E61 has EDGE communication in addition to GPRS, 3G and wifi. So in my mind communication capabilities are perfect!

Copied from Nokia.com:
"EGPRS (Class B, MSC 11)"

=)juha

Nice review, Steve.

Guess whether you want one or not depends whether you can stand the format/layout of the phone and whether looking like a berk holding one to your head when making a call is important.

Eh? It was Ewan's review!!!

And the text isn't the final text - the system's mangled it all. 8-(

Steve

Apologies, obviously confused by the sun today.

Ewan, judging from your review it seems that you're right in saying that the screen layout and the keyboard are not being used at their full potential in every application. But to be fair to Nokia, it's still great to see that they have at last abandonned those ridiculously huge title bars and buttons that used to take up one third of the screen in previous S60 devices and that the vast majority of the display area is now available to the applications. I give it only a few months before third party applications using the full potential of the screen start to ship. And at that point, the E61 is really going to be an amazing piece of smartphone.

A few more screenshots would be nice though. In particular of the email client and of the music player (how easy is it to browse through dozens of albums and hundreds of songs?). Also, you didn't say much about the speed of the device. Do applications still takes seconds to launch (as they do on my Sendo X) or do most "normal" apps launch instantly? How fast is it to delete a text message or to display a text message by clicking "Show" just after it's been received? On my X, these things take ages.

Its a shame to hear about the shortcommings of the keyboard and navigation. I look foward to seeing how well the E70 does in comparison as that is the device I'm leaning based on specification only. Anyway the E61 still sounds like a good device and I suspect it will do quite well.

I cant see why they dont include a spellchecker when the free Openoffice and Thunderbird email are 2 examples of open source software that have them.

Agree about the spellchecker. And the reason Ewan hasn't done screenshots is because none of the existing screen capture programs will install on the E61 8-(

Once that hurdle's been overcome, expect a 'version 2' of the review, with tweaked text from Ewan (and hopefully myself, once I've had a play) and screens aplenty.

Steve Litchfield

"Screenshot 2" by Antony Pranata installs and works flawlessly on the E61

http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software...aq=1&fldAuto=4

Not on Ewan's device 8-(

Maybe non-production firmware? I'll try fiddling once Ewan's passed it on to me...

Steve

Thks for the review.

Three updates as of May 19:

- pdf reader LE is now downloadable from Tools/Catalogs and works.

- Seven has issues with the E Series for their alwayson push email solution. Seven supports states quote

Components

Product: Enterprise Edition, Professional Edition, Internet Edition
Component: Push Client
Device: E60, E61, N71, N80, N91, Nokia 3250

Description

Nokia has started commercial shipments of N-series and E-Series devices based on the S60 v3 platform. Current ROM versions (May 2006) include known issues in the Symbian OS core that prevent SEVEN clients from working reliably on the devices. SEVEN and Nokia are jointly investigating the issues, but a device ROM upgrade will be required to provide fully working solution.

Additional information

For more information, please contact your Nokia representative.

Keywords

ROM upgrade, Series 60 version 3.0, S60 3rd generation
Changed on May 09, 2006

unquote

- If you are unhappy with the rendering of the pre-installed browser, try opera mini. IMHO the much better solution - rendering to fit the screen - and fortunately free of charge at www.opera.com

best regards

Has anyone seen a bible application for the E61?
Thanks in advance!

How many different E61 English keyboard layouts are there? In this review, the & is on the same key as P. But I've seen other English layouts where the & is on the W key, and my personal favorite where & and @ have their own keys to the left of the space key. (While the comma and period are to the right of M, where they're supposed to be.)

What you describe is I believe now the standard configuration. At least one of those pictures is one I took at a tradeshow of a prototype device.

Someone know if e61 works with route66 mobile 7 ?

Thanks !

Not yet - but Route 66 support is coming soon.

Don't get me wrong, the E61 is a fantastic device & easily the best smartphone I've owned to date but some of it's BEST features seem very oddly thought out:

Access Point Groups:
+ This feature is nothing short of revolutionary. The ability to set up a preferred use of networks (wireless at home & the office or 3G when I'm out) Outstanding!
- But at present it is ONLY possible to select it as the *default* connection method for email & syncing. It SHOULD be possible to use this feature as the *default* for web browsing & every other internet application?

Message notification.
For an integrated device the notification system is seriously disjointed.
+ The Standby screen (or day view). After much searching through menu's I found the option to turn on message display in the Standby screen. Lovely.
- Why is it only possible to have the day view show txts OR emails? And why when you select one of these, does it display the top two messages This is worse than useless.... despite the glaring fact you may not want the first line of your private texts clearly displayed on the front of your phone.
It SHOULD show only unread message's: Txts AND emails & only the senders name.

The LED:
+ Potentially a fantastic feature.
- But again for an integrated phone, it will ONLY work for emails.
It SHOULD work for all unread messages. Txts & emails.

Multimedia:
+ Despite being marketed as a business phone it is a powerful multimedia device too.
- What is the point of including mp3 & video software with a mono ear piece?
Nokia SHOULD at least have supplied the short Popport to 35mm headphone jack that is available all over ebay. Heck if they didn't want to put it in the box, they could at least offer it as an accessory on their online store.

Love the phone but REALLY hoping that a firmware update will resolve some of the above.
R.

Whaaa - they're only shipping a mono headset with it? Can someone else confirm this? Maybe it's only in certain countries?

Steve

At least finnish unlocked version of E61 has only mono headset.

...my mono headset is still in the phone's box. I immediately replaced it with AD-46 and good headphones...

=)juha

If you find yourself depressed that there's no camera on your lovely new E61 there is a bit of a bodge work around..

I found that using a the 'miniSD to full size SD' card adapter, I can take photo's on my tiny Konica-Minolta Dimage XG. Pop out the card & stick it in the E61. I changed the camera settings to '640x480-Fine' to keep the files small and the E61 software is intelligent enough to scale images down further, to an appropriate size for MMS.

Not q-u-i-t-e as convenient as a built in megapixel camera but should be nice for sending back holiday snaps.

& BTW a LOT better than the AWFUL pop port camera I used to have with the 6800.
;)

Can someone please advise if MS Active Sync and Exchange Active Sync are same. As I am using Treo 650 versa mail which uses Exchange Active Sync for my company emails, if MS Active Sync is the same thing, then I definitley want to get the E61. Thanx

ActiveSync is the application which allows one to sync with Outlook OR Exchange but the settings are different. If the Exchange server is not patched with the ActiveSync updates then you cannot sync directly with the server.

If you open ActiveSync application on Windoze you will find an option in your config to talk directly to the server. Try it and see if you can pull down the data. If you can thrn the server is patched. You can then speak with your IT bod for the external IP address/DNS name of your firewall and enable the open ports to allow you to talk to the server from the big bad world. Note, Exchange through firewalls makes the firewall look like swiss cheese so if the money is there is front end and backend Exchange servers is better. That way all external communication is done with the front end and the data is stored on the backend. It does work with a single server, it's just better for security with two.

The review of the E61 says that iCal synchronisation over Bluetooth is available for the E61. How? I have an E61, and I cannot find any mention of iCal in the manual or on the device. Right now I am dead in the water with regard to calendar syncing. I do not (will not) use Outlook, and do not use Lotus either, and there appears to be no way to sync with anything other than these. If the E61 supported the iCalendar standard for synchronization, then I would be able to sync it with other calendar programs, but I see no feature for syncing via iCalendar.

1. Can anyone tell me whether the E61 can sync with both my personal and busness contact folders in Outlook? In the past it has only been possible for my PDA to sync with one folder, in fact with the default folder just called Contacts which for me is the folder in which I keep my personal contacts, and not with my business contacts which I keep in a different folder called Contact Management.
2. If the answer to the above is positive would all my personal and business contacts be listed together in the Nokia, or separately, or would I be able to select either of these options?
3. I have 2154 personal contacts (in my Contacts Folder) and 3661 business contacts (in my Contact Management folder). These are 3.3MB and 8.6MB respectively so the E61 should be able to cope with them easily - but in reality are these folder sizes an issue?
4. My perception is that to make a call I would look up the contact using the first few letters to search by surname, be presented with the name, be shown one row per different phone number for that contact, scroll down to the name/number contact that I want and then press a call key to ring the person. Ideally the screen would show three columns - name in surname order, description of the phone number (home, business, mobile etc) and the number itself. Is this perception correct?

I keep connecting to the Nokia OS upgrade site with the E61, and it keeps telling me that there's no upgrade available. I know there is an upgrade for some foreign ROMs, but does anyone know when the standard UK ROM upgrade will be available to self-install from Nokia? Surely the boffins at Nokia have enough brains to make a note on the site as to what's available before you have to connect everything to be told there's nothing?

Deadly silence on this? Has anyone been able to download a UK upgrade for the E61? I still get 'no upgrade available' or whetever the helpful message is. I wish Nokia would get their finger out and listen to people. Their forums are absolutely useless.