Nokia E65 review: how does it stack up against a 5-year-old Siemens ME45?
I got a Nokia E65 after years of swearing that I'd never buy a Nokia.
Symbian has sold me. The built-in apps are garbage, but it's just the idea of finally having a beefy computer that I can carry around and with a nice screen that I can read. There are free SDK's and tools, and so I'm very excited about the idea of building a nice work environment on there.
I was carrying around a Siemens ME45 for about five years prior. Beautiful little phone in its own ugly way. Absolutely bulletproof. It had serial and IrDA connections, GPRS, internal memory, and was the only useful phone in an era where everyone wanted pretty.
Sadly, Siemens followed everyone else and started making pretty phones. Then they sold their mobile phone division to BenQ, who are renowned for making pretty bits of plastic. Nokia made a few 'durable' phones, but they were garbage. So the Siemens lived on well past its expected service life.
On with the review.
| ME45 |
E65 |
|---|---|
| Can get smacked around and won't look much worse. It's pretty ugly to begin with. |
Looks like it'll scratch easily. |
| My one spent half an hour immersed in salt water and still worked afterwards. |
I got some kebab grease in there, but it still works fine. Except that it smells like kebab. |
| Has yummy tactile buttons that you can operate reliably without looking at the screen. |
Buttons? What buttons? Nokia staff must have the softest, most sensitive thumbs on the planet. Even looking at the thing, I still can't reliably find buttons. |
| Cost $360 retail in 2002 |
Costs $680 retail in 2007 - but my earning power is two orders of magnitude larger now. |
| Is very shiny, but that's because five years jostling around in my pocket has rubbed the case smooth. It's not supposed to be shiny. It's a very masculine phone. |
Is very shiny. Intentionally. For the man who's comfortable with his sexuality. |
| Uses a 16MHz processor. |
Uses a 220-ishMHz processor. You wouldn't notice if the speed wiggled by 16MHz either way. |
| Contains 348kB of internal memory and was considered well ahead of its class. |
Contains 60MB of internal memory and can take a 2GB memory card. |
| An SMS in 2002 costs 25c and can contain 160 characters. |
An SMS in 2007 costs 25c and can contain 160 characters. |
| 2.5G capable |
3G capable. That's, like, 0.5 more G's. |
| All of the applications have very efficient UIs and are a pleasure to use. |
You can download applications with good UIs. If you can find them. And get past the application signing. And find enough memory space for them. Assuming they exist in the first place. Oh, and they probably cost money, too. |
| Any key can be assigned to whatever you want. |
Has a revolutionary new feature that lets you assign a special 'Own Key' to be any function you can imagine! |
| The screen is one of those nasty old black-and-white LCDs that is easy to read in bright sunlight. |
The screen is readable in bright sunlight if you unlock it and the backlight is on and you cover it with your hand and there's an appropriate tailwind and you sacrifice a virgin. |
| Has survived car crashes, mountain bike crashes, being dropped on concrete, being thrown at things and bouncing for 20 metres down a stone driveway. |
I don't even want to put this thing on the desk without its protective soft case. Though it did survive the kebab incident unscathed. Update: it's survived a mountain bike crash. I landed on my back and smashed my helmet. Good work, Nokia! |
| Uses an annoying custom charge plug. |
Uses an annoying custom charge plug. |
| Can only do monophonic ringtones, but they sound nice. |
Can do any sort of ringtone, but they all sound like ass. |
:) I've also moved from a
:) I've also moved from a Siemens Me45 to a E65 and agree with you all the way. The Me45 can be considered a letal weapon if you throw it at someone. :)
But nothing endures but change, right?