Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I have been looking and waiting to find a good phone to tether with the N800. I just got the E51 from Amazon. I was able to quickly and easily set up the tether and it worked! It is a great phone (Sound quality, feel, etc.) and also has Wifi. Just went on an extended business trip and only took the N800, E51 and Bluetooth keyboard. Worked fantastic and was much better than lugging my laptop. The E51 is $370 at Amazon – Just saw that if you are willing to wait a month you can get it for $270.


Zolt

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

Ditto...

I had an E65 (which turned out to be very buggy in relation to networking security, even after latest firmware upgrades). A few days ago, the screen cracked, just cracked by itself, the phone didn't fall... go figure.

So I went shopping for a new phone to the Nokia Flagship Store and found the E51, after checking its specs, features and reviews online; I decided on buying it.

I do agree with you. It is a great phone and a great companion to the N810. I do also travel a lot but just take my NIT N810, the E51 and an Apple Wireless Keyboard (I like this one better than the folding Nokia ones) instead of a heavy laptop. Those days are gone thankfully.

The E51 is a symbian phone, it seems very stable (so far), includes an FM radio, great apps and what I like best is that is a candy-bar form factor phone. That is no sliding, turning, opening or twisting parts which, personally I don't like much.

In short, a great combo, Nokia E51 + N810.....

Kind regards from Mexico City.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

Yep. I just replaced my N80 (another symbian phone) by an E51 (European version) and I am very pleased. Very stable and fast, good built-in browser, E-mail client works, and works very well with y N810. Also: I don't know about the US version, but the European version supports HSDPA, which bumps UMTS speed from 320K to 3,4Mbits/s...

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I've got the E51 and N810 combination too.

For me the critical factors that make the two ideal are:

1. Can share the same charger so when travelling can take just one.
2. Can interchange the same microSD (with mini-adapter for N810)
3. E51 has HSDPA so when tethering can get real high-speed mobile broadband.
4. E51 supports DUN bluetooth profile and tethering is generally very reliable.
5. E51 has good contact synchronisation with Outlook and can send contacts via bluetooth to N810, so the lack of PIM on N810 is less critical.

The E51 has an excellent keyboard action and its a shame that the N810's hardware keyboard wasn't designed by the same team.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

So here comes the fifth rider :-)

I just bought a second-hand E51 to replace my previous "modem", and it is indeed a nice piece of kit. First time, in fact, that I find a telephone interesting in itself :-)

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I don't know much about cell phones, among other things. Is it possible to use an E51 on Sprint? I find my Treo 755 works fine for tethering, but am about to switch for something else.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I don't know about that, I don't live in Sprint-land (I use it on the Orange network).

It has a lot to like, though : not very expensive, slim and compact (bit heavy maybe), tethers just fine with tablets of course, supports 3G+. It also has Wifi and SIP, and is more natural than tablets for VoIP use.

As an E-series it complements nicely the N8x0 in what they don't/won't do : calendar, mobile Office and whatnot.

And of course Symbian/S60 also supports Python, which is another can of worms :-)

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I see that most of the E51 users in this thread and non_US users.
So to Zolt - who is a US user - how fast is the E51 in regards to 3G HSDPA speeds when connecting to the Nokia N800 ?

Since I understand it does not support US HSDPA frequencies, does it fall back to Edge speeds or does it at least do UMTS speeds in the US ?

See this is the reason I couldn't buy any of the cheaper Nokia phones - since most do not have true 3.5G HSDPA US support - except the N95 and now the N78 and the E71.
So I would like to know an have some benchmarks as to how fast teh E51 is in the US when used as a modem with the Nokia IT.

(i am currently using a N95 with my N810 - an expensive setup really).

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

What's the battery life like when used as above? I'm currently using an E61 and only get about 3 hours of connectivity out of it, so any suggestions for something better (Nokia or not) would be very welcome.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

Battery life is what I would be concerned about too. I recently signed up for Broadband Access Connect with Verizon for a couple of days and I was using Motorola E815 over bluetooth. I ran pidgin when I was connected to broadband. I noticed pidgin causes packets to be transferred every 8-10 seconds. With that, battery life was about 3 hours on E815 and phone got really warm. I guess pidgin kept phone from switching into low power mode with constant data transfer.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I have used the E50 on ATT I don't have any benchmarks but it worked pretty much as fast on EDGE as my N75 which supports UMTS barely any difference in streaming with the internet radio player on my N810. Now that the N78 is 399 I might go and get that so I can upgrade to HSDPA and try out the new s60 (feature pack 2)

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

is it possible to connect the e51 and the n810 via wifi? because it is a lot faster than bluetooth.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

there is a program called Joikuspot that provides this functionality.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I've got an E51 and an N800 and I think it has to be the greatest combo since peanut butter and jelly. I was previously using it with a $20 a month unlimited data plan (GPRS/EDGE only) and am on a similar plan with a different carrier. I wouldn't call it the fastest in the world, but its good for general web browsing and updating the various bits of software. I also have tested the Joikuspot application and it works as advertised, EDGE isn't great but its fast enough that my girlfriend and I were able to browse the web on the N800 and a laptop simultaneously. Since we don't live in New York we don't have T-Mobile 3G, and I don't know that the E51 could do it anyways (that's why I'll upgrade to an E71 if 3G ever gets here). All in all for the price I'm very happy with my E51 + N800 vs the E90 I could have gotten for the same money. I get the benefits of Linux and a touchscreen as well as Symbian for the same price I would have paid otherwise.

Everyone is probably aware of many of the things you can do with the N800, RDP to a windows server, VNC to a Linux one, I was able to SFTP to a storage server and monitor the progress of an upload from another remote computer. There are torrent clients, streaming radio, and even the Carman software for the gearheads (of which I'm not, but I luuuurve my gadgets).

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

wait till you guys get Gizmo and Voipbuster working with the E51. The only phone I would replace this with is the E66.

I have MSN Messenger running on mine, and the J2ME client for Gmail. With a 2GB microSD card, I've also got a core set of my favourite albums and stream them over A2DP to my SE stereo earphones.

Toss in Mail for Exchange connectivity to my office email system and it's become almost perfect.

If only it has GPS and A-GPS

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I replaced my SE k550i with an E51 about a month ago. I was mad to get an E51 at that time. Unfortunately I don't really like it, there are so many minor things that make an SE phone much more comfortable for me. And I don't really see any point of having a Wifi enabled phone and the N800 as well (mobile internet in Hungary is bloody expensive).

BUT! With the E51 connecting to a hotspot is just a half second. I can check my e-mails when I'm sitting on the bus in a traffic jam with the E51 whilst connecting with the N800 takes ages. And I think it's wifi is less sensitive. So at some point E51 seems to be a better pocket friend than an N800.

What do you think? Is it just me or is the E51 has much better wifi than tha N800?

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I share your experience. It's a mystery to me how much faster this phone connects to Wifi APs (even WPA protected) compared to the tablets. The browser is actually quite capable too.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

I wonder if it's a hardware or just a driver issue. I expected the E51 to have a much weaker wifi since it's smaller, so there's less space for an antenna. And the N800 has stronger power source and it's main communication way is the wifi. But I was wrong.

I'm sitting in my room, there's a router near the entrance (two walls and about 12-15 meter). The E51 can connect to it, but drops it afterward, the N800 can't even connect.

Re: Nokia E51 and N800 - Great Combination
 

JoikuSpot and WWMWiFi (for WM) only support plain and WEP; not WPA2. N810 does not have good GPS. Nokia E71 which I got has a good GPS and a nice but small keyboard. Great to tether with. It is also possible to use the GPS of E71 on the N810. Both devices have same battery although my N810 instead has a Mugen so for long distance travel the Nokia BP-4L is backup battery for either device.