Nokia E61

Thin is still in, but those of us who wanted a sleek and slim design in a smartphone, especially one with a QWERTY keyboard were out of luck until the Motorola Q came out on Verizon a few months back. What if Windows Mobile isn't to your liking, or you prefer a GSM world phone to Verizon's US-only offering? You were out of luck until Nokia surprised us with the sexy and capable E61 this summer. The E61 has it all: brilliant and roomy QVGA display, solid smartphone OS, WiFi, Bluetooth, a full QWERTY thumb keyboard and push email support including BlackBerry Connect, GoodLink, Seven and Visto. WiFi is particularly yummy since BlackBerries, Palm Treos and the Motorola Q all lack WiFi.

The E61 runs Nokia's S60 3rd Edition on Symbian OS 9.1 and comes with full PIM applications, email client, a superb web browser and applications to read, edit and create MS Office documents. Not only that, it looks really, really good and measures only .55" thin. In the US, the Nokia E61 is offered by CompUSA, Tiger Direct, some independent T-Mobile dealers (such as Skylight Wireless in the Dallas Metroplex area who supplied our review unit) and importers. Importers generally sell it for a truly affordable $350 unlocked with no contract while CompUSA sells it for considerably more. The E61 is a quad band world phone with EDGE and Euro-3G (not compatible with US 3G). You can use the phone with any GSM provider, which means Cingular and T-Mobile in the US. Since the E61 is a business phone, it does not have a camera, but the newer E61i adds a camera. The E61 is available in several localized versions for different countries and languages. All have full support for English but the QWERTY keyboard on the Middle Eastern one is bilingual with both English and Arabic in the case of our Middle Eastern review unit (which came with both English and Arabic manuals). The Spanish version adds a few non-English characters (this is the one that's generally cheapest and easiest to find on eBay as of this writing). So if you're buying sight unseen, check with the seller to see which version they're selling. Cingular is rumored to release the Nokia E62 later this year, which is the same as the E61 but it deletes WiFi and 3G.

Display: 16 million color 320 x 240 (QVGA) display. Screen size diagonally: 2.8 ", landscape orientation.

Battery: Nokia BP-5L Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1500 mA. Claimed talk time on GSM networks: 4.3-9.5 hours. Claimed standby: 13-17 days.

Performance: Texas Instruments OMAP 235 MHz CPU. 64 megs of flash memory for storage and typically 22.5 megs RAM available for running programs after boot.

Size: 4.6 x 2.74 x .55 inches (117 mm x 69.7 mm x 14 mm). Weight: 5.08 ounces (144 g).

Phone: GSM quad band world phone supporting the 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands with GPRS, EDGE and UMTS on the 2100MHz band for Europe.

Camera: None.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and Pop-Port jack. Mono headset included but will output stereo to Nokia's optional stereo Pop-Port headsets. Voice Recorder, Music Player (MP3) and RealPlayer included.

Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b /g and Bluetooth 1.2.

Software: Contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, Office suite (read and write Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents), PDF viewer, Navigator GPS application (requires optional Bluetooth GPS), Pro Golf Contest 2, memory card manager, Java VM, Messaging client (SMS, MMS, POP3 and IMAP email), Nokia PTT (Push To Talk), web and WAP browsers, voice recorder, Gallery, Converter, Calculator, File Manager, RealPlayer, Flash Lite, Zip Manager, theme manager, application manager, Transfer (transfer contacts, calendar and some phone settings to or from another S40 or S60 phone), music player, clock, printer managment app.

Expansion: 1 miniSD slot. 64 meg card included.