Nokia E65 Review

Camera interface

Camera:

The camera is started in 3.5 seconds and then you are faced with its definitely unattractive interface. It differs from the interface of the multimedia N-series and resembles that of the Symbian 6 phones and is the same as that used in E50. Thus the manufacturer wants to show that this is not a multimedia phone and defines another difference between the E and N-series.

The camera's interface does not even take up the whole display and the Viewfinder only occupies half of it, while the options available are color effects, white balance and night mode, which almost useless.

We are not positively surprised by the photos quality but still they are good to use. Colors, which are unsaturated and unrealistic, are a disadvantage. Immediately after the light grows weaker, noise appears which kills part of the details.




By pressing the right direction you will switch to video recording regime whose maximum resolution of 352x288 (CIF) is a proper achievement expected to be used on a computer. Actually, the quality is such that the videos are usable but the high compression is felt by the appearing artifacts clearly seen in the moving objects.

Nokia E65 sample video at 352x288 pixels resolution

The gallery in which you view the photos already taken is again not like that of the N-series, but just visualizing a list of small thumbnails. In full-screen view the phone fails to rotate the photos if taken in opposite orientation and shows them with large white fields.



Multimedia:

The music player is just like that of the other Symbian 9.1 phones (N73, N93i, etc) and allows sorting your music by artist/album/genre/composer/track list (most played/recent/recent additions). The “Now Playing” interface has its peculiarities and, in order to be able to use its potentialities, you have to “navigate” on small icons and not like in the more recent version, where you can control everything with the d-pad’s five directions.


To listen to the MP3/MP4/AAC audio files you can use both the loudspeaker,offering average volume of not particularly high quality, and wire headphones. The model from the set is one of the simplest, offered by the producer, but you can use other models that can be connected to the PopPort or an interconnect.


The Real Video player can open 3GP and MP4 files; with the H.263 code, rather than with the 264. MP4 H263 video with QVGA resolution you can view the files comfortably, without cutting or losing frames, which was a surprise for us, given the comparatively slow processor.


Software:

You have 50MB of available memory in your phone and if this is not enough, you can increase it by a microSD card. Nokia claims that the user avails of about 24MB RAM memory and a 220MHz ARM9 processor.

The phone can use applications based both on the Java platform and Symbian S60, which provides wide 3rd party software compatibility. Installation is a piece of cake, while additional programs increase the phone's capabilities and it can be personalized to better suit you.

Preloaded with the phone come printing applications (Printers & HP printer) and Screen export, enabling you to transfer the images from your phone’s screen to another device (whether a projector, a screen or other).