Nokia E71 Review

The days are gone when only good smartphone choice for businessman were BlackBerry. Nokia E Series was introduced as a competitor of the BlackBerry handsets and now the E71 outshines even the best BlackBerry phone like BlackBerry Bold with its performance, features and capabilities. One might argue that full touchscreen phones like LG Arena or Renoir or Samsung Tocco Lite that utilize the whole face both as an input device and to show outputs, offer better interactivity. But business people who have to text heavily in the form of messages or e-mails like the full hardware keyboard found in the E-Series smartphones of Nokia. Is this the greatest challenge to BlackBerry yet? We have made a review to find the answer. have a go.

Design

The device looks very sharp and refined with minimalist design. The phone sports a solid metal rear, chrome-trimmed front and flat. The device is very slim at only 10mm which makes it a very pocketable device. If you take it side by side with any BlackBerry Device they’ll look just huge.

Display

The E71 has one of the best displays from Nokia lineup. The display shows 240 X 320 pixels at 2.3 inches which feels somewhat lower screen real estate when we keep it side by side with BlackBerry Bold’s 2.6 inch screen supporting 320 X 480 pixels resolution but the BlackBerry device can display only 65K color whereas E71 can display 16M colors. So the display looks more colorful and shows a lot of details which is enough for working on documents, e-mails or viewing webpages. It also uses a active matrix LCD for good visibility and clarity, even in moderate sunlight.

Keypad

The keypad of the E71 has a clear techie look-n-feel. Cramming all those keys into a narrow space isn’t tough but making them usable at that small space is a remarkable piece of engineering. The buttons are slightly domed so that you won’t be mistaking by pressing the neighboring key very often. The keys are slightly rubbery so that your fingers won’t slip off the keys. The key layout is also very sensible. The frequently used full stop, comma and @ symbol is directly accessible without having to press any key such as shift or symbol. There is no scrolling trackball like the BlackBerry Bold but there is a D Pad which is easy to use and works well. There are some shortcut keys on both sides of the D Pad which provides easy access to Home, calender, contacts and e-mail.

Connectivity

It supports quad band GSM wit 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 frequency bands. There is also a 3G HSDPA Connectivity with 900/2100 bands for European version and a 850/1900 bands for American Version. It also has standard GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth with A2DP Connectivity as well as Infrared and a Micro USB port to connect it to your PC. It has WiFi 802.11 b/g wireless connection and also GPS with A-GPS support with Nokia Maps.

Multimedia

Without good multimedia features every phone is left incomplete these days. And man! it does pack in some good multimedia features which are rare to see in a business smartphone. It has a nice 3.2 MP camera which supports autofocus and there is a LED flash to assist you in taking pictures in low light. You can record video in MPEG-4 or 3GP format at a 640 X 480 resolution at 22 frames per second and at a 320 X 240 resolution at 30 fps. There is also a secondary front facing camera which you can use for video calling. The music player can play all common formats and there is real player to play the videos. It also has FM Radio that supports Visual Radio when you don’t want to listen to the music stored in your 8GB Memory Card.

Messaging

The device is well equipped with both push e-mail and text messaging. It supports IMAP, POP and SMTP e-mail Protocols as well as Nokia intellisync Wireless e-mail. Full support for VPN is also provided.

Browser

The built-in browser can handle XHTML, Javascript, stylesheets and Flash which even the most hyped iPhone browser doesn’t have. This makes you see most webpages rendered correctly within its browser. The NAVI key can be used very effectively to zoom in on webpages.

Battery

It has a standard Lithium Polymer Battery of 1500 mAh capacity which provides decent talktime of 10+ hours claimed battery life and a continuous music play of upto 18h. As far our experience is concerned, the exact life of the battery will be very close to the stated battery life.

Pros

• Slim Design


• Full QWERTY keyboard


• Every Necessary Feature including WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3G


• Strong Voice, Messaging, Productivity Tools


• Provider-independent VoIP support


• Business minded shortcut keys

Cons

• Display real estate seems to be lesser


• Keyboard feels a bit cramped


• Camera performance average


• No dedicated camera key


• No standard 3.5 mm headphone jack

Conclusion

At the end of the day it seems that the E71 is the greatest challenge that BlackBerry has yet faced. Any businessman will like its push e-mail, attachment editing and web browsing capabilities. On the other hand it does not disappoint in the multimedia capabilities either. While we personally think that BlackBerry still provides the best mobile e-mail experience, the E71 outshines it in every other respect – may it be the camera, media playing capability. Good Battery life and calling quality is there to complete the whole package.