Pat Phelan: Bits, bytes and telecomsMobile, Roaming and Social Media

Iain Dodsworth the super head honcho behind Tweetdeck recently borrowed a Nokia E71 from me for testing, the deal involved Iain doing a completely independent review of the phone for me to post, below is just that
I think he likes it

The Nokia E71 is clearly aimed at the business or enterprise end of the smartphone market with less of a focus on entertainment and “social” features (as found in the Nokia N range for example) and more of a steer towards productivity and communication. First impressions of the E71 are very favorable: holding the device it feels solid, extremely well made and looks superb. This is a smartphone that looks like “it means business”. In fact it is praise indeed to say this looks like a smartphone, as opposed to, say, an iPhone which for me looks and feels more like an internet device with phone capabilities.

Having little experience of previous smartphones in the E range makes it difficult to judge how much of an improvement the E71 is over its predecessor, the E61, but the direction Nokia is taking is clear. The
E71 is substantially smaller (with a smaller screen), lighter and includes a full qwerty keyboard. The inclusion of a small but complete keyboard is a brave one by Nokia and a real antidote to the rush of touchscreen-only and flip out partial keyboard devices that have recently (or are about to) hit the market. Unfortunately due to the small form-factor the keyboard is a disappointment. Each key has a slight raised area to it but the gap created by this is not sufficient to pinpoint each key thus making typing less accurate than it should be. On the plus side the keyboard does have very usable dedicated keys for its core applications calendar, contacts and email and the four way directional pad is very effective when navigating the E71′s numerous menu systems.

Regarding some of the E71′s other hardware elements: the rear camera is of a very usable quality for both still photo’s and video with the front camera useful only for low bandwidth video calling (which is generally intentional) and the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack means you are unlikely to use the E71 as a music player.

On the software side, the E71 comes complete with a comprehensive toolset including mapping, GPS, a full office suite and media playback and record. Unfortunately a number of these applications are hampered by the small screen. This hampering is especially apparent in the email application where only a single row is used to represent each message, which makes it difficult to discern the content of each message when your inbox is heavy. One feature that does impress is the voice synthesis used to read out items, such as email messages, in a clear and believable manner. This would be of real benefit to those who travel a lot who can listen to their emails whilst in transit.

The main feeling I’m left with after using the E71 for a few weeks is that it is an extremely good smartphone but it could have been even better. Judging from the hardware specification, the comprehensive feature set, the build quality and appearance this could have been at least as good if not better than the current iPhone – but somehow it is not and that leaves me feeling slightly underwhelmed. Perhaps that is down to the screen size, the feel of the keyboard or just the OS in general but either way these issues can be remedied and any successor to the E71 will be definitely worth considering.