfortunately of the RS-MMC variety, which, at the time of writing, costs more per Megabyte than the competing miniSD format used in many of Nokia's other recent phones. Furthermore, SIP compatible VoIP software is pre-installed and well integrated into the handset, which should be a bonus for enterprises wishing to cut down on call costs.
Lastly, battery life proved to hover in the range of two days with average use of the E60, which is fully on par with other recent entries.
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