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

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.

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...

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.

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 :-)

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.

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 :-)

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).

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.

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.