Nokia E71 review
Let me first admit, I’m a DIE-HARD windows mobile fan. But, when I was asked to do a review of Nokia E71, I first thought of passing it to one of the team-members. Later on, I thought that this looks like an interesting device. It is thin, elegant and has a lot of great features.
Just a few days ago, I’d done a big review of Palm Centro, which also had a similar design. The only physical difference is the lack of touch-screen in Nokia E71. But, the Nokia E71 is way superior device. Let’s see:
The way I would describe E71 as “just put the Nokia E61 on a low-carb diet and after some days, you will get E71!”. Pretty funny but now you got an idea of how slim it is.
Let’s acutally see how slim it is:
Ergonomics and Usability
The device has curvy body now unlike it’s predecessor E61, which was quite boxy. The device has a nice QWERTY keypad which I found to be very usable. The device is very small when compared to Nokia E61. People with small hands who used to have trouble using the E61 with one hand will love this as the width of the E71(57mm) is considerably smaller than the E61(69.7mm)
Operating System
Since this is a E-series device, it is powered by the latest Symbian S60 (3rd edition). I found the device considerably faster than the E61. This is mainly due to the faster processor(ARM 11 369) and increased RAM(128MB RAM) which has increased almost 3 times in terms of free available RAM.
The S60 OS has been on the scene for quite some time now and is now backed by plethora of great applications and games. I love the simplicity of the S60 OS.
Keyboard
The Nokia E71 has a built-in QWERTY keyboard which works well for quick data entry and for writing emails and SMSes. I was able to achive 35wpm on it’s keyboard which is not bad at all for a mobile device. The keys have nice white backlight.
Screen
The screen size is 4.8cm x 3.6cm which has actually reduced from E61. This was mainly done by Nokia to reduce the width of the device. The E71 has QVGA(320 x 240) resolution, which does an okay job of displaying web pages and documents. The text is very sharp and clear.
Performance
The Nokia E71 remained zippy even after opening a lot of applications in the background. Switching between the applications was seemless. Thanks to the powerful ARM 11 processor clocked at 369Mhz.
The best part was that even after installing 10-14 series 60 applications, the device didn’t slow down a bit.
Battery Life
The device comes with a mammoth 1500mAh battery life. This lets you use your device quite heavily for a full day with some wifi browsing, 3G, music etc.
You don’t need to worry about the battery life at all with this device.
Communications and Networking
The device is a quad band GSM device. It has HSDPA too to support the faster internet speeds. The E71 didnt drop a single call. The call quality was great too. There was no problem with me or with the receiver at the other end with respect to the voice quality. In other words, no dissapointment at all in this area.
It comes with wifi, bluetooth, GPS, IR blah blah. You name it, it has it! Everything worked well as expected.
—
What I liked about the device:
- small size
- fast processor
- ample usable RAM
- micro-SD support(hot swap)
- latest S60 OS(3rd edition)
- stable
- slim
- GPS
- Nice QWERTY keyboard
- Removable battery( unlike iPhone :P )
What I did not like:
- still QVGA resolution
- no touch-screen(odd, but for web-browsing, touch screen is must for me)
- expensive
Thanks to Mr. Jeet, Nokia for the device
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[...] the original post: Nokia E71 review copyright, gadgetmix-com, Games, img-0292, Mobile, Music, new-specs, nokia, nokia-e71, [...]
Nice review again. It must have been an odd feeling doing a Nokia review eh? ;)
Ha ha. It was weird for sure as I’d never reviewed a non-windows mobile device. But, I’d no problems in writing the review :)
[...] Nokia E71 review [...]
Looks like it is a great device. My friend has E61i.i know you have one too.read the ‘team’ link above.Kamal, would you get this and sell your e61?
@ Smith: Haha. I have a E61i but I don’t use it much. That does not mean that I don’t like it. It is a nice device and it does suits my needs. Actually, I like the big display of the E61i and won’t be replacing it with the E71 anytime soon.
However, I’ll be replacing my HTC P4350 with the HTC TOUCH DIAMOND very soon :)
May I have one ?
Ha ha! No, you cannot ;)
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Nice review – This device is remarkable. So happy with my purchase
“no touch-screen(odd, but for web-browsing, touch screen is must for me)”
That is lame