Nokia E52

Discontinued
6th May 2009

Nokia's E-Series handsets tend to be unexciting but practical business workhorses. The new Nokia E52 certainly fits into this category - it's a phone that looks unexciting on the surface, but it is much more impressive when you look more closely at what it can actually do.

First the headlines: the Nokia E52 is an S60 smartphone with a 2.4" 240 x 320 pixel display, a 3.2 megapixel "full focus" camera with LED flash, 3.5G support and WiFi, a multimedia player, an FM radio, microSD expandable memory, Bluetooth and a standard 3.5mm audio socket. In fact, the E52 is almost completely identical to the recently announced Nokia E55 apart from the more traditional keypad.

Delve a little deeper and some of the E52's strengths become apparent. The large 1500 mAh battery gives up to 6 hours talktime and 18 days standby on 3G, and a whopping 8 hours talktime and 28 days standby time on GSM. Then there's the handsets's HSDPA support with maximum download speeds of up to 10 Mbps, plus maximum HSUPA upload speeds of up to 2 Mbps. Of course, your carrier will need to support those speeds.. but potentially it means that the Nokia E52 can pull down data quicker than many ADSL connections. One other useful feature is the inclusion of a 1GB memory card as standard, and the standard sales package also includes a data cable and wired headset.

The E52 also comes with GPS plus a compass, and the Nokia Maps application is preloaded. You could also potentially use Google Maps or another S60 based navigation system, although the 2.4" screen is not really well suited to use as an in-car satnav.

Included is support for several push email protocols plus various document viewers and other applications. If you really need to know about the OS, then the E52 has the S60 Edition 3.2.3 UI running on top of Symbian OS 9.3.

There's no word on a camera-less version of the E52 as there was with the Nokia E51, but we would very much like to see that as an option.

Priced at around €245 before tax and subsidy, the E52 isn't exactly a cheap handset but it does offer pretty decent value for money. Nokia say that the E52 should be available sometime during the second half of 2009 in metal grey and golden aluminium colour schemes.