Nokia E65

The letter E on a Nokia phone marks it out as one of the flash Finns' business models – usually smart of brain (Symbian 60 in this case) and of attire, but aimed more at impressing the suits in the boardroom rather than notching up impressive high scores.

The E65 is the first slider in the series, and it sports a more elegant look than the majority of its functional brethren. The slider shape means there's room for an ample screen surrounded by chrome-effect trim, and there's a brown leather-feel casing on the back and sides, which feels distinctly upmarket.

It's slim at just under 16mm, too, though at 115g it feels quite chunky, possibly due to its reassuringly solid build quality. A cleverly angled edge at the top helps it slip neatly into your pocket.

The screen is a marvel – at 33x44mm and with 16 million colours to show off, it's impressively detailed and clear, plus there's plenty of room for all those pixels to do their best. It looks good from a wide viewing angle, even in fairly bright sunlight.

The array of controls below the screen, meanwhile, is a minor masterclass in how to pack a lot of functionality into a confined space while still making the buttons easily identifiable and accessible.

A slight ridge around the joypad and the outer sections of the buttons make it easy to feel where you are and reduces the risk of wrong key presses. This functionality is echoed on the buttons themselves, with the E65's slightly ridged keys proving a surprisingly effective way of distinguishing them under your thumb. The keys are satisfyingly responsive and nicely spaced, so there's plenty of room if your thumbs are on the hefty side.

Incidentally, the phone balances very nicely in the hand as well, since the weight when it's opened is very much in the bottom half.

As if underling its primary occupation as a work phone, the E65 comes with absolutely no preloaded games. Not one. Although there is a download menu with a few titbits lined up by Nokia. We gave Mophun's Golf Pro 2 a go and found the greens and fairways showed up a treat on screen. However, if you're on Vodafone, there's a problem between the E-series and Vodafone Live, so you won't be able to access any of their games yet.

For a turn of speed we went with a bit of retro action in Galaxian, which turned out to be extremely addictive. The processor held up nicely, even in those intense later flurries, and the keypad was a joy to use.

Other goodies include a 2-megapixel camera, and while there's no flash or zoom, it's perfectly decent for snaps. It's well connected with Bluetooth, infrared, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and USB cable, plus there's 50MB of memory onboard and the option of a microSD card slot for more, although you'll have to buy that separately.

There's also an MP3 player but with one howler of an error – it comes with a mono headset, which in 2007 seems about as much use as a surfboard with handlebars.

At the end of the day, there's no way that anyone would expect the E65 to be any cop as a dedicated gaming phone. But that luscious screen, cleverly thought-out controls and robust build quality mark it out as an office grafter that isn't shy to stand its round at the fun bar after work.