While I haven’t been able to get my hands on a real live Nokia E55 just yet, I was able to snag a few screenshots recently, using Forum Nokia’s RDA system. If you’re a developer, this is a great way to test your application – for free – on a number of recent and future S60-powered smartphones from Nokia. I made some rather cool discoveries along the way, so stick with me as I share these with you.
First up, the Nokia E55 that I played with was a prototype with firmware v021.003, so things aren’t quite final just yet. Nonetheless, the device has 44.5MB of RAM available at boot, and 46.2MB of internal memory. Both of these numbers really disappointed me, to be quite honest. For a business-class device, Nokia should know better than this.
Also, while the E55 does feature a built-in accelerometer, unfortunately, it is only used to rotate the display. There is no support for flip-to-silent or tapping on the display to silence the phone, which is definitely going to be sorely missed on an Eseries device. It does, however, include the typical notification lights settings, as well as the user-customizable one-touch keys, as expected.
Ovi Chat is also included, again, as expected, and is integrated into the Contacts app just as it would be on any other phone. It’s nice to see this installed by default, though.
In the Music folder, there’s a new face, called Music Search. As we know from the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic screenshot walkthrough, this is the Say-And-Play application that allows you to call up a music track by simply saying the artist or track title out loud. Very cool stuff, something I’m looking forward to playing with soon.
The best part, though, is this little treasure – an Ovi Sync application. As you can see, this application will FINALLY allow us to automate the process of synchronizing with Ovi Sync, with quite a few options, such as not syncing while roaming. You can also choose a default access point, which is definitely nice.
I was also extremely pleased to see my personal favorite, the Nokia Audio Themes, readily available in the themes settings area. I don’t know why I love these so much, but I do, and I’m glad to see that Nokia does, too, apparently.
Hopefully you were able to get a better idea of what to expect from the Nokia E55 from our discoveries. I’m extremely pleased to see the Ovi Sync application, but concerned that it appears to be baked into the firmware – that reduces the liklihood that we’ll see this application available for other devices, such as my Nokia E71 or the 5800 XpressMusic. We’ll have more coverage of the Nokia E55 as soon as possible.
If you’re excited about the Nokia E55, what is it about the phone that excites you? If not, why aren’t you?
