It's the big, big Nokia E61i/E90 comparison...

[slitchfield]

...that you've all been waiting for. I lost count of the number of people wanting this and have bitten the bullet. Photos, details and opinions are here in my blow-by-blow comparison of the Nokia E61i and Nokia E90.

Read on in the full article.

[natanlevine]

While on the subject on form factors. Isn't it correct to say that another huge advantage of the e90 is that it has all the advantages of qwerty as well as keypad smartphones.
What would really be interesting is if the Nseries would come out with a qwerty phone. This would seem to go against their multimedia focus but the e90 totally encroaches on all the Nseries territory.

[Chrissybear]

Indeed, the article many of us have been waiting for, but maybe the E61i is a little underrated?

As a long time Psion 3, 3mx, 5, 5mx, 7, and communciator user, I took the plunge about 6 weeks ago to the E61i and, after about a 3 week adjustment, I can't believe how good this phone is!

One adjusts to the keyboard size relatively quickly and it's easily good enough for mobile use. And Steve, you have gone on record in sayng the keyboard is hardly better on the E90.

The screen may be smaller, but it's plenty large enough for what most people will need on the road, even with my failing eyesight!

But the killer for me is the practicality - one handed operation is not just possible but absolutely pleasurable! And the thickness!! (or should that be thin-ness) - it is so comfortable to hold and to have in one's trouser/shirt pocket. And it's a lot lighter on the wallet too!

It's hard to say this, but the longer I look at the E90, and the more I hear of it, the more I'm appreciating my E61i, and thinking the days of "clamshelling" are at last over for me!

I'll use a laptop if I want real Office apps and take my E61i for doing everything else, thanks! Anyone want to buy a 4 month old 9300i?

[krisse]

The E61 is great, and it's really good value too as it launched for half the price of the E90. The one thing I'd want to improve on the E61 though is the resolution, the screen is physically so large I wish they'd gone for the full VGA rather than QVGA, and hopefully they'll do that on whatever model succeeds it (presumably they'll call it the E63?).


"What would really be interesting is if the Nseries would come out with a qwerty phone."

The problem is that the QWERTY phone market is mostly made up of business users at the moment, and Nokia's concentrated all its business phones in its Enterprise division, who do Eseries.

Most companies try to avoid different divisions making exactly the same kind of product as it duplicates lots of costs to very little advantage. It's like a hospital not wanting two doctors to treat the same patient at the same time.

If Nokia Multimedia (who do Nseries) wanted to do a QWERTY phone, they would have to find a different market for it, perhaps try to make it a leisure accessory of some kind. No one knows if there is such a market though.


"This would seem to go against their multimedia focus but the e90 totally encroaches on all the Nseries territory."

Many phone enthusiasts will no doubt buy an E90 instead of an Nseries model, but most mainstream customers still prefer smartphones that look like phones rather than computers. You and I might think the E90 is cool in terms of features, but the real sales come from phones that are smaller and have a normal keypad.

[ratza]

"WMA support in E90 means you can rip CDs with Media Player"

Media Player allows ripping CDs also in mp3 format, so there is no problem. I'm using as default CD ripper.

[slitchfield]

I meant using it for ripping to the much more space-efficient WMA format...

Steve (posted from E90)

The most important audio codec is flac (Free, Lossless, Audio Codec) flac.sourceforge.net). (For compressed audio, try Ogg Vorbis (vorbis.com)).

If users do not insist on using the best codecs, we will get all the D.R.M. hassles that companies want to stick up our headphone jacks.

[krisse]

"If users do not insist on using the best codecs, we will get all the D.R.M. hassles that companies want to stick up our headphone jacks."

I don't think 95% of users even know what the word codec means. :-)

My point being this, I have heard a lot of people talk about Clamshelling versus owning the E61i. I have the E61 and have never owned a communicator.

The question is this, can you really rate one hand use of old communicators against the E90, if you have never used a S60 based communicator. I thought the older ones were severely limited in functionality (while closed). Am I right or wrong?

Further more, the amount of one hand use I used to get out of my 6620 and other S60 phones is nothing like the E61. ITs almost like an apple to orange comparison with any of these phones.

I expect the S60 portion of the E90 to really give me the best of both worlds where the older communicators I am thinking would have failed poorly. I do a lot of SMS, MMS, in addition to IM chatting , etc etc. I almost always have a computer terminal handy for big jobs, but there are times when I am in an airport and want to check flights that it would be good to have that screen and keyboard.

[Chrissybear]

(quote) "can you really rate one hand use of old communicators against the E90, if you have never used a S60 based communicator"

Well, yes! The communicator is a form factor - s60 or s80 is the platform.

What has surprised me is the ease of use of the E61i coupled with its thin/wide form factor which is really easy to use one handed with that large screen.

The Communicator form factor (E90 or 9300/9500) will always give you a bigger screen and keyboard when open (2 handed) and a smaller screen and keypad when closed.

But for my money the E61i gets the balance between the two just right and at half the price! Maybe I should buy a pair!!!

[nj7]

Like Krisse said, if E63 or what be the name can have a VGA screen, it go be a great little QWERTY device.

Key feature not obvious from the comparison is that fantastic 128MB on RAM on the E90. At least I don't think the E61i has that much.

Zuber

You don't say anything about speed - surely part of the premium paid for the E90 (and N95 come to that) is the 300MHz CPU?

I have had the E61i for 2 months coming from a windows smartphone. Great phone, super batterylife, nice set of apps BUT for that size screen the resolution could have been improved and text for email is small and times tiring to read - no way to increase the text size. And predictive text is missing -this surely cuts down on typing speed. Was Nokia saving a few pennies here> or they just plain forgot. I am looking forward to trying the E90 primarily for the screen resolution, larger text, predictive text but will have to live with the bulk

[iantaylor27]

Hi Steve
Thanks for that, i have decided on the nokia E61i for now and will wait until around December/Jan to upgrade to E90 or another device that might catch my attention.