- E71 image courtesy of Nokia
Author and widely read tech blogger (Joel on Software), Joel Spolsky published a rave review today of Nokia's newest QWERTY business phone, the E71. Ever since this phone was announced, I've thought it would be a huge success. Smaller, thinner and lighter than the Blackberry Curve or iPhone; tons of memory; fast, stable, expandable S60 OS and a keyboard that just about every reviewer seems to like in spite of what appear to be minuscule keys.
Joel certainly seems to agree, explaining why he chose it over the iPhone 3G and saying things like "... the best phone I’ve ever had and I’m loving it." He does have a few complaints, mostly about the bundled Nokia software, specifically the WebKit browser, Nokia Maps and Nokia's Mail for Exchange preferring to use Opera Mini, Google Maps and DataViz RoadSync respectively.
I wonder why ATT and T-Mobile USA are seeming ignoring this phone? Nokia really needs to make some deals to put the E71 on US carriers at an attractive, subsidized price. I think this phone would open the eyes of a lot of dedicated Blackberry, Windows Mobile and even iPhone users to the joy of S60's openness, huge software library, great multitasking and GPS support and industry leading voice quality and reception. Though I've heard some rumblings that the E71's reception isn't up Nokia's usual standards. On the other hand, Gear Diary's Michael Oke says the E71's reception is as good as the N95's, which if true would be very good indeed.
How about you? If you have an E71 let us know about your likes and dislikes and especially how you find the reception in marginal areas.
We've had the phones for 6 months now and are trying to get it sent back
Parrticularly a good choice for people who do not want to get an expensive data plan for email - I can find a wifi connection often enough (at home, or at the university or at coffee shops) so I can just download all my emails by wifi. I was looking for a phone that can download all the emails (including attachments) by POP (instead of IMAP) so i can read them offline, and the E71 is excellent for this purpose.
Excellent office applications as well, I wrote some of my cover letters and resumes on the E71. And as usual nokia's calendar functions are decent.
Having said that Mail for Exchange is not very good - it requires you to specifically set which wifi connection to use, instead of giving you an option to "always ask" which connection to use when going online. That means going into the options and changing wifi connection settings each time you move from your home wifi and other wifi. Then again this is only for cheap bastards like me who don't want to pay for expensive cellphone data plans.
Also, media support is poor as expected. Don't expect to really watch things on flash video, it is choppy at best. This phone is definitely not for entertainment unlike the iphone.