Nokia E52 review

E-series the complete family has been through a long period of revolution and now that the devices belonging to this family have become more reliable, grown-up. Also the chief motto of the designer is to serve the customer rather than anything else. E52 is yet other addition to the family, which seems to be increasing the stamina and speed to the E-series family.
For sure by this time the readers are well informed about what they should expect from E-series and what not. E52 is a complete package of features shuffled from E50 and E51. Think big, act fast and look sharp has always been the prime principle behind E-series, though this seems to be fine, there is yet another fact that really bothers us, “Conservative”- safely ruling out uncontrollable display.
Usually the best part to start the review would be right from the box, but incase of E52, it has been a mere disappointment. Nothing really special about the box stands really simple.

Design and Construction
One of the complete business phones that has been wrapped in a style and sleek metal covering. The metal accent run all over the body of the E52, giving it an extra shine and durability. The other best thing about the construction is that the keypad also has been derived from the same metal and sense of touch makes us feel extra-ordinary. The color combination in the front is much like a graphite rectangular metal that has silver line circumferencing.
The E52 is available in three different colors – Metal Grey Aluminium, Golden Aluminium, Graphite Grey. But undoubtedly, the golden one has throbbed the hearts of the users. The display occupies a little more than half of the front screen. 2.4″ 16M-color QVGA display. This display for hard catches all high resolutions and is undoubtedly is hard to find the same feature in other phones of the same variety. The output of the device when exposed to sunlight is extremely good, no matter how much the sun shines, the phones display remains unaffected.
Moving down to the D-Pad, completely built on the same metal used for the construction of the body. The D-Pad accommodates two soft keys, and the “call connect” and “end” buttons. It also has a backspace key and typical E-series one-touch shortcut keys, which can be used as a shortcut to four different applications. The alpha-numeric keypad sure ranks the best among its other competitors. Well spaced, distinct borders and great touch orientation. The 3.5mm jack audio and power button are concentrated on the top while the USB port is found to be uncovered (unlike E71) on the left side. The camera lens as usual is placed at the back side. The volume rocker, voice command key and the shutter key are pushed to the right side.
User Interface and Phone book has not had many changes, infact there needs to be no changes, since the working of these interfaces with the previous models was very satisfying. Voice over the phone is likely not to be disturbed by external factors. The clarity and reception of the voice is comparatively good has been the same through the E-series.
Messaging has always been one of the best features of this series and no doubt it has done a great job. The keypads also support greatly in this deal to messaging. The device supports any kind of messaging, including the fact that editing office documents is not at all a big challenge for this device. All other features have been retained like delivery report, auto-save while exiting, and audio messages. E-mail client, the one that was first featured in E75, looks much better and well adapted to the features of this device. Organizing and searching your mails, which was a great deal previously has turned to be very simple over this model.
Image gallery is yet another pleasant surprise on this phone. Browsing through images available on the phone is much easier; all that we have to do is just keep holding the direction keys. The zoom functionality is also quick and looks improved. Of course it does get slowed down when you try to cross 100% letting you zoom up to 400%.apart from this the other usual features are slideshow which can be customized.
The headset offered with E52 has an excellent reception and delivery quality in them. There is no doubt that we can call this model the best in its audio quality. The bar-shaped E52 has better frequency response, stereo crosstalk and distortion levels than its side-sliding sibling and that seems enough to us to announce it as the new E-series lead-singer.
For sure none of us are going to feel disappointed if Nokia offers good Music Player features on a business phone. Yes, the music player offered along with E52 is pretty decent and we can expect a considerable quality in the output. There is no special dedicated key for turning on the music player. There is a huge number of audio formats supported including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. M3U playlists are also managed seamlessly and transferred files are added to the music library trouble-free by choosing the refresh option.
Video playing becomes possible with the new Real Player that has been feature on this phone. Viewing in both normal and landscape is possible. The device also supports FM radio where you can save up to 50 stations.
Camera has surely been a feature that has been let down. The lens offers a capability of 3mpx, with no auto-focus. Instead E52 has what they call “Enhanced fixed focus” , but this has got nothing to fill the gap that the Auto-focus function does. Thanks to the LED flash, otherwise there would be no use in the camera. But the customization of your camera must really be appreciated, the camera supports very complex settings like: from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects which are labeled color tones.
Connectivity with the Bluetooth v2.0 and USB v2.0 to Wi-Fi and 3G available, the phones transfer rate is unquestionable and is really the morale booster for the complete device, transferring data up to 10.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink.

Key features

• Compact metallic body and extra slim girth (9.90mm)
• Quad-band GSM support
• 3G with HSDPA 10.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps
• 2.4″ 16M-color display of QVGA resolution
• Symbian OS, S60 UI with FP2
• 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, DLNA support
• Accelerometer for screen auto-rotation and turn-to-mute
• One-touch shortcut keys mean “business”
• 3 megapixel enhanced fixed focus camera with LED flash
• Secondary videocall camera
• FM radio with RDS

Main disadvantages

• Disappointing camera features and performance
• Video recording maxes out at VGA@15fps
• No DivX or XviD support (can be installed, possibly requiring a purchase)
• No TV-out functionality