Nokia E71 review

I’ve had my Nokia E71 for nearly 3 months now and overall I’m extremely pleased with it.

Looks

FIrst off it looks gorgeous (the black version anyway, the white version looks a bit cheap to me) and feels great in your hand, it has a good solid feel to it.

I’m sad to say this but it really shows how bad the Nokia N95 was when it comes to looks. Although updating the look & feel of the Nseries seems to be Nokia’s goal at the moment, the N96 & N85 both sport the same similar design.

Keyboard

It’s a decent weight (not to heavy) and has a great texture to the back of it that improves your grip. The QWERTY keyboard looks very small at first but each key has a slightly raised curve to it that makes it surprisingly easy to use.

Theme/Icons

The themes/icons provided are pretty bad really, the first thing you should do is install the Eseries E71 theme – it’s the default Eseries theme with the Flahorn Icon Pack included (icons based on those available in S60v3).  I know the Eseries is targeted at business users but they can appreciate eye candy too! The default icon pack is bloody awful if you ask me!

GPS

The on board GPS locks on a heck of a lot quicker than my old N95 used, I double checked this against a co-wokers N95 too. The E71 seems to leave the GPS device on after it’s first locked on to reduce the time it takes to lock on in future.

Battery

The battery life is absolutely excellent. My E71 is typically used for calls/texts, browsing at home using wifi, e-mail using Nokia’s push beta service and occasionally as a data modem for my laptop and it usually lasts 4-5 days without needing a charge. I tend not to use the 3G network as the coverage can be hit and miss up here in North Wales, but it’s not a huge drain on the battery life. If what I said about the GPS is correct I assume this is a benefit of the excellent battery the E71 has.

Camera

Camera quality is awful. I really hope they improve the quality with a firmware update as it’s pretty much unusable as it is. The poor quality was mentioned in a few reviews I read prior to ordering the phone but I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it is, when they said purple they really meant it! While it’s a decent 3.2MP camera the quality is actually worse than my old SE W810i 2MP which is nearly 3 years old now!

Signal Strength

Signal strenth is OK but not as good as the N95 when coverage is poor. I’ve only noticed this as in work coverage is not the best, where as the N95 would have at least 2 bars of signal my E71 struggles to access the network.

UI

The UI is snappy as you’d expect it to be, however it is an improvement when compared to the UI on the N95 but then the N95 UI was pretty slow even with the latest firmware update. Strange considering both the N95 & E71 run the same version of Symbian OS (v9.2) & S60 (FP1)?

Firmware

The quality of the camera and UI speed on the N95 was significantly improved with firmware updates however I had to change the product code to be able to get at those firmware updates from Nokia. My E71 is running firmware 100.07.76 and while there is an update available it’s not yet available to Vodafone UK users. I’ll probably resort to changing the product code on this device too to benefit from the newer updates rather than wait for Vodafone to get round to releasing it! Having said that the initial firmware supplied with the phone has proven to be quite stable, I haven’t come across any major bugs in it myself so far.

Elsewhere

Looking around the Internet the Nokia E71 seems to have had a pretty good year:

• Dialaphone have listed the E71 in their 2008 mobile phone highlights.
• The Tao of Mac has picked the E71 as his phone of the Year.
• Mobile Choice voted the E71 as phone of the year & smartphone of the year.

Nokia E71

After saying back in June that I was going to get an iPhone 3G and then, in August that I was looking at the Nokia N96 instead, I’ve now gone and got a Nokia E71!

I thought about what I use my mobile for right now and it’s mainly used for Internet access while I’m at home and the keypad on my N95 is a right pain when it comes to entering URL’s and text. I realised I miss the full QWERTY keyboard that my old Treo 650 had so I started looking at devices with a full keyboard and came across the E71.

It got good reviews by AAS, Joel and a couple of other sites, and all have said pictures don’t do the phone any justice when comes it how good it looks and feels in your hand. It runs the same version of S60 & Symbian OS as my N95 which is a major plus point for me (more on S60/Symbian later).

Vodafone were also extremely pro-active in keeping me, they called me out of the blue to advise me that I’m eligible for an upgrade and when I asked them to call me back a couple of days later they did. They offered me an improved contract package (I’m saving £7.50 a month but getting more for my money) without me having to ask along with giving me the E71 for free and all on a 12 month contract.

I’ve had the device a couple of weeks now so expect a review sometime soon.

Nokia N96

Last week I was told by someone in work that the Nokia N96 should be available via Vodafone UK by mid October. With all the negative feedback I’ve been seeing on Twitter about the iPhone’s battery life & 3G quality I’m looking around at other options at the moment.

I’ve been really impressed with my Nokia N95 so far and it re-awakened my interest in the Symbian platform. The only things the N95 lacks when compared to the iPhone is a bigger screen, a touch screen and oooh factor in terms of looks. In terms of technology the N95 is far superior, quite surprising when you consider it’s been available for over 18 months.

With the recent news that Nokia is going to acquire the rest of Symbian and open source the platform makes a Symbian based phone even more appealing to me. The N96 is looking like the best alternative to the iPhone, improving on the excellent N95.

Think I’ll wait to see if the N96 does come out in October and if Apple do anything about the issues affecting the iPhone 3G before I rush out to get one.

iPhone 3G

Dear Vodafone, unless you can offer me the iPhone 3G in the next 3 months I shall be leaving you after 6 years and joining O2.

The 3G version of the iPhone has been announced by Apple and should be available sometime in July here in the UK. I’m assuming it’ll only be available via O2 again. It’s been released quicker than I thought, while the rumour sites had been predicting it would be I wasn’t so sure.

I upgraded to the Nokia N95 last September in the hope the 3G version of the iPhone would appear sometime this year. I managed to get a 12 month contract out of Vodafone (along with the free upgrade) just in case it was released. I was very tempted to get one last year but couldn’t justify the handset cost along with the 18 month contract required, I was also a little disappointed that it wasn’t 3G.

I’ve got to decide whether I go for the 8GB or 16GB version now. Decisions, decisions!