60 second review: Nokia E65

The E65 slider phone has one feature I hadn't used before: the 'Message Reader'. This 'reads' back your text messages in a choice of two voices (male or female). It's quite smart insofar as it recognises certain commonly used text abbreviations, like 'btw' (by the way) and reads them as if they were spelled out. Its only limitation is that it can't be targeted at a certain message (ie it starts at the beginning of your inbox and just works its way down).

The E65's negatives?

The buttons on the front of the phone are positioned in a way that's probably more awkward than most other Nokia models I've used. And there are too many: 15 buttons (not including the keypad) on the front, with another four on the side (the camera/volume controls) and the on/off button on top.
Another significant downside is that the web browser has cut out unexpectedly on me several times. I'd go as far as to describe it as being unreliable.
The other (slight) downside is that the software continues to be fairly slow at running through commands. For example, backing out of the messaging programme seems to take ages (I count 5 seconds as being ages).

Now the positives.

It has loads and loads of applications. Nokia really is out in front when it comes to business phones -- only Sony Ericsson's high-end smartphones can rival them. Though only 2 megapixels, the camera's decent, too. Wi-fi's here, but no radio (that I can find).

The other very nice thing about the phone is the material it's made from: feels like a sort of hard leather. Very nice to touch and a welcome break from cheap plastic alloys.

The phone costs €460 sim-free or about €250 on contract.

Comments

[Adam]

I've been having the same kind of problem with my N80 - internet browsing cuts out unexpectedly and regularly and interface often freezes up for a second. Sending a text message can sometimes take forever because everything seems to freeze up.

It runs on Symbian S60 (not sure what version) - I imagine this is the same. Must see if there are updates out there for it.