| Review of the Nokia E65 |
 |
The E65 is yet another slider-style Smart Phone from Nokia, once again
sporting the Symbian operating system. It also includes a 2-megapixel
camera, MicroSD expansion slot, and support for WCDMA at 2100 MHz (though
this band isn't used in North America). The phone was tested only on the standard GSM
voice network presently offered by Rogers (and by extension, Fido, 7-11,
and other virtual network providers who use the Rogers network). Last Updated: 25-May-2007 |
This review is dedicated to the memory of Barry Leung, who lent me many phones for review in the past. He past away unexpectedly last month and he will be greatly missed. Follow this link for a thread concerning Barry passing on HowardForums.
Before reading this review, please read
Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: I tested this aspect of the phone
over at Square One in the Hall of Shame 2. The test was performed against
the still-excellent Siemens A56. This particular
phone, despite its low-end status and advancing age, has excellent RF
sensitivity at both 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. The E65 performed well, in that there
was almost nothing to tell it apart from the A56. Both hung in there exactly the
same, and both could be called upon to complete calls in equally weak
conditions. Thus, the E65 get very high marks for this aspect of performance.
Over-the-road Performance: The E65 has
approximately the same over-the-road performance as most other Nokia models I’ve
tested, which is to say okay, but hardly stellar. Handoffs are generally tamer
than in earlier Nokia models, but the number of handoffs and the overall network
experience while on the move is decidedly sub-par compared the recently-tested
Sony-Ericsson z710i. If it weren’t for the
z710i I might be more impressed with the E65, but alas technology marches on and
the z710i raises the bar. That leaves the E65 looking like old-tech.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: I’ve generally found Nokia models to
have pretty decent tonal balance, but the E65 sounds rather muddy and
indistinct. It isn’t severe by any stretch, but compared to other GSM phones on
the market (including plenty of Nokia models that I’ve recently tested, as well
as the z710i) the E65 is just not up to par. I had no trouble hearing people or
making out what they said, but it was painfully obvious to me at all times that
the sound wasn’t nearly as crisp or distinct as it could be.
Sound Reproduction: I had no problem with the sound
reproduction however. The phone seems quite capable of reproducing the various
nuances of speech without introducing its own distortion or colorization. Alas
the muddy tonal balance spoils the show.
Earpiece Volume: Certainly no problem here. The
earpiece volume is excellent, especially when the now-ubiquitous Nokia
volume-boost feature kicks in. Out on noisy streets the volume from the earpiece
is remarkably loud, which certainly helps given the muddy overall quality of
that audio.
Outgoing Audio: Outgoing sound quality was nice,
but the phone had a nasty habit of picking every little scrap of background
noise and sending it along to your caller. For example, MOST phones suppress
background noise well enough that using them in a reasonably quiet car at 60
km/h wouldn’t give your callers any clue that you were driving. Under the same
conditions with the E65 however, your callers will be quite aware that you are
driving.
I tried the driving-past-a-tractor-trailer-with-the-window down test and the E65
failed miserably. While such noisy conditions are unusual, they do demonstrate
just how well a phone can cope with background noise. While some phones I’ve
tested can continue to transmit quite understandable audio under such severe
conditions, the E65 is totally impossible to make out.
Speakerphone: Nokia is all over the map when it
comes to the quality and overall usefulness of their speakerphones. Sadly the
E65 is one of the worst. It produces so little volume that the ONLY place you
can really use the feature is in a totally quiet room. Even more frustrating is
that the very same speaker generates quite decent volume levels when playing
multimedia files. Surely if the amplifier and speaker are capable of generating
that level of audio, then the same could be expected during calls.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: Like the speakerphone feature, the
volume of the ringer (which uses the same speaker) is not particularly loud.
Choosing the correct MP3 file and assigning it as a ringer mitigates the problem
to some extent, but no matter how loud the MP3 file is, the ringer volume just
doesn’t cut it in really loud environments.
Keypad Design: I had very mixed feelings about the
two keypads on this phone. The numeric keypad under the slider is actually not
too bad. It’s well-spaced, the keys are fairly large, and they press with a
reasonable amount of tactile feel. However, they are also flush and if it
weren’t for a horizontal ridge that runs across each row, there would be no way
to feel one from the other. The ridges make it possible to feel the rows
however, but not the columns.
The on-top keypad, which includes the 4-way cursor and TALK and END keys, is far
too crowded and indistinct. Those with tiny fingers will definitely find it
easier to use than those with large fingers, but given that most people use
their thumbs to work the keypad, even having small fingers isn’t a great help. I
found it difficult to press the cursor-down key without occasionally pressing
the menu key below it and to the left. Whenever I did that, I found myself
unable to easily return to where I was, as pressing EXIT would just go back to
the main screen.
Display: The display, like most the Nokia Smart
Phones, has a resolution of 240 x 320. For many things this is very good, but
the lack of a scalable font for the phone makes it difficult to see for people
with less than perfect vision. The display also isn’t particularly bright and is
easily washed out by direct sunlight. Clearly the screen’s primary purpose is
for the multimedia features and NOT for day-to-day phone use.
Icing on the Cake
Fit & Finish: I don’t normally comment on this, but
I felt that the E65 deserved a special mention. Unlike virtually all of Nokia’s
other slider designs, the E65 is surprisingly solid. Even when slid open, the
phone feels as though it is made from one single piece of material. This is a
far cry from their other models that feel as though you could accidentally snap
them in two without even trying. Kudos on this design, and we can only hope that
most future Nokia sliders are built the same way.
Camera: First the good news. The 2-megapixel camera
has an excellent lens with exceptional linearity and consistently-sharp focus
across the entire image. The JPEG compression level is also low enough that the
images are largely free of the telltale JPEG blocks when examined up close.
And now for the bad new. Like most Nokia cameras, the one in the E65 suffers
from excessive amount of digital noise. While this has become the norm for Nokia
camera phones in low light, the E65 exhibits surprisingly large amounts of noise
in the darker areas of even brightly-lit subjects. On the phone I tested, the
noise was generally green in color, and many pictures possessed a green tint
that was almost impossible to balance out in Photoshop.
Here is a sample photograph taken outdoors using the E65 and my Motorola i880. My dashboard is gray, not green. Any attempts to correct the green tint (without selecting separately) just caused the other colors in the photograph to look totally wrong:
Picture taken with the
E65
Similar shot with the i880
The phone is capable of producing very impressive videos with excellent audio
tracks, but they too suffer from the digital noise and green-tint effect found
in the still photographs. In one video, which the phone’s owner had taken of a
young relative showing off a toy, the kid looked like he was from Mars. Changing
the white balance setting does not overcome this problem.
WiFi: The E65 includes a
built-in WiFi transceiver, which makes it possible to use data applications on
the phone using a local WiFi network rather than the GSM data network. Although
E65 still has problems connecting with all WiFi configurations, but I had no
difficulty connecting with my network, which uses WPA Personal and the TKIP
algorithm.
Conclusions
So while the E65 possesses excellent fit & finish, decent RF sensitivity, and
good earpiece volume, not much else really got my attention. Virtually every
other aspect of the phone was in some way inferior to what one could expect from
other phones on the market, including other Nokia models. It’s not a terrible
phone by any stretch of the imagination, but despite some of its gee-whiz
features, it fails to rise above mediocre.
