Nokia E70 Review

Is it rue, that it takes up to 10 seconds to open messaging depending on whether you access it from the active homescreen ot the menu? That was the main complaint of german magazine Connect when they reviewed the device...

No, not true, Messaging is its usual self. The only thing that's slow here is the mode switching.

Steve

I wonder why so many mobile review sites totally contradict each other when reviewing hardware. Could it be that they review prototypes as if they were final products, in their eagerness to be the first ones with a review of that model?

Thats what I thought too, when I read the Connect review. It pictured the E70 several times and on ech pic it had a QWERTY keyboard instead of the german QWERTZ. So it either was an english version (maybe with a german ROM) or Nokia is seriously disrepspecting the large german market by releasing a device with a nonm-german layout. At CeBIT I personally saw an E70 with QWERTZ and german umlaute (ä, ü, ö, ß).

In fact a lot of differente taste, when look at E70. MobilCZ, said it´s wonderfull and predicts it gonna be a top seller! Other, are not so positive...

It is worth bearing in mind that everyone has a different opinion and thus does explain some differences. That and there are different variants / firmware etc.

We do try and make it clear if we are (p)reviewing prototypes (the give away is it usally called a preview).

--It is worth bearing in mind that everyone has a different opinion and thus does explain some differences.--

Oh yeah, that's true, but the contradictions I had in mind were the instances where sites give out specific technical information that just doesn't tally with each other.


--We do try and make it clear if we are (p)reviewing prototypes--

All About Symbian do that because they're cool and groovy and nice, but some lesser sites don't, they post "reviews" of devices that are many months away from being shipped, sometimes as much as six months.

There's one phone website which shall remain nameless (but is situated in eastern europe if you want a clue) which reviewed the 5500 in May, but the phone had a Q3 2006 release date and still isn't out yet. They must have been reviewing a non-final version, but there's no clue to it in the text of the "review".

www.onedaymobile.co.uk

mobiles, nokia 5 series,

Steve, try exiting and relaunching the task manager after opening/closing the flip. Check the amount of free RAM after relaunch of Taskman => The huge memory leak that you mentioned is not the complete truth. :)

E70 has it's share of RAM issues but not of the magnitude you suggested by observing the task manager. :)

Thanks, investigating now - it seems I might have to re-do my text and video reviews 8-)

This is fascinating though - SysExplorer does the same, with the OS not reporting free RAM properly until the utility is restarted! I wonder which other applications this affects in terms of day to day operation?

SpinSpin, can you elaborate please on "it's share of RAM issues"?

Steve

This was linked from the my-symbian forums (from a thread I think you started).

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/fo...d.php?p=224637

It's a little more worrying than it just running out of memory :)
I think I'll buy one anyway though, it seems like it would be good for me, nice review.

A very similar observation can be made when launching Gallery/Images on the N80, which also involves a switch from portrait to landscape orientation : delay and a drop in memory of about 4 MB (from 11MB to 7 MB). This is undoubtedly caused by the same phenomenon : switching screen orientation seems to put a heavy burden on the Symbian OS!

I had try an E60 in a shop, and it have a icon to change the screen orientation. But, for me, that hapens very fast, almost without delay.

I just upgraded. There's no change history or known bugs to indicate changes. And voila, no more Blackberry again!

No idea on Blackberry, maybe you have to reinstall the client? In terms of a changelist, there's one in this thread: http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=243167 , though a lot of it is quite technical.

Steve

Any comparison w/ the size/features of a Nokia 6620?

Never used, that, but it's quite an old device now.... 8-)

Steve

i have been waiting for this phone forever in san francisco. is it really worth waiting for, or do i just buy a blackberry. i currently have a nokia 6820. i want to use email if it is any good

I had the Nokia 6820, and upgraded to the E70 this summer. No regrets, huge pay-off. It's a bigger phone, not much heavier, big beautiful screen. Email is great on it - handles attachments nicely, connects to WLAN pretty easily. Notes is much better (unlimited size), Organizer is still just fine. Gull keyboard is just as functional. 2 megapixel camera is wonderful. Voice recorder is easier to use (just push the side button). Perfect smartphone? Pretty close. Def pull the trigger on this one.

One "hard-to-make-use-of" phone

"+"
Very good design. qwerty keyboard.
Good camera, although 2MP - verry fast screen refresh i camera mode.
Good display.
Descent battery life. 2-3 days active use (it really depends). a lot of BT and Wi-fi downloading and web browsing
Firmware updates over the internet. (put it as a "+" although many people reported that their phones died after trying to update from firmware 1.6xxx to 2.xxx so cross fingers before updating)
Light sensor. Keybord backlight is on only in the dark.

"-"

E70 speciffic.
---
Wi-fi Ad-hoc mode restarts the phone each time the connection is terminated.
Wi-fi WPA2 TKIP works 50% of the time.
Snooze feature disappears after been used 5 times in a row. Restart gets it fixed.
Can not use the VPN to connect to M$ VPN server. only several servers are supported by the VPN client.
Poor audio. Fixed in 2.xxx firmware at the price of weak volume. Weak sound even at MAX.
Mono hands-free.

Symbian OS60v3
---
Mobile office allows you to open only simple files small enough to be loaded.
Out-of-memory error too often.
No repeatable alarm for workdays only. Even daily repeatable alarm is missing.
Problems installing some PKCS#12 certificates. Some of them work and some don't. After opening the certificate file, phone shows that there is one cert and one key in it and when you choose install - one big message "Private key corrupted" Never got suppurt from NOKIA for this one.

First, let me say that this is a beautiful, solidly built and feature-rich phone. I love it--in theory. I say that since for the past four months, It has been at Nokia service almost as much as it has been with me. From the very first, it suffered what I considered unacceptable battery life. The E70 specs state that "standby time" is around 17days. I've yet to experience 17 HOURS of standby time, and I make very few calls.

Nokia has checked it out twice, sent me a new battery once and finally, sent me a replacement E70 last week, but it's exactly the same.

On the various online forums regarding this phone, I've heard from a lot of E70 users. No one has experienced 17 days of standby, but some do get five or six days. However, there are a lot of owners, like me, who cannot even get one day's use before having to recharge.

Nokia seems "clueless" or stonewalling. The phone is great in concept and functionality, but when you're told to disable the Bluetooth and WiFi and don't put any third-party applications on it an still get only a couple of days use before it goes dead. I'm sorry. This is not acceptable. Now, I have a unique $400 (plus expenses and software) paperweight on my desk.:frown:

No, you're usually told to disable those things temporarily, in order to check whether everything's all right at heart. You can then start reenabling stuff in order to find the culprit.

My E70 is my main device and gets a lot of use, and yet I can go 2 or 3 days without charging. Fabulous battery life.

My bet for why some people have problems is badly written push email software or GSM/3G weak signal issues.

Steve

I've just purchase this phone. My new symbian phone after 2 years of not using symbian. It's hard to find in the market, no longer around but I love the features and the unique of the phone. Too bad changing housing is impossible but I use casing to protect the phone.

A happy E70 owner :)

Will this review be updated when the v3 firmware is properly released? I'm umming about this or the E90. Is there any sign that an E70i may appear?

Thanks
Mark

I am wondering if the E70 is capable of playing back true full-screen videos, ie. full-resolution videos?