Nokia E71 Review

The first thing you’ll notice about the E71 is how thin it is – a significant difference to the E61 and E61i. In recent times, Nokia has been revolutionising its business range of handsets. For candybar fans there’s the E51 and those that like sliders can get the E66. There’s also the ageing E90 Communicator that still performs well if you don’t mind carrying something larger in your pocket.

This leaves the E71 free to take on the BlackBerry Bold. The Nokia doesn’t have the high resolution display of the Bold (as with all Nokias, you’ve simply got the standard 320x240 pixel display which can’t match the Bold’s 480x320 pixel screen), but it does have HSDPA, GPS and the backing of thousands of Series 60 applications. The GPS receiver is especially impressive here, managing to find my location while indoors in less than a minute. It would seem that all those bad memories of the N95 (standing out in the open, holding up the phone like some sort of gift to God) are now ancient history. Amen.

Do ya think I’m sexy?

Nokia’s advertisements state that the N71 and E66 is making email sexy. The same cannot be said for the rest of the phone, which comes with a choice of dull themes and icons that even Vodafone would have rejected during their phase of heavy handset branding. You can spruce things up by downloading more exciting ones, but this is a common trait for all Eseries models. It seems Nokia thinks that a business phone must use colours like black, grey, brown and burgundy.

Even the fancy iPhone-like animations and transitions (introduced in Series 60 Feature Pack 2) aren’t present here because Nokia decided not to use the very latest version of the user interface. The reason isn’t obvious. Is it because the handsets were in development a long time before the N78 (we first saw photos of the E71 in January), or was it an issue of stability, with Nokia wanting to reduce the chances of teething problems being uncovered on their business models?

Whatever the answer, the E71 still performs like any other S60 device and, like earlier Eseries models, you have a range of useful shortcut keys at the top of the keyboard. With a short press, these take you to the calendar, phonebook or messages application. Press a little longer and you can quickly enter a new appointment, create a new contact or compose an email. All very simple, although the removal of the mute key is a disappointment.

On the button

Nokia also seems to have removed another useful key in an attempt to keep the button count down. With no dedicated camera button, taking photographs quickly requires returning to the menu and pressing a softkey.

The 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera also has some difficulty getting the colour balance right, although it must be said that you’re still going to get better photographs than most business handsets, especially as there’s a flash LED included.

The E71 fares better when it comes to the media player, and means the phone can be used to entertain just as well as any of its competitors, even if Nokia hasn’t made much of an attempt to tell you of the fact. You will probably want to invest in a larger memory card and better headphones.

Split personalities

In 2007, Japanese network NTT DoCoMo, introduced a phone that could switch identity at the press of a button. The idea being that you could completely separate work and pleasure, or even share the phone with someone else. Like switching identities on a computer, you could separate messages, email and contacts, as well as photographs, music and other media.

Nokia has something similar, but not quite as advanced. When you switch mode (using an icon on the active standby screen) your theme, profile and shortcuts can be changed. However, your data remains unchanged, so those work emails can still haunt you whether you like it or not.

Get the message

So what about email? Well, as with all other Eseries models before it, the E71 supports a variety of email solutions, with support for Microsoft Exchange - but no longer BlackBerry Connect. If you’re using a normal POP3 or IMAP email account, these can be added using the built-in wizard or manually.

You can also connect to a service like Google Mail, but it doesn’t support the free IMAP push service, forcing you to poll the server at fixed intervals instead. This is a disappointment, especially as regular polling could impact on the battery life.

Nokia is also testing its own push email service, which you can find out more about at http://email.nokia.com

The email client still can’t display HTML messages either, which means you have to open the attached .html file in the web browser. Once you do so everything looks fine, but it’s a surprising omission on a well established platform aimed at users more demanding than most. If you do need a more feature-rich email client, there are others on the market to use instead – but you’ll have to be prepared to pay more money.

Like the iPhone 3G and the BlackBerry Bold, a load of fancy features on a phone is certain to encourage you to use it more frequently for non-phone tasks. With the camera, GPS, media player and the excellent Nokia web browser, even the mammoth 1500mAh battery is going to be put under a lot of pressure. Initially, you’ll find it quite easy to drain the battery in a day but you will soon learn to be a little more sensible (probably when the boss starts wanting to know why your phone was switched off all afternoon) and enable it to last a whole working day. With common sense, the phone can easily last a day and probably two or three.

If you’re really only after the E71 for its keyboard and couldn’t care less about the rest of the features, the battery should easily exceed expectations. The sad fact is, battery technology hasn’t advanced enough to keep up with the increased demands.

Nokia has produced something that is about as small as you can get before the keyboard becomes difficult, or impossible, to use.The form factor feels about right, and there’s always the E90 Communicator if you really do need a larger keyboard.

My concern is why Nokia didn’t make the E71 a bit more funky, when all of the competition is trying so hard. With BlackBerry and HTC pushing music, video and imaging so heavily and Apple trying to sell its iPhone to corporates, Nokia seems to have sold itself short with a ‘sensible’ email device. Of course, Nokia probably knows its customers better than me. Or perhaps they don’t. Either way, the E71 is an excellent workhorse that should appeal to Series 60 users wanting something decent to type on.

VERDICT

The E71 can certainly give similar products a run for their money. As the thinnest smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard, the E71 feels good in the hand, but it’s not very sexy when you use it - thanks to bland icons and dreary colours that seem commonplace on all Eseries models for some reason only known to Nokia. Nokia has also opted not to use the latest version of Series 60, presumably for stability, but it is still perfectly capable with Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G/HSDPA and a 3.2-megapixel camera. The huge battery will ensure the battery lasts for ages if you don’t get carried away with all of its toys.

RATINGS (OUT OF 5)

PERFORMANCE: 4
FEATURES: 5
USABILITY: 4
OVERALL: 4