Phone rating: 
Best buy: *Free* from Vodafone Business Shop.
The Nokia E65 is a 3G smartphone aimed squarely at business users. It's the nicest looking of the E series, looking remarkably like a Samsung D500, but with a different choice of colours, so no-one could mistake the two. Unlike the Samsung, it's very much targeted at the serious business user. This is a Symbian phone, so if offers a lot of scope for power users to customise the phone and install their own applications. The calendar is very flexible, and contacts are easy to manage. There's support for email with attachments, and fast access to data via EDGE or 3G networks. On the negative side, Symbian can sometimes be slow and the phone may crash or freeze from time to time.
There are some great features in this phone, but others that aren't so hot, so you'll need to make sure it's right for you. Starting with the exterior, we've mentioned the attractive design of the phone already. It's a very nicely-sized phone and not too heavy, although we'd have preferred a slightly larger keypad - what is it with Nokia and small keypads? The slide design is practical as well as smart, as it enables a large screen to be fitted to a compact phone. The screen is one of the nicest features of the E65, using Nokia's latest 16 million colour technology and a high resolution. However, the E65 does use very small fonts, so be wary of this if your close-up eyesight isn't what it used to be! On the other hand, it enables you to view a lot of information on the screen at one time.
One of the selling points of the E65 is the fact that it can make Voice over IP (VoIP) calls using the integrated wireless LAN connection. It's virtually unbeatable when it comes to connectivity in fact. Not only does it have WLAN (both 802.11b & 802.11g are supported), but it offers Bluetooth, USB and infrared too, so you ought to be able to connect it to just about anything. Onboard memory is reasonably generous at 50 Mbytes, with a slot for a MicroSD memory card too.
Although the phone features a camera and a music player, these are bonus features, not core to the phone. One obvious ommission is that there's no capability for making video calls, as there's no secondary video camera.
The battery life of the E65 is less than average, which is not surprising considering that this is a 3G phone with WLAN and Bluetooth. You can switch off any of these features to conserve battery life if they're not needed.
Overall, the E65 is a reasonable implementation of a 3G Symbian phone, although it is dogged by reliability problems and slow menus. If you don't have a need for all the high-end features, you'd be better off with something simpler, like the Nokia 6300 or Nokia 6500 Slide.
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Features of the Nokia E65 include:
- Series 60 3rd Edition Symbian operating system
- One Touch keys for direct access to contacts, mute/unmute, and conference calling
- Java & Symbian applications
- Voice over IP (VoIP) calls via integrated WLAN
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email with attachments (POP/IMAP, SMTP, and IMAP4 protocols), Instant Messaging
- Voice dialing
- Voice commands for menu short cuts, keypad lock, and profiles
- Voice recording
- Integrated handsfree speaker
- 2 megapixel camera
- Display: active-matrix TFT, 16 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels
- Music player (MP3/AAC) and media player
- Talking ringtones
- Calendar with weekly view, contacts, to-do list, and notepad for short notes - all viewable while managing a phone call
- Memory: 50 Mbytes plus MicroSD memory card support
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 1.2, USB, Infrared, WLAN (802.11b, 802.11g)
- WAP 2.0, EDGE (maximum download speeds of up to 296 kbps)
- XHTML web browser
- Size: 105 x 49 x 15.5 mm
- Weight: 115g
- Quad-band (EGSM 850/900/1800/1900) plus 3G (WCDMA 2100)
- Talktime: 3-6 hours (2G) or 2.5 hours (3G) or 3 hours (VoIP)
- Battery standby: up to 11 days (2G) or 5 days (3G/WLAN)
