Nokia E52

The Nokia E52 measures 116mm tall by 49.9mm wide by 9.9mm thick and weighs 98g, and is therefore a 'sub-10mm, sub-100g' device. It's actually smaller and lighter than many 'feature phones' that pepper the mid-range of the consumer market.

The all-grey casing lends it a professional look, while the aluminium parts should help the phone withstand its share of drops and knocks. If we have a grumble about the colour scheme it's that the white of the key markings does not always stand out too well. In bright outdoor and dull indoor conditions, when the backlight is not activated, it can be difficult to distinguish their markings. The brilliant white backlight does a superb job when it's on, though.

Nokia has managed to fit in an impressively large number pad, with the largest keys almost 15mm wide and 6mm tall. The two outer columns of keys are slightly smaller than the inner one and the bottom row of outer keys is particularly curtailed, but all of the keys are relatively large.

The Symbian Series 60-based Nokia E52 offers a strong set of business-orientated features, but also has plenty for the crossover user. To this end, Nokia has integrated its dual home-screen system. We've seen this before in E-series handsets, but it remains a simple yet smart solution.

You can set up two different home screens, with different wallpapers and application shortcuts. Switching between them is a matter of choosing an option on the shortcuts menu. It's an easy way to switch between 'work' and 'play' modes.

The E52 is a quad-band GSM phone with GPRS, HSDPA (10.2Mbps max) and HSUPA (max 2Mbps) support. Despite Vodafone's recent announcement of a 14.4Mbps upgrade in some areas, this handset can be classed as capable of handling pretty much the highest mobile broadband connection speed available.

Battery life is startlingly good. Nokia says you should get up to 8 hours of GSM talk, 23 days on standby and up to 18 hours of music playback or 30 hours of FM radio listening. Our own test involved playing music continuously from a fully charged battery through the handset's loudspeaker. We had to conduct the test over several days, as the E52's 1,500mAh battery delivered an amazing 26 hours 19 minutes of music playback.