Nokia E71 - The Lowdown
Now I’ve had a play with the Nokia E71 and integrated it with my daily routine I think I have enough to give it a proper run down on the pros and cons. Hopefully I can try to wrap the physical design and usage in one post. I won’t be going over much of the OS and menus etc, as I think many of the other bloggers have done a pretty great job on these issues already.
So to get this started, let’s look at the physical build:
The handset is made from a blend of metal and plastics with some rubber components to cover up some of the connectivity ports, mainly the Micro-USB and Micro-SDHC (yes it supports SDHC cards, I have my 6GB card in there now) ports. Again I’m not happy about having the Micro-USB port on the left hand side of the device (the Micro-SDHC port is adjacent to it) as when plugged in with the USB cable it is on the wrong side, but I guess it’s one situation where you can win and lose because not everyone has their USB cables on the left or the right. I would still prefer it on the top or bottom but only if it comes with some sort of connectivity stand. This would make life easier. Looking around the rest of the device, you’ll notice there is a lot of shiny metal and loely curved edges which are very ergonomic and pleasing to both the hand and eye.
Screen and Keyboard
There are two main aspects of this device which are key here - the keyboard and the screen. Both of these will either make or break the device, they are one of the most essential aspects. Taking a look at the screen first, in comparison to the E61i’s (2.8″) is physically smaller on the E71 (2.4″). Although the screen is smaller it’s not what I noticed as it doesn’t make that much of a difference to me. The size of the font and screen icons were what attracted my attention as they are slightly harder to see than on the E61i, this is most likely directly down to the screen being smaller and still keeping to the same 320×240 resolution. The difference will be the same as users of the N95 and the N95 8GB may have experienced. Also the change of the icons is also another gripe, I still can’t get used to these new icon sets, they look washed out and very retro, come candy would have been well appreciated. Other than these few gripes the screen is satisfactory, users of the other E Series devices will be happy with it.
The keyboard on the other hand will be very dependant on personal choice, as the device is smaller than the E61i and less wide, there is no space in between the keys, something which I usually use to type, a little gap would have made it perfect. Users with big thumbs will take longer to get used to it, as they will end up pressing multiple keys initially. Looking at the actual physical key’s laid out and accessible, you will realise some keys are now on the keyboard and not in the characters menu, which is a positive in my opinion. One significant improvement for me is the fact the device will display the numbers on the main screen when pressed, which something I’m sure the E61i didn’t do (unless I’m mistaken), this is common sense as most likely you will be dialling a number on the standby screen rather than typing words. Typing anything on the home screen now will initiate the phone book and list the relevant entries, this is great.
Speed and Battery Life
Some of you guys have asked about the speed of the device when handling multiple background processes and if there is any sluggishness, the quick answer is no (well I haven’t noticed any). The overall speed and response is a huge improvement over the E61i’s, and looking at the hardware specs it’s no wonder why? Whilst the E61i’s sported an ARM 9 processor running at 220Mhz with 23Mb of RAM available to the user, the E71 improvements on this significantly with an ARM 11 processor running at 369Mhz and 71Mb of RAM available. With specs like these, running multiple applications is a breeze!
The one single thing that has impressed me is the huge battery on this device, it is absolutely awesome! Using every feature possible full on (Wi-Fi, HSDPA, Bluetooth, Max Brightness, push e-mail on updating every 30 mins via 3G, browser running in the background constantly, Jaiku S60 client on up-to-date mode) and it didn’t even break a sweat! I could have squeezed 2 full days of usage with this baby, it just keeps on going and going!
So far I’ve used the E71 for 2-3 days now and I’ve been impressed with this device all the way, it’s becoming something that I will miss seriously when it’s gone, rest assured I will get this device when it’s available as everyone that has played with it (and one that dropped it, sorry WOMWorld guys) all had positive things to say about it. Blackberry users are asking their IT departments when they can get one! If you are already on a E Series device and are thinking of purchasing one, I wouldn’t even hesitate, this will be a great replacement / upgrade to any E Series out there right now! If you have questions about the camera, then this device is not for you, this device is designed for professionals who need their e-mail on the go, and users who need to stay connected to their e-mails at all times, this device gives the user a piece of mind, where one doesn’t need to worry about battery life, has their e-mails to hand, the web at their fingertips and wants to make an impression with their handset. It’s sexy, it’s sleek, it’s shiny and it will get you laid! (Well maybe not! :P)
I’ll try to give more details regarding the usage and my gripes on some of the other features it lacks and disappoints in, which are not major but could do with improvements, but that’s next issue, so don’t forget to tune in.
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By the sound of it you where impressed by the device. What you write is what I was pondering about when I first saw the E71. It looks great but the screen and the keyboard size worries me. I have big hands and pushing small buttons is hard. I thought Nokia would stay with the screen size of the E61, because the phone is built with e-mail and the web in mind. Browsing with such a small screen can be strenuous. I'm glad that the processing power and the ram went up significantly, one needs them since there are so many apps now days that run constantly in the background, making our lives easier, but straining the device.
I still haven't made up my mind over getting one of these devices or switching over to a win-mo device with a nice big touchscreen... it's so tempting, but I'm not much of a win fan...
The HTC Diamond and the upcoming HTC Touch Pro are the candidates in my eyes. I wish that Nokia would finally bring out their touch interface. That would make even small screen browsing so much easier and the overall user experience better, I wouldn't even think about switching.
Sadly though that is far in the future, at least a year I presume, and I don't know if I can wait that long, and by then Android will be ready for commercial use. Hate to say, but Nokia has to come out with some great handsets to compete against HTC and a whole lot of other competitors that will run Android (which will level the playing field software-wise).
Sorry for going off topic... I'm waiting for the rest of the critical review especially the lacks of the E71, because the pros are plain to see :D
THX again Abul
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My impressions of it are very poor.
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Thanks for sharing that with us.
You guys should have a blog this professional for win-mo devices too :D
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Touchflo was pretty lame, the device was confusing, and it got hot pretty quick. I wasn't impressed with the feedback and responsiveness of it, something the iPhone does with ease.
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Would be great if you (or anyone else with experience) could focus on this a bit more.
Keep up the great work!
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All in all moving to widescreen is the same concept when moving from a 4:3 tv screen to 16:9, you get more of a wider view, applications are designed to optimize this and there is no problems.
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please PLEASE please!!!! stop using this term incorrectly. Nokia users (i use an N95): Push email does NOT GET UPDATED EVERY _X_ MINUTES. This is like saying you're going to poll for incoming SMS every 30 minutes - or that "maybe those windmills will cool you off" - it just doesn't work this way!
countless times in recent months i've seen this misnomer. and i keep trying to correct it. why? because i want REAL PUSH EMAIL. if everyone accepts that we've got it already "by polling every 30 minutes" then the definition of the problem becomes grey and cloudy.
Look at the US market for bluetooth. Verizon and Microsoft both played their role in destroying the ubiquitous Personal Area Network that is Bluetooth. sure sure, buy a nokia and bluetooth does what it's meant to. but my co-workers and even my boss have no idea that verizon has crippled their precious strangled devices. no one in my office, beyond me, can use their phones as generic, open, connected devices.
why? because they have accepted that Bluetooth==handsfree. they've accepted it as much as every windows user has accepted that windows==performance (also a lie) or that mac==graphics (another lie).
please PLEASE for the sake of my sanity, don't propagate this sort of mis-use of terms into the realm of nokia. you'll end up redefining the term altogether -- just as the media did when they used Hacker instead of Cracker - now the term hacker is forever clouded by the stupidity the masses, and it's our fault for not providing them all with the proper terms when the mis-use was young enough to be fixed. "great hack"! can now be followed by a whispering, "is that legal"? it's a shame.
polling for email every 30 minutes? thats called any of these: 'Email', 'Pull Email', 'Polled Email', or 'Timed Retrieval of Email'. PUSH gets PUSHED to your device. if this were an alarm clock, you would be pretty ticked off if i sold you a clock that you could look at every 30 minutes and, if it reads 9:30am or later lets you press a button to make it beep. no no no, you'd want the alarm to PUSH the beep at you, so you can ignore it until it beeps. having the clock automatically check it's time every 30 minutes to push the button for you? that's half-assed. it's not a REAL alarm clock. it's a misnomer to call it such. perhaps it's useful, or at least more so than the clock that requires user intervention at all times, but it's still not right -- and the RIGHT thing exists, it's real, it can be had, IT EVEN HAS A NAME.
*sigh*
thats the end of my rant. sorry for being so long winded. if you actually read this whole thing you must be thinking i'm nuts. i'm just fed up. i'm tired of 'polling' email being called push. i'm tired of technology failing to take root because people forget they want it.
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Don't mind the rant, we all have our moments :P
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Something to note - if you have IMAP accounts set up with polling times of
30 minutes or less, S60 supports IMAP idle meaning that new email headers
will be pushed as they arrive. The Nokia mail app will keep the data
connection alive and while this is not traditional push email (body must
still be retrieved manually), it is the source of some of the "push"
confusion.
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We had a user with the Mail for Exchange on another Nokia device rack up $300 in data roaming charges just for 20 emails each a day over 30 days. The Mail for Exchange software polls the server like crazy, changing the interval helps but then it's nowhere no real time.
No carriers I've seen are doing an "all you can eat" email data charges service for local or roaming with Mail for Exchange. For those who didn't know.. most carriers had a flat rate Blackberry service fee for local data charges (no cap on BB email usage) and also had add on packages to make international data roaming for BB email flat rate.
For our company we love the e71, but without a way to have predictable email data charges we are having to stick to the e61i's and look at Blackberry devices.
Poor move by Nokia here... There are going to be a LOT of IT departments and finance people who are going to have a fit when their roaming users get their first bills for data usage.
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problem - when I went to London for example I picked up a prepaid card
and paid £1/day for unlimited data so it wouldn't be a problem. Deals
like that are rare though and most people don't want to deal with
hunting down a prepaid SIM so they just roam internationally. That's
going to cause some problems indeed!
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