Nokia E71 [Review]

Mobile professionals who need a powerful but sleek messaging-centric smartphone will be well-served by the Nokia E71; just be prepared to pay a price.

Nokia's E series sometimes gets overshadowed by the flashier N series, but it's just as bright and deserves some recognition too. Traditionally, the E-series devices have been aimed at businesses and serious in design. Now though, Nokia is updating the line with the introduction of the Nokia E66 and Nokia E71, bringing with them a modernised look and a fresh set of features.

For this review, we took a look at the Nokia E71, which steps in to relieve the older Nokia E61i. What the company has done with the E71's design is remarkable, as it's taken the once-bulky smartphone and turned it into an incredibly sleek QWERTY device. You do lose a bit in screen and keyboard size, but we feel it's manageable. Plus, with its strong messaging, productivity and connectivity features plus solid performance, it's worth those little sacrifices. The only downfall is that an unlocked version of the Nokia E71 will go for around AU$709.

Design
The first thing you'll notice about the Nokia E71 is its design. It's noticeably sleeker and sexier than the Nokia E61i, sporting a compact frame that measures 114mm by 57mm by10mm and weighs 126g. The slimness is especially noticeable when you use the E71 as a phone, or just hold it in the palm of your hand. In addition, the handset has a solid construction with its steel frame. Our only complaint — and it's a minor one — is that the back gets a bit tarnished with fingerprints and smudges.



On front, there's a 2.36in. non-touch display with a 16-million-colour support and 320-by-240-pixel (QVGA) resolution. The screen is a bit on the small side, but text and images look sharp. It also has a light-sensing technology that adjusts the display's brightness depending on the environment you're in. A new feature that's not readily apparent from looking at the phone is the Business and Personal home screens. You can now toggle between two different home views, depending on whether you're at work or at home. In Business mode, you'll have immediate access to work tools, such as email, the web and the file manager. After hours, you can switch to Personal mode and have your music and photo gallery a click away. Of course, you're not really 'off' from work since you can easily switch back, but it's a nice thought anyway.

Below the display, there's a standard navigation array of two soft keys, Talk and End buttons, and a four-way toggle with a centre select key. In addition, there are four shortcuts to the Home screen, Calendar, Contacts and Messages. You also get a full QWERTY keyboard. Given that the E71 is physically smaller than the E61i, the layout is a bit more cramped with less spacing between the buttons. Still, I found it pretty easy to use, although I do have small fingers. Customers with larger thumbs might want to give it a test drive. On the bright side, the keys don't have that squishy feel of the E61i; they give more of a satisfying, clicky tactile feedback.



The left spine holds a microSD slot and a micro-USB port. It seems Nokia is sticking with the decision to go with the less standard micro-USB port at this time. It's definitely not a deal-breaker, just a minor inconvenience since you can't use the more widely used mini-USB accessories. On the right side, you have a 2.5mm headset jack, a volume rocker and a voice command activation key. Both sides also have buttons to release the battery cover. The on/off button is located on the top, while the power connector is on the bottom of the unit. Finally, you'll find the camera, flash and self-portrait mirror on the back.

The Nokia E71 comes packaged with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a wired headset, a 2GB microSD card, a protective pouch, a lanyard, a software CD and reference material.

Features
If the QWERTY keyboard didn't give it away, the Nokia E71 is a messaging-centric smartphone, although it's certainly not limited to just email. The E71 works with Microsoft Exchange Server, POP3, IMAP and SMTP accounts and has a full attachment viewer. The device is also compatible with a number of push email solutions, including Intellisync Wireless E-mail, Visto and Seven Always-On Mail. The E71 includes a new wizard to help set up your email as it automatically looks for the settings needed to access your account. There are no instant messaging clients preloaded on the device, although you can certainly download software to do so. In fact, there is a download catalogue right on the device where you can find such titles.

Using the new wizard, we configured our review unit to access our Yahoo Plus account by simply entering our login and password. There's also a voice aid utility that uses text-to-speech technology to read aloud not only your messages but your call history, contacts, clock and more. The feature worked fine in our tests, although the voice sounded quite robotic. We'd say this function might come in handy when you need to hear a message while driving; otherwise, it might just be easier to read the information off the phone.

The E71 runs Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 3.1 edition, and comes with full support for viewing and editing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents with the Quickoffice suite. It appears, however, that the company has done away with the Nokia Team Suite, which first debuted on the Nokia E65. The E71 comes with the Nokia Web browser with support for Flash Lite 3.0, so you're able to view and use such sites as YouTube. The smartphone does have a number of other PIM applications and organisation tools, including Adobe Reader, a Zip Manager, a calendar, notes, a calculator, a clock, a voice recorder and a currency converter. There are also a number of security features, including memory encryption and mobile VPN. There's 110MB of internal dynamic memory, and the microSD slot can accept up to 8GB cards.



The good:

* Slim design with full QWERTY keyboard
* Feature-rich, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSDPA and GPS
* Voice, messaging and productivity tools are also strong

The bad:

* Expensive
* Display is on the small side
* Keyboard is a little cramped

The bottomline:

A powerful but sleek messaging-centric smartphone.