The Nokia E51 is both stylish and suited to business purposes, which combined has created one of the most popular mobile phones the world has ever seen. The usual approach taken by companies building business mobiles is that business is a serious matter, so style is unnecessary. Some fear if their phone looks too fashionable their colleagues won’t think of them as a real businessperson. Others worry their partners don’t want them to spend money on something flashy, but rather should get a device that is simply functional for necessary purposes.

All this is changing now with the advent of business smartphones that also look great, and the Nokia E51 exemplifies this design approach to a tee. The Nokia E51 is a ‘chocolate bar’ shaped mobile that measures 114mm by 46mm by 12mm, while weighing in at 100 grams. This could be deemed by some business-shirt-wearing types as being a touch lengthy for the front pocket, but if you look at this type of phone historically, it’s nothing when compared to an older model Blackberry.

A 3G, HSDPA capable mobile, the Nokia E51 also comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which is what you’d expect from a business phone. Running on the Symbian 60 platform, the E51 supports push email via Mail for Exchange, Seven Always-on and Visto Mobile platforms.

When you ‘re in the office, QuickOffice allows easy access to Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, but be aware this is for viewing purposes only. You would never think of actually editing a business file via the E51's two-inch screen, so not having full editorial capabilities doesn’t feel like much of a loss. However, as other phones do have this option, some business people will question it being left out.

As you’d expect from a business handset, the E51 is not a hotbed for entertainment or multimedia. It comes with a 2-megapixel camera, but there’s only this single camera, so video calls aren’t possible. It can play both music and video, and has 130MB of on-board memory space to hold files, but these features pale in comparison to multimedia-based mobiles we see on the shelves today. You can upgrade your memory with a microSD card if need be.

‘Chocky bar’ shaped mobiles have been around for a fair while now, and most of the manufacturers have developed them to work quite well. The Nokia E51 does a great job at most aspects of functionality, but it’s not without its issues. A few of the rubbery function keys don’t push down as well you’d hope. Unless your thumbs are built rather tough, the side keys may be unresponsive, while the option keys that surround the main control pad could feel undersized and thin. However, everyone is different, so go and play with a display model to see if this is the case for you.

The Nokia E51’s browser uses a virtual map set-up to traverse through web pages, and as the phone only has a standard keypad and two-inch display, this is a suitable compromise. In essence, this is a business phone for checking information while travelling on the train, as opposed to a device used for creating files and documents.
The Nokia E51 has been rated as having up to 4.4 hours of call time, and up to 13 days on standby. As the phone does use Wi-Fi, most business people will know these figures are fairly optimistic, and they’ll probably have to recharge the E51 every three to four days.

Pros:

-    Phone can still work without a SIM card
-    Fast email access
-    GPS
-    3G-capable
-    Attractive design
-    HSDPA and Wi-Fi
-    Good battery life
-    Integrated e-mail
-    Web and document browsing

Cons:

-    Menu system is complicated
-    No video–call abilities
-    Speakerphone isn’t quite loud enough
-    Design is a little heavy and long
-    Screen display is not big enough for lengthy document reading
-    A few keys aren’t big enough
-    Other keys are difficult to activate
-    No inbuilt editing of documents