Three Days with a Phone

Three days passed very quickly with the E71. Before I share my experience and thoughts about the E71 I have to add a disclaimer - the unit I tested is not a production unit but a test unit I received for software testing from a friendly mobile operator. The main purpose of this “Three Day with a…” review is to share my experience using the phone on a daily basis. Still, if you need to see the full tech specs check out my previous post on the issue.

The E71 comes as a replacement for the E61i so it makes sense to see how the E71 compares with the E61i.

Screen Size and Resolution

I would like to start with some steam I need to release. I know that many people regard the E71 as the device which will “kill” the Blackberry and will provide the ultimate Eseries email experience for the business/corporate users - but exactly at this point which should be the highlight of the device, the E71 falls behind.

IMHO, the main problem of the device that prevents a decent email experience is the screen size vs. resolution. The screen used in the E71 is 320×240 pixel screen (same as the E61i). But its area shrank by about 30% to fit the new slim form factor. In order to make the text still visible Nokia had to increase the size of the fonts and reduce the number of text lines in the screen. So, while the E61i has 7 lines of text, the E71 has only 6 to use.

The Nokia E61i has a 2.8″ screen while the Nokia E71 screen is only 2.4″. Just to illustrate the differences here is a comparison between the E61i and E71 screen sizes:

As a result, you can only get email notifications or only the last email compared to the E61i’s layout where you could get 2 last emails. I would expect Nokia to actually increase the height of the screen (something like the E51’s screen ratio) and allow flexible email configuration to set the number of lines used by the email screen plugin (Even if you set all the plugins off and keep only the email, you still see only one email header).

Camera

The E71 is equipped with a 3.2MP camera and a LED flash. I know the E71 is not competing with the Nseries phones and its target users are different. But who says that business people should be punished with such a terrible camera? If I’m going to spend hundreds of dollars on a high-end smartphone, I expect it to have a decent camera. I would love to have the camera of the N82 inside the E71, but at least give us the camera from the N78. In any case, the E71’s camera is only good for …well…I’m not sure it is good for anything, maybe for MMS.

As may be witnessed from the sample pictures below which are less than impressive, the colors are washed off, the white balancing is not very accurate and the level of details is not that great. Event he E90 produced much better photos than the E71…what a shame - I really expected more from this device.

Form Factor and Design

After I released all the steam above, I can talk about the really good stuff - beginning with the phone’s design. It is absolutely gorgeous. It looks great, feels solid in your hand and the build quality is terrific. The device fits right to your hand and feels much more comfortable than the bulky E61i.

The keyboard is much smaller than the E61i’s. basically the keys are the same size but there is no space between the keys. All to all, the keyboard is usable and feels solid.

Messaging: SMS and Email

The messaging composer includes few nice improvements compared to the previous models. The most important ones probably are the spell checker and predictive text. When composing a message or email, the composer identifies words as you type them and you can auto complete the rest of the word. In addition, the spell checker automatically fixes any typos you have made. Both enhancements work very well.

Another nice enhancement is the ability to receive email notifications for two mail accounts. For example, I configured the first email to be use mailforexchange and the second to my gmail account.

Web Browsing

The E71 uses Nokia’s superb S60 Safari based web browser - not too much I can say about this other then, as with other S60 devices, using standard web sites with the Nokia S60 devices is almost livable and way better than the browser that comes with the Windows Mobile phones, for example.

GPS

Yes, the E71 comes with a built in GPS. The phone comes with the standard Nokia GPS applications: Maps, GPS Data and Landmarks.

Conclusions

The E71 is a good device. However, it is not perfect. It has a pitiful camera and the screen cannot display more than one email header. However, the form factor, the build quality and the daily usability are great. Would I replace my E61i with the E71? In a second. Would I buy this device? sure….at least until I can get my hands on a Blackberry Bold or a SonyEricsson XPERIA X1.

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