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DESIGN: Speaks for itselfNo matter how many pictures of Italian cars you see, their true beauty can be admired only when you see them in flesh. The same goes about this phone. Although this is subjective, in my opinion, E71 is one of the sexiest phones Nokia has produced, if not the one. You have to hold it in your hand to see how incredibly small and slim this phone is. The smooth metallic finish and use of high quality plastics speak for the price of the phone.
Speaking of price of the phone, it may not go well with our American friends as they are used to the subsidized prices and contracts. But here in India unlocked phones rule the market. And thus the market is very flexible and also owning a phone is very affordable. With unlocked handsets available for as little as USD 24 and prepaid SIM cards with lifetime validity and free lifetime incoming for just around USD 4 to 5. And all this without signing any contract.
The battery cover at the back is metallic with dotted texture. It feels great to hold and gives a good grip, even though it’s a fingerprint magnet, a simple wipe will do the job. Also worth mentioning is the back cover release buttons, this is a good solution. The size (114mm x 57mm x 10mm) is perfect in my opinion. The E61 was too wide for single handed use. Although screen estate had to be sacrificed but smaller screen size with the same (240 x 320) QVGA resolution makes the screen a lot more crisp and detailed.
Nokia has done a great job of creating this tiny package of just 10mm thickness, with endless features to satisfy any greedy-for-tech geek. There isn’t a touch screen here like the iPhone but this is not a phone to be compared to the iPhone, as they both are targeted to different users. And also I don’t call iPhone lovers a tech geek. Yes I do like apples innovation and they have done a great job of creating a great GUI. But it’s everything but a Smartphone. But that’s just me. None of the phones are perfect, there different phones that do the job for different people. May be iPhone is good for some, but not for me. I prefer power packed Smartphone, not the simple dumb interface of iPhone. iPhone would have still worked for me if it wasn’t delivered with Apples marketing tricks. Everything is locked with the Apple and they control the phone more than the user. But if I start explaining Apples marketing this review would lead you to some other planet. So let’s get back to what we were at, the E71.
This is perhaps the smallest and thinnest QWERTY Smartphone to date. Other than the QWERTY keys and the regular D-pad, soft keys and call & end keys, there are four other important keys worth mentioning. Three of them being one touch keys which can be configured for long and short press. And the fourth being the new menu key or home key, which was earlier seen on the E51. A good move from the swirly key found on the other S60 devices, as the home icon makes it more intuitive of the function it is assigned.
All the design falls in perfect place but for the tacky red power key on/off key on the top of the device. It could have had a better color than that. A simple black key would have done the trick.
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SCREEN: Crisp and ColorfulThis is one area where I can bet on Nokia with my eyes closed. Nokia are currently offering some of the best screens in the market. Display is good in all lighting conditions indoors and outdoors, without any complaints. The 2.36” screen is a bit scaled down but offers crisp and clear viewing of videos and images. The 16 million colors are brilliantly displayed and the brightness sensor does its job well.
KEYBOARD: Spot on
Is this keyboard too small? Will it be easy to type on this keypad? If these are the questions on your mind, the answer to both the questions is ‘yes’. Nokia has done some serious engineering here. The keyboard although small, makes for a good typing experience, thanks to the dome shaped keys. The keys are prominently separated from each other even though there is no space between them. The tactile and feedback from the QWERTY is spot on. In my opinion it is even better than the E90. I feel the E90 is two wide to be used for thumb typing and I feel that even after having pretty large hands. Of all the phones I have used I feel the best pad for thumb typing is of the Nokia 6800. It’s a split keypad and takes time getting used to. But once you are familiar with the keyboard things speed up drastically. And if the E90 is used for typing with index fingers with the E90 on the desk the things slow down due to lack of enough travel of the keys. 9500 rules the roost in his department. E71 stands out in typing whether one handed or two handed. And process becomes speedy with the help of auto-correct and predictive text input that is included in the E71. The auto-correct option works similar to that in the PC and the predictive text saves time in typing the whole words by prompting words, press space and done, move to the next word. It has a learning curve but once you get accustomed this might become your fastest thumb board. Some people with large fingers may take time to get a hang of it but it’s not a deal breaker.
Is this keyboard too small? Will it be easy to type on this keypad? If these are the questions on your mind, the answer to both the questions is ‘yes’. Nokia has done some serious engineering here. The keyboard although small, makes for a good typing experience, thanks to the dome shaped keys. The keys are prominently separated from each other even though there is no space between them. The tactile and feedback from the QWERTY is spot on. In my opinion it is even better than the E90. I feel the E90 is two wide to be used for thumb typing and I feel that even after having pretty large hands. Of all the phones I have used I feel the best pad for thumb typing is of the Nokia 6800. It’s a split keypad and takes time getting used to. But once you are familiar with the keyboard things speed up drastically. And if the E90 is used for typing with index fingers with the E90 on the desk the things slow down due to lack of enough travel of the keys. 9500 rules the roost in his department. E71 stands out in typing whether one handed or two handed. And process becomes speedy with the help of auto-correct and predictive text input that is included in the E71. The auto-correct option works similar to that in the PC and the predictive text saves time in typing the whole words by prompting words, press space and done, move to the next word. It has a learning curve but once you get accustomed this might become your fastest thumb board. Some people with large fingers may take time to get a hang of it but it’s not a deal breaker.
BATTERY: Never say die
This is one of the most important part of any business phone. What use is a feature rich phone if it runs out of juice? Nokia has again stroked the right chords in this department. Open the battery cover and you’ll be greeted by a giant battery, almost the same size of the phone. This is the same 1500mAh battery used in E90 and E61i. The battery takes up most of the volume of the phone. Great showcase of engineering by Nokia. And with smaller; read less energy consuming; screen than the other two E-series giants the E71 manages to deliver 3 days of normal usage. And around a day with heavy usage with 1 or 2 bars left at the end of the day to go home and charge it. Here I have tested the phone with GSM network as 3G networks are not available here in India. So the battery life might decrease on 3G networks. But it surely won’t die before you go to bet. Of course battery hungry features like using WLAN and GPS will reduce that.
This is one of the most important part of any business phone. What use is a feature rich phone if it runs out of juice? Nokia has again stroked the right chords in this department. Open the battery cover and you’ll be greeted by a giant battery, almost the same size of the phone. This is the same 1500mAh battery used in E90 and E61i. The battery takes up most of the volume of the phone. Great showcase of engineering by Nokia. And with smaller; read less energy consuming; screen than the other two E-series giants the E71 manages to deliver 3 days of normal usage. And around a day with heavy usage with 1 or 2 bars left at the end of the day to go home and charge it. Here I have tested the phone with GSM network as 3G networks are not available here in India. So the battery life might decrease on 3G networks. But it surely won’t die before you go to bet. Of course battery hungry features like using WLAN and GPS will reduce that.
USERT INTERFACE AND OS: S60 V3 FP1 = Powerpuff Phone
The phone runs on Symbian platform. It uses S60 version 3 feature pack1 (with a tinge of FP2). The users of previous S60 phones will be very familiar with the interface. The changes seen here are few, but very important ones. The first being the most important one and you’ll notice it the moment you start using it, its blazing fast. I haven’t seen any S60 device faster than this. The menus and applications open with no lag whatsoever, attributing these fast legs to the freescale processer and the mammoth 128MB of RAM. (That’s right RAM not ROM)
The phone runs on Symbian platform. It uses S60 version 3 feature pack1 (with a tinge of FP2). The users of previous S60 phones will be very familiar with the interface. The changes seen here are few, but very important ones. The first being the most important one and you’ll notice it the moment you start using it, its blazing fast. I haven’t seen any S60 device faster than this. The menus and applications open with no lag whatsoever, attributing these fast legs to the freescale processer and the mammoth 128MB of RAM. (That’s right RAM not ROM)
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The other tweak is the homescreen; it now has a Switch function. Using this, users can create two different homescreens with entirely different shortcuts, plug-ins, themes and background. For e.g. having an office homescreen where your appointments, office mail and shortcuts to Quick Office are present with a simple edgy theme and having the other homescreen with funky themes or your favorite wallpaper and shortcuts to gallery, camera and music player. Yes, Nokia has realized even business professionals have a personal life.Another innovation on the homescreen is the smart dial. Its simple, just start typing the contacts name whom you want to contact and the screen will show you a list of all the contacts with the same combination in first or last name on the homescreen itself. Sweet. No need to open the contacts list. Everything right on the homescreen. And that’s not all, just scroll to the contact you want to contact and press the D-pad to the right to find a drop down menu with options to call, message or e-mail the contact.
Calendar has also seen some minor changes. It has a split screen view now, just like the E90. Good for utilizing the wide landscape screen. Also a new agenda view has been included. Rest of the calendar options remain the same. The smooth jump from one month to another while scrolling in the month view is a nice touch.
Messaging app is the same. I was wishing for some improvements here. I would love to see search-by-typing in messaging in the S60 phones just like their S80 brothers.
E-MAIL: Missing Blackberry
E-mail application is similar to the one found on earlier S60 devices. Setting up POP and IMAP accounts is very easy, thanks to predefined settings for the popular mail services like Yahoo, Gmail, Rediffmail etc. All you have to do is enter your e-mail id and password and you are ready to go - neat. The downside is that HTML mail is not supported by the application. However, a link with the mail will direct you to the web browser and the HTML format of the mail can be seen online.
Shocking is that Nokia has done away with the Blackberry Support. Yes, that’s right, no Blackberry. It has been done as Nokia has come up with its own solution, Nokia Mail for Exchange, which is under beta testing currently. For more on this click here.
E-mail application is similar to the one found on earlier S60 devices. Setting up POP and IMAP accounts is very easy, thanks to predefined settings for the popular mail services like Yahoo, Gmail, Rediffmail etc. All you have to do is enter your e-mail id and password and you are ready to go - neat. The downside is that HTML mail is not supported by the application. However, a link with the mail will direct you to the web browser and the HTML format of the mail can be seen online.
Shocking is that Nokia has done away with the Blackberry Support. Yes, that’s right, no Blackberry. It has been done as Nokia has come up with its own solution, Nokia Mail for Exchange, which is under beta testing currently. For more on this click here.
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WEB BROWSING: Enhanced with the landscape screenWeb browsing is a pleasure as in any Nokia S60. The S60 browser is the default one with mini maps and on screen cursor. Browsing speed on 3G couldn’t be tested due to unavailability of 3G networks in this region. But browsing on GPRS/EDGE was decent like all Nokia phones. And browsing on Wi-Fi was sheer bliss. The browser was quick; just like the entire interface; and opened almost any site thrown at it. With full flash support, the sites opened exactly as they would on the PC. The landscaped screen added to the experience.
MULTIMEDIA: Lacks 3.5mm jack
Multimedia features are on par with N-series devices. Just the 2.5mm jack leaves a lot to be desired. The music player is standard S60 type seen in N-series with support for search-by-typing. Album art is also supported. Equalizers, repeat and shuffle all are present. New equalizers can also be created. The tracks are sorted by album, artist, genres, composers or your own track list can be created. The sound through the speaker is clear and loud without any distortion. It is decent enough by E-series standards, except for the E90 which is in a league of its own with stereo speakers. The music quality through the headphones is also decent and clear with the stock headphones. Bass is inadequate but it makes for a good listening experience without any distortion even at full volume. The sound is very Nokia-ish and the soundstage represented is what I like about Nokia. With a little tweaking of the equalizer and using good headphones sound quality can be enhanced, although you’ll need a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter which is not included in the sales package.
I agree this is not a multimedia phone, but even business people need TV out to project their presentation directly from their phones. I hope Nokia works out on this one.
The Gallery is the old S60 type. No fancy revolving menus here, just a simple list view. I know the fancy revolving menus of the N-series are eye candy and a hit among many, but if my opinion is to be considered, I like the old S60 type gallery. For simple reasons that the old gallery is more organized and more customizable at the same time also quite productive. In the old gallery I can keep my images and videos separately, that way they are easier to find. Further I like to keep my images in different folders, just like I do it on my PC. I can organize files in this gallery but not on the revolving one. If there is one thing stopping the E71 gallery to be perfect for me, it would be search-by-typing. It would make things quick.
Nobody and no-thing is perfect. So let’s come to the disappointing part of the phone - the camera. I guess Nokia had to compromise on camera quality for making the phone slim. All the pictures are infected with noise, producing grainy pictures. And the 3.2MP shooter fails to deliver in the dark even with the flash on. Many people buy phones thinking all the cameras with same ‘Megapixels’ will produce the same result, and end up buying a phone with lesser price which actually might have lower camera performance. So don’t be lured by the tall figures of ‘megapixels’. A lot of things; like lens, flash, focus, etc; play a role in the quality of images produced by the camera. One such example is right here; the E71..jpg)
The 3.2MP doing duty also has autofocus. The AF is less intuitive, but more useful I feel. First t key is pressed, and after the device has focused press the center D to click. Or for quick snaps you could press the D directly. The AF will not be used in that case, dropping the image quality a bit. But this makes the process speedy for those instant shots, and gives the users the best of both the worlds. Heck what if no autofocus for those instant shots? Did we never click when there was no AF? There’s no dedicated camera key for the good. This form factor makes it easier to take snaps using the D-pad.
Video recording is limited only to the free memory available. Video recording tops out at QVGA @ 15fps, which is a disappointment, considering its brother E90 capturing VGA quality videos @ 30fps.
Multimedia features are on par with N-series devices. Just the 2.5mm jack leaves a lot to be desired. The music player is standard S60 type seen in N-series with support for search-by-typing. Album art is also supported. Equalizers, repeat and shuffle all are present. New equalizers can also be created. The tracks are sorted by album, artist, genres, composers or your own track list can be created. The sound through the speaker is clear and loud without any distortion. It is decent enough by E-series standards, except for the E90 which is in a league of its own with stereo speakers. The music quality through the headphones is also decent and clear with the stock headphones. Bass is inadequate but it makes for a good listening experience without any distortion even at full volume. The sound is very Nokia-ish and the soundstage represented is what I like about Nokia. With a little tweaking of the equalizer and using good headphones sound quality can be enhanced, although you’ll need a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter which is not included in the sales package.
I agree this is not a multimedia phone, but even business people need TV out to project their presentation directly from their phones. I hope Nokia works out on this one.
The Gallery is the old S60 type. No fancy revolving menus here, just a simple list view. I know the fancy revolving menus of the N-series are eye candy and a hit among many, but if my opinion is to be considered, I like the old S60 type gallery. For simple reasons that the old gallery is more organized and more customizable at the same time also quite productive. In the old gallery I can keep my images and videos separately, that way they are easier to find. Further I like to keep my images in different folders, just like I do it on my PC. I can organize files in this gallery but not on the revolving one. If there is one thing stopping the E71 gallery to be perfect for me, it would be search-by-typing. It would make things quick.
Nobody and no-thing is perfect. So let’s come to the disappointing part of the phone - the camera. I guess Nokia had to compromise on camera quality for making the phone slim. All the pictures are infected with noise, producing grainy pictures. And the 3.2MP shooter fails to deliver in the dark even with the flash on. Many people buy phones thinking all the cameras with same ‘Megapixels’ will produce the same result, and end up buying a phone with lesser price which actually might have lower camera performance. So don’t be lured by the tall figures of ‘megapixels’. A lot of things; like lens, flash, focus, etc; play a role in the quality of images produced by the camera. One such example is right here; the E71.
The 3.2MP doing duty also has autofocus. The AF is less intuitive, but more useful I feel. First t key is pressed, and after the device has focused press the center D to click. Or for quick snaps you could press the D directly. The AF will not be used in that case, dropping the image quality a bit. But this makes the process speedy for those instant shots, and gives the users the best of both the worlds. Heck what if no autofocus for those instant shots? Did we never click when there was no AF? There’s no dedicated camera key for the good. This form factor makes it easier to take snaps using the D-pad.Video recording is limited only to the free memory available. Video recording tops out at QVGA @ 15fps, which is a disappointment, considering its brother E90 capturing VGA quality videos @ 30fps.
CONCLUSION: My Favorite Phone
Nokia should be commended for producing a fast series 60 smartphone, which shakes of its sluggish hierarchical behavior. It’s built like a tank and versatile like a Swiss knife. It falls short in areas like camera and Blackberry support, in which Blackberry support being more important for people wanting to jump ship from blackberry devices. So this surely isn’t the phone for those who need blackberry services.
Then who is this phone for? Well, this would be the apt phone for users who need QWERTY to type out mails and messages on their phone, provided you use push-mail services for your e-mails. I would also recommend this phone for the bloggers on the move, the QWERTY backed with powerful S60 browser and landscape screen makes it a great device if you want to write your blogs away from your laptop. This is a device you could take with yourself for camping and let your friends know your whereabouts while climbing a cliff by posting your pics and thoughts on your blog. And the powerful battery will surely last a camping weekend. It simply makes life better in all the scenarios.
This would also be a great upgrade for people who are using E61 or E61i. It is for those who find E90 and E61i too bulky. The phone does all the functions you’d expect from smartphone of this kind and then some more.
Nokia should be commended for producing a fast series 60 smartphone, which shakes of its sluggish hierarchical behavior. It’s built like a tank and versatile like a Swiss knife. It falls short in areas like camera and Blackberry support, in which Blackberry support being more important for people wanting to jump ship from blackberry devices. So this surely isn’t the phone for those who need blackberry services.
Then who is this phone for? Well, this would be the apt phone for users who need QWERTY to type out mails and messages on their phone, provided you use push-mail services for your e-mails. I would also recommend this phone for the bloggers on the move, the QWERTY backed with powerful S60 browser and landscape screen makes it a great device if you want to write your blogs away from your laptop. This is a device you could take with yourself for camping and let your friends know your whereabouts while climbing a cliff by posting your pics and thoughts on your blog. And the powerful battery will surely last a camping weekend. It simply makes life better in all the scenarios.
This would also be a great upgrade for people who are using E61 or E61i. It is for those who find E90 and E61i too bulky. The phone does all the functions you’d expect from smartphone of this kind and then some more.
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