Nokia E71 review...part 1

I'm still not really sure why I ended buying this phone but I had been looking at it and semi-lusting after it for a few weeks and felt obliged to take the plunge, purely for research purposes you understand. This review is going to be a tad different as I'm not going to do one of those app by app or feature by feature reviews but instead I'm going to compare it to the current dream team phone, the iPhone for a reason or two. Most importantly, it has got to be up to scratch for my needs an what I need a smartphone to do well.

Firstly, the iPhone is my current device and has been for about the last 6 months now and anyone who has been reading this site will know that for me, 6 months with the one gadget is a heck of a long time...murderers get less boom boom. Secondly, I use only the Phone because it does the things that I need a phone to do the best...period. No ifs and buts about it, for my useage the iPhone is the current King so if anything is going to replace it then that new phone is going to have to do those things at least as well. And those things are...podcasts, RSS, email, web browsing, video watching, password storing (eWallet), a bit of card gaming and one or two other apps such as task management and calendar. Frankly, I don't care how good or not the E71 is at things like GPS or Exchange push email or A2DP. or VOIP or whatever.....if I ain't going to use them then they are totally superflous to my needs and may as well not be there. If I have learnt anything from my numerous smartphone devices over the past few years then ease of use is a high priority and a device only needs to do the things that I use 99% of the time well. I prefer a specialist in fewer areas than a jack of all trades device these days. Others of course won't and prefer the all hands on deck approach.

So, of we go. Firstly, let's look at something that I haven't yet mentioned but is always important to a shallow gadget monkey like me....looks. On that front this E71 wins hands down as being one of the nicest looking qwerty equipped smartphone I have seen. It makes the treo 680 feel cheap with a capital C and is probably just a bit nicer to hold and own than the iPhone. Yet it is not grippy, all that metal makes it feel slippery in the hand and although there is a dimpled pattern effect on the back it adds little to confidence. It's like the iPhone, nice to behold, not so great to hold. I still much prefer devices with that rubbery Treo 750 back, soooo much better to hold and more confidence inspiring. The iPhone and E71 are like bars of soap in comparison. Build quality seems good although mine suffers from a slight battery lid wobble, being used to the all in one build of the iPhone this came as a reminder that other devices are not as solid as a result of having removable parts. If you like removeable bits and the undoubted advantages that provides then you'll not mind that one jot. I would also question if this device is too thin? Personally, I prefer a slightly more substantial feeling device, this one's thinness lends an odd sensation of nothing-ness. To me, it just doesn't feel right in the hand, not quite wide enough, unlike the Moto Q9, to reach that optimum hold in both hands and type comfortably.

Hardware buttons. These are pretty darn good, especially the dpad which is just as well as being touchscreen denuded, you''l be using that dpad a lot. I like dpads on devices but not for the sort of lengthy useage you'll be using this one for. The screen is okay, smallish and clear but when you are used to the bigger screen and higher resolution of the iPhone one, like me, then it seems a bit second class and it becomes more of a problem when using apps that benefit from a bigger screen, such as...errrr...just about every app you care to mention but in particular web browsing, viewing office docs and ebook reading. I've got used to bigger screens of late and am now reluctant to use anything that doesn't measure up.

A useful feature is the ability to assign apps to most of the hardware buttons by assigning a different app when performing a longer button press. Useful, in fact vital when you realise that accessing important apps and programmes can otherwise involve lengthy digging through menus. On the subject of menus, am I missing something here because I couldn't find a folder in the menu system that holds all the applications under the one roof, they all seem to be scattered around in different folders. Nokia doesn't seem to have a launcher style approach a la Palm and I'd bet that most, who are new to the platform, would find their set up initially quite confusing and a bit frustrating. You've got to dig around the menus to find things. Invariably, when I was trying to change settings for applications it wouldn't offer the change of settings I wanted to improve the application for my preferences. Perhaps I am some sort of weirdo...

Keyboard. This is very good and is on a par with the treo and Moto Q9h keyboards. Easy to use, nice big keys even for my large digits and sensible things like a dedicated full stop button, dedicated @ button and good auto correction. I like it a lot and it reminds me how much I would prefer the same thing on the iPhone but not, possibly, at the expense of a the bigger screen. The two outermost buttons, used to access "menu" and 'camera" on the home screen are too small though, I have to perform a strange finger angling sort of pointy motion to press them properly which soon grates.

Some other initial thoughts in comparison to the iPhone. Firstly, on the iPhone, when I use the home wifi network the display clearly shows you are using wifi by replacing the phone carrier info with the mac wifi symbol. On the E71, when it found my home network, I wasn't sure it was actually being used as the carrier info stayed on screen. This was more of a concern when using email as it wasn't obvious to me that when downloading email, wifi was being used. I fact, I could have sworn it wasn't...a small symbol appeared on the top right hand corner at times but it is so small as to be unreadable. It would vanish almost as soon as it appeared the reappear. Another irritating thing is that when you open an email, you then have to tell the E71 to download the whole email. I couldn't find a setting in the options to tell it to automatically download say, the first 5kb of each message. I'll need to check the manual to see if there is a way to do this. As mentioned previously in a post, the look of the messaging app is in my view dated. There is no HTML support and to view an HTML email you have to download the HTML "attachment". How quaint. This won't bother a lot of people but a lot of email I get (and enjoy receiving) are newsletters from websites that are image rich and the iPhone displays these nicely. I prefer to view them within the email itself rather than having to click on the "attachement" link in the email, then open the link and go to the website. It seems a bit cumbersome in comparison to the iPhone method.

The SMS app is lumped in with the whole messaging application. I don't like that nor do I like the lack of threaded SMS which I have now decided is a feature I can't live without. There is however a 3rd party threaded SMS application available but I doubt I'll be sticking around long enough with the E71 long enough to try it out.

As for the phone itself, there is no doubt that the signal reception is better than that of the iPhone. I maintained a near constant 3g signal...wish I could say the same for the iPhone. In addition, my initial useage was about a three hour exploration and the battery level didn't appear to go down at all. On the iPhone, about half the power would have gone  by then. Disappointingly, the three calls I received during this initial period sounded like they were coming from people trapped down a mine shaft which completely flies against what everybody else is reporting about call quality on the E71. Nokia have also finally introduced smart searching for contacts, start typing a name or number on the home screen and it filters out the correct person. All in all, with the signal strength this is a much better "phone" than the iPhone, especially with the hugely better battery.

So, there you go and as you can probably tell from this first part of my review, I have not really taken to it so far. Tomorrow, I'll compare the E71 and the iPhone from the viewpoint of how the applications that I use stack up against each other. So far though, I can't say it has impressed me as much as others. If you believe those other sites this takes all the best bits of every other platform and melds them into one unstoppable smartphone.

I can't see it that way, my initial one day useage led to the opinion that Nokia has crammed as much as they can into a nice device at the expense of the UI. One example. On my Centro, in the applications launcher, when I press a letter on the keyboard it takes me to the first app that starts with that letter which saves a heck of a lot of scrolling. On the E71, when in the menu page, pressing a letter key seems to have no effect...is there another way to access the folders quickly without having to use the tiresome dpad?

Comments

[ARJWright]

I think that I will be liking this review. Thought I've not had the reception issues that you have had, the UI aspect of things I can totally agree with.