Nokia E5 The E5 is the first device announced for the Eseries portfolio after Nokia clarified its handset naming convention back in March. To understand the positioning of the E5, one simply needs to look at the letter and the accompanying digit. The E in Eseries comprises productivity and business devices, and the number 5 (on a scale of 1 to 10) means the cost of the E5 is best described as middling. With a retail price of S$398, the E5 could well go for next to nothing with a two-year plan from a telco operator. Parts of our earlier preview of the E5 have been reproduced in this review. Design The look and feel of the E5 is completely different from the current E72. That's probably more good than bad since the E71 and E72 are barely distinguishable in terms of the hardware. In fact, we initially wondered if the E5 was a Nokia at all--it looks very much like the old Palm 500v, a Windows Mobile phone from the now HP-owned company. The E5 weighs 126g with battery included, which is a mere 2g lighter than the E72. But in the hands, the predominant smooth matte plastic of the E5 gives it a gentler, even pebble-like and less sharp appearance. This is complemented by a convex wave contour at the back, which probably added to the girth of the phone. The biggest and probably only hint of metal you'll get on the E5 is the battery cover. Nonetheless, the solid build quality ensures this smartphone doesn't feel cheap. In fact, we would say it looks more expensive than its actual budget price. There are also differences all around for the E5. The spacebar now spans the width of four letters on the keyboard compared with two on the E72. If you look further back, the keyboard on the E5 follows more closely to the configuration of the E71. Holding down the Sym, spacebar and Ctrl keys activates Bluetooth, torchlight and silent mode, respectively. Instead of four shortcut buttons for Home, Calendar, Contacts and Messaging on the E72, the E5 now has just two keys for Home and Messaging. The feel of the keyboard is very similar to the E71, so you will get a generally good typing experience when it comes to tactility and key spacing. The E5 doesn't have a front-facing camera since it doesn't support video calls and the primary 5-megapixel shooter at the back is now recessed, unlike the protruding module on the E72. The E5 has a 2mm connector port for charging, although the micro-USB port could also be used to juice the battery. The latter option would be more convenient for those who want to charge and synchronize their phone with the computer at the same time without running two cables out from the device. Features The E5 runs the same S60 3rd Edition software with Feature Pack 2 like the E72. However, there are a number of differences beyond that. The E5 has a lower 18-bit screen color depth (24-bit on the E72), 50cm to infinity camera focus range (10cm to infinity on the E72), and lacks an onboard accelerometer. On the bright side, it has twice the amount of RAM at 256MB and a larger F2.4 aperture (F2.8 on the E72). The fixed-focus camera on the E5 also has the Extended Depth of Field feature, which increases the distance of the depth-of-field, keeping more objects in focus. On the connectivity front, the E5 comes with HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS for satellite navigation. Its maximum download and upload speeds over the cellular network are 10.2Mbps and 2Mbps, respectively. Take note that these are theoretical limits and actual transfer speeds will depend on your operator's network. The interface on the E5 will not confuse anyone who has ever used a Nokia S60 device. There are six different options for the home screen. The different versions are the default panels from older versions of the S60 interface, so we expect that most users will be able to find one they are familiar with. Pressing the Home button will bring up the familiar grid-style menu interface. Folders can be created and apps rearranged to your liking. As it has been capable of for years, Nokia's Symbian OS allows multitasking--just press and hold the Home button to see a list of programs running in the background. Though the browser is usable, the small 320 x 240-pixel display means Web surfing isn't very enjoyable. Third-party applications are available for Symbian S60, but these aren't as plentiful as what's found on the iPhone and Google's Android OS. If games and programs are important factors in your buying decision, going Symbian probably isn't the best idea. Test shot taken with the E5's camera. To Nokia's credit, it has made getting your email on the smartphone a simple task. The setup wizard has presets for the most popular email services including Gmail, Yahoo, Exchange and Lotus Notes. You can also configure a service manually if the preset is available. The 5-megapixel fixed-focus camera on the E5 gave decent image quality with acceptable sharpness and good color rendition. We noticed a slight blue cast in the middle of the photo in our test shot, but this should not be too obvious for small, Web-quality snapshots. Outlook The 600MHz processor and 256MB RAM did well to keep things chugging along smoothly. We did not feel significant slowdowns when using the smartphone even with the browser, Tweets60 (for Twitter), email and the Bloomberg app all running in the background. Battery life was good, giving us over two days of use on a single charge. Considering most touchscreen smartphones these days require daily charging, this is a very good show from the E5. However, remember that the dwindling third-party support for S60 also means apps are not as compelling. For example, the preloaded Facebook app is very hard to use compared with the Android and iOS versions. Because of lower-quality apps, we ended up doing fewer social-networking activities (such as tweeting and checking in using Foursquare) and spending less time using the browser. That had a part to play in extending the battery life of the E5. The 1,200mAh battery, according to the specifications, has a rated talktime of 18.5 hours on GSM and standby of up to 29 days. Call quality was good. We were able to hear and be heard clearly and no dropped calls were experienced during the course of our review. Conclusion Like the E63 was a budget alternative to the E71, the Nokia E5 is the E72's cheaper cousin. With this S60 smartphone, you will be able to get your emails, make calls, surf the Web a little and take some photos. As long as you don't require the latest and greatest games and apps and don't mind the dated Symbian interface, the Nokia E5 will get the job done.