Nokia E52: Doing business in eye-candy style

MANILA, Philippines - The only way I know that I am getting older is that there are so many ‘kids’ who use business cellphones.

Kids? Anyone below 40 is still a kid to me.

“I really need a cellphone that can keep me always in touch with my work,” says Diego, my ever-busy nephew. “There are so many things to do at work. But I also need to stay cool and be in touch with my friends.”

A cellphone for every user — that is the name of the game. And kids are such finicky users. They want cellphones that can do magic when it comes to making the best connections — and then a cellphone that looks cool when they take it out on gigs.

When I recently chanced upon the Nokia E52, I thought, “Hmm, what a cool business candybar cellphone — slim and sleek.” And not to let cellphone looks deceive me, I gave the Nokia E52 a good once over. What did I discover? It is a fully equipped business phone with more features than I ever thought possible. Not only this, but the E52 is also one of the best-looking phones in its category, is less than a centimeter thick, and comes with one of the longest battery lives on any cellphone currently available.

The Nokia E52 excels in the area of talk time and voice quality with nearly a month standby time and noise cancellation, and adds features such as HSPA, A-GPS with Nokia Maps, and a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash. It has a music player, media player and FM radio and quick access to applications with one-touch keys (home, calendar, e-mail). It also supports social networking sites like Ovi, Windows Live!, Yahoo IM, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace.

While being very competent in voice, the Nokia E52 also boasts upgraded mail capability with a new e-mail user interface that integrates perfectly with Nokia Messaging, a service that pushes the world’s leading consumer e-mail accounts straight to your device, and Nokia’s corporate e-mail solutions Mail for Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes Traveler. With direct access to either Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Notes e-mail servers, companies can potentially save up to a third of their operating costs for mobile e-mail and personal information management as there is no need for middleware or additional servers. 

It’s got the looks

Here’s why the Nokia E52 stands way ahead of many of its competitors. Having made the decision to stick with the candybar form and not offer a QWERTY-keyboard, Nokia has been able to keep this phone remarkably slim and light. Not only that, but the brushed metal finishing of the case (available in a choice of two colors) also gives the whole thing an incredibly high quality feel. It is definitely a business phone of the highest order, but also something many who don’t work in the business world could find useful.

I have also noticed that many people really use the cellphone as a camera. In the past it did not seem to matter too much to some business folks. But today, taking shots is so important that a cellphone with no camera is a no-no.

The image quality of the E52 is decent for a three-megapixel shooter. I did try out the camera and the shots were OK, but I did notice that I needed to be quite close to my subjects to capture the details I needed. That can be a bummer when shooting on the move.

Connected all the time

The E52 is truly on fire when it comes to data transfer: from Bluetooth v2.0 and USB v2.0 to Wi-Fi and 3G. Furthermore, the 3G comes with HSPA support for the fastest network data transfers — up to 10.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink. The microSD card slot is also on board, under the battery cover. It might just be the quickest and most convenient way of transferring data. The standard 3.5-mm audio jack is also there and the only thing missing that we can think of is TV-out functionality.

I did some browsing using the E52 and I liked how quickly I was able to get to my fave sites. The E52 is no exception with its excellent page rendering. I really was amazed how most Web pages I got looked like they do on a desktop computer.

Take a spin

Nokia E52 stands at 116 x 49 x 9.9 mm and has a volume of 54 cc, which makes it extremely pocketable and remarkably comfortable to handle. Even with such a slim body, the Nokia E52 is only two-grams short of 100, which gives it a really pleasant solid feel. The extensive use of metal is certainly responsible for that and we are pretty happy Nokia chose to continue this trend with yet another Eseries handset.

The Nokia E52 adopts the unmistakable Eseries design. It is great that it goes for the purist styling and durable materials on a remarkably slim and solid piece of gear. All these make the E52 our favorite in the family so far.

The metal accents on the handset’s body are a nice thing to see, and they boost both looks and durability. This time even the keys below the display are made of metal, giving the user an extra nice feel when navigating the handset. The grooved surface of the rear cover has quite a raw and industrial feel, which makes the otherwise slim and refined handset even more poised and convincing. The front has a glossy silvery frame enclosing the dark graphite navigation deck and number pad.

Making a call never sounded so good. Yes, I know that Pinoys love texting, but the callers among us enjoy a cellphone that works overtime when it comes to talking. The E52 features advanced noise canceling, which works just great when there’s a lot of noise where we are.

Nokia E52 also has a Smart dialing feature, which helps you quickly find a contact straight on the standby screen. With this quite useful application you can opt for various settings like accepting only calls from your contacts, from all non-private numbers or from anyone. You can create your own filters with quite extensive settings like including rejecting a call with SMS.

In addition you can set up different ringing profiles that can be scheduled to activate at a given time (hour and day). You can even enable an option to have the E52 say the name of the caller.

Talk about making it personal. 

What I like:

• Connecting to the Internet is really easy. Also, I had no problems setting my e-mail addys, and getting the e-mails I really needed on time.

• It is a candybar cellphone and comes in matte silver finish.

• It fits perfectly into my pocket, or should I say into the small pocket of my big bag.

• It is light, slim and classy.

• It has a really long battery life. I hate it when the phone dies in a middle of an important transaction.

• Texting is easy, even if the keypad looks small.  

The Nokia E52 retails for P17,580 and is available at all Nokia Stores and authorized dealers nationwide.