This phone is designed for the style-conscious users. Nokia 2626 is a colourful phone, keeping up with the users in the emerging markets. It is available in quite ambitious colours of Fiery Red and Spatial Blue, and to go with the trend, it has a FM Radio for music on the go. The phone is constructed out of three different plastic materials, with the inset made of tinted glass, having mirror coating on the front.

The phone has none of the control rockers at its sides, except for few things. Two loudspeakers are situated at the top and right hand sides ofthe phone, and the charger input jack and the 2.50mm audio jack, are situated at the bottom of the phone along with an odd looking slot. Nokia 2626 has a 27×27 mm STN-matrix display, with a resolution of 128×128 pixels, having 65K colours. While the picture quality is good in normal ambient light conditions, it gets washed out in the sun, but however, it retains the legibility of the display.

Phone book: 300 entries
Connectivity: GPRS, USB
Multimedia: FM Radio, MP3,AMR, Midi ringtone support, Voice recorder, Loudspeaker.
Interface: Series 40 Interface
Display: 65k colors,128 x 128
Messaging: SMS,MMS,Audio Messaging (via MMS), email client(pop).
Dream Feature: I never thought it will come in reality. Nokia 2626 has copy/paste option.

The Nokia 5300 belongs to the XpressMusic series, which is at the tip of Nokia’s sword for battling Sony Ericsson’s Walkman brand. The most notable features on the 5300 are the new 2.5mm earphone jack and dedicated music keys. Today we will see if the 5300 can really substitute your music player.

At first glance you might think there’s nothing cutting edge about the Nokia 5300’s design. Yes, it’s a bit boxy and a little bulky (3.6 by 1.9 by 0.8 inches), but it’s lighter than it looks (3.6 ounces), and ultimately it’s a form factor that deserves closer inspection. First off, the 5300 Xpress Music is a slider phone. Though Nokia is just starting to ease into the slider craze, it hasn’t stopped the company from succeeding here. The slider mechanism slides up and down with one hand, yet it is sturdy enough to feel comfortable in the hand. Our only quibble–and this is a small one–is that the 5300 feels somewhat top-heavy when the slider is up. As with most slider phones, the 5300 won’t cradle against the curve of your head, but we’ve never considered that quirk to be a big deal. Durability is a key theme with this phone; its midsection is wrapped in a rubberized covering that extends down to the navigation controls (see below). We also like the offbeat red-and-white color scheme–call it the Austrian phone–but there’s a black-and-white version for more traditional tastes.

The picture-perfect QVGA display measures 2 inches (320×240 pixels) and supports 262,144 colors. Equal to the gorgeous screen on the Nokia 6126, it offers an eye-popping array of colors, and displayed everything from graphics to texts to games beautifully. The simple but attractive menus are also a treat to view, and we love that Nokia provides a description of unfamiliar applications if you hold the cursor over the corresponding icon. You can change the font size and the backlight time, and even though you can’t alter the brightness, the display is plenty bright as it is.

The keypad on the 5300 is one of the best out there. The keys are large and the tactile feedback is excellent. My only complaint actually arises from the built quality, and it is the obvious when you are text messaging. When you reach up for the d-pad, the slide will wobble, making your grip unstable. Apart from that, the whole keypad is extremely ergonomic, and even the lowest row of keys is very usable, as they are not that close to the edge of the device.

The half auto-open sliding mechanism works fine on the 5300. The only trouble would be the build, as we mentioned earlier, since it will not lock itself when slid up.

Key features:

• 1.3 megapixel camera
• Dedicated music keys
• microSD memory card slot (hot-swap)
• Enhanced MP3 player and stereo FM radio
• QVGA display resolution
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP profile
• Standard mini-USB port
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack adapter in the package

Nokia have, in the past, managed to successfully improve both popular and unpopular products with slight product revisions. The N-Gage to the N-Gage QD, and the Nokia 9300 to the Nokia 9300i both spring to mind. Have they successfully pulled off this trick with the E61i? As with previous iterative devices, there are some slight changes to the physical device, a few changes inside, and a general polishing of everything with an eye on the extensive user feedback that has been gathered.

Browsing is a lot quicker too. surfing through secure sites is not a problem by the way. i know the latest version of the E61 is capable of doing this but personally i think the E61i’s browser response is much better. i also haven’t experienced a single crash so far, when browsing and editing with Quickoffice at the same time. to test the phone’s stability, i even tried launching 4 to 5 apps (web, quickword, quicksheet, adobe pdf and mobireader) simultaneously while running screenshot on the background, and i can say, the E61i didn’t even flinch. very stable!

The QWERTY keyboard, other than having more room between each key, remains largely similar to the earlier E61. What we don’t quite fancy about the new buttons are the less pronounced. The rubbery surface also makes a squeaky sound when we run our fingers on it. However, it’s a minor gripe and we soon got over it as we breeze though typing a full text message on the E61i.

Key features:

• Rich connectivity options - UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, Infrared
• Outstanding battery life
• 2 megapixel camera
• Messenger form factor with a full QWERTY keyboard
• Really large 2.8” TFT display
• Solid, metallic body
• Symbian OS 9.1 S60 3rd Edition UI
• microSD memory card slot

The Nokia 6151 is a 3G phone that looks very similar to the Nokia 6233. It’s a classic straight design with a functional keypad and 5-way navigation key.

Despite being a 3G phone, the 6151 has a rather lacklustre specification. Although the phone has a video camera, it’s rear mounted, making video calling impossible - a major design faux pas for a 3G phone. The camera itself is really nothing special, at just 1.3 megapixels, no flash, and dodgy quality. The 6151 does have a good MP3 player and FM radio, but with no memory card included in the sales package, you’ll have to fork out some more money if you want enough memory to store more than a few songs.

In typical Nokia style, they’ve managed to combine the most basic phone functions, but have also crammed in 3G connectivity, Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera, expandable memory and a generous amount of battery life to keep you on the go between power point hops.

At only 1.3 megapixels the camera seems a bit dated compared to the Nokia 6300’s 2-megapixel offering, although it’s still ample for happy snaps at family events. Don’t expect digital SLR quality photos, with images up to a maximum resolution of 1,280 x 960, but they are enough for a desktop wallpaper or the odd print out.

The 6151 features Nokia’s S40 interface, a little different from your traditional single page menu system. The icons scroll vertically rather than horizontally, and while it’s not a bad system, we did find ourselves doing laps of the menu to check all the options because you can’t see all the sub menus in one go. Our other big gripe is with the navigation button, sitting perilously close to the number two key and on more than one occasion was accidentally bumped when attempting to scroll down lists. Users with fat fingers have been warned.

The 6151 is well equipped for a handset in this price range. It has Bluetooth 2.0, support for SMS and MMS messaging with T9 predictive text input, Java games, a hands-free speakerphone, FM radio, MP3 player, push-to-talk, a voice recorder and voice dialling as well as MP3 ring tones. The FM radio works quite well, although you have to use the included headset as this acts as the antenna. The 6151 media player was notable for a phone in this price range. It is capable of playing MP3, AAC and M4A file formats and has preset and manual five-band equalisation options. It can also play videos in either 3GPP or MPEG4 formats.

Nokia E50 is another Series 60 Symbian 9.1 smartphone from the famous Finnish manufacturer. It’s the small sizes and ergonomic shape that attract most of the attention. The new quad-band handset has connectivity features like Infrared, Bluetooth, USB, GPRS and EDGE. As it comes at a low price, it will be a phone with many fans. Packed with features in small dimensions, coming at the right price, E50 is surely a bright addition on the GSM phones’ market shelves.

The E50 is intended as a lightweight SmartPhone for the business user who’s not interested in having a camera, MP3 player, etc on their phone. There is a camera, but it’s not up to much, and is in fact optional. On the other hand, the E50 has a good set of business functions: a good speakerphone, voice dialling and commands, email support, web browsing and an attachment viewer for Microsoft documents. It supports Bluetooth 2.0 wireless connectivity in addition to USB and infrared. Memory is ample, with 70 Mbytes built-in and support for hot-swappable memory cards. The E50 is quadband, but not 3G. However, fast downloads via EDGE are possible, so this isn’t too much of a hindrance. On top of this, the Symbian Series 60 functionality makes this a powerful business device. The E50 also has superb battery life.

There are, however, numerous problems with the E50. First of all, like many Symbian SmartPhones, its user interface is slow and the software is prone to crashing. Also, like many of our users have commented, the font size is tiny, so it’s hard to make use of the advanced features. Given that the target user is likely to be older than average, this is an inexcusable design fault. The Nokia E60 is a much better option.

Specifications: