Steve Reviews the Newly Announced Nokia E71

[Ewan]

Having been using the Nokia E71 for a little while now, Steve Litchfield delivers his verdict - what's new compared to its predecessor, the E61i? And how close does the E71 get to being the perfect smartphone for the modern professional? With predictive text and a wealth of other tweaks to S60, the E71 certainly delivers more than you'd think at first sight.

Read on in the full article.

[krisse]

Great review Steve!

Interesting on the word completion feature, there's something similar on the Nokia tablets and I did wonder if they'd ever use it on the phones.

Also fascinating that they've upped the multimedia features by including such a good camera, and compatibility with things like podcasts. Most interestingly, as the N71 has Nokia Music Store built in along with several games, I can't see any reason for it to be excluded from the N-Gage platform, as that's just as much pure entertainment as a music store.

"The Messaging application itself is largely unchanged from earlier devices which is something of a dissapointment "

FAIL.

Next, please.

Holy noise and purple Batman!
I was SO looking forward to this phone since with all those features it would have been a near perfect device for blogging my upcoming half year trip around the world. But then I clicked on the camera samples and .... WTF?! Hey Nokia, 2001 called, they want their crappycam back.

Am I the only one constantly puzzled about all companies' incompetence when it comes down to produce a no-crap device? Seems like some random (yet for my purposes essential) feature is messed up on each phone these days. So now I can choose tween going windows mobile or doing mobile blogging without qwerty. Sheesh, thanks Nokia.

It's strange that this uses FP1 whilst the N78, launched earlier, uses FP2. The multimedia stuff is a little disappointing too, I was hoping it'd be an all-rounder to replace my N82 and Blackberry with :(

[krisse]

It's strange that this uses FP1 whilst the N78, launched earlier, uses FP2

The version they use depends on when product development starts, not when it ends.

If Nokia started work on the N71 a long time before the N78, it would make sense that the N71 is based around an earlier version of S60v3.

I'm a long-time Nokia user, for better or worse.

I upgraded from E61 to N95 8GB because I wanted HSPA and and a less sluggish device -- that has worked well enough -- but I just cant get along with only 9-key number pad anymore... it's so painful to input text, and how often do we really dial numbers manually anymore?

So I need a small qwerty with HSPA. E71 looks a good from that perspective.

[bheetebrij]

Thanks for the great review! Despite some really good things - such as the calendar tweak, modes, home-screen quick contact search, installed podcasting and share on-line apps - it is no home-run for me. Particularly, the multimedia part is slightly disappointing.

I realise that my wishlist is odd, and have to congratulate Nokia on a really good all-round device!

[nj7]

More of the same boring screen resolution... I´m tired of that! None evolution at all, phone after phone

[langdona]

Seems like a perfect replacement for my battered E61.

Battered because I stupidly did not zip my pocket whilst on a large roller coaster on Part Aventura leading to it flying out.

Surprised because someone handed it in.

Even more surprised that the only damage was chunks missing out of the aluminium cover and my memory card was missing. It works perfectly. Tough things these Nokias!

[AVR4000]

It´s a nice device but I prefer the E90. The E71 is very interesting in the most areas but the camera department is a dissapointment. I like the E90s abilities in this sector so I thought the E71 would be identical.

The software additions (contacts etc) is good but they could have used the E90 style in more apps.

A question: what is the theme used in the reviewed E71? It looks like the good old 6600 and S60v1.

"For video recording, capture is at the new 'phone' standard of QVGA at 15 frames per second"hmm,gsmarena spec sheet says that it has VGA video recording @ 22fps.Any comment on this.

Sounds like there are several potential customers for a consumer/Nseries qwerty handset among the commenters already. From the live feed: "why no consumer qwerty? Consumers are using qwerty more, but geo specific. More products. Yes. No specifics."

Maybe they could approach it from the blogging angle, huh.

http://europe.nokia.com/A41146123
it states clearly "640 x 480 at 22 fps"

[tomsky]

Any chance we'll see some of these innovations on the e90? I quite like the idea of predictive text on the E90, and VPN would be a dream come true, albeit 3 days too late (don't ask...).