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Nokia E71

Author	Jonathan Bray
Published	9th Jul 2008
Manufacturer	Nokia
Price	£262.08 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£307.94 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price	Click here

Design & Features
Performance
Value
Overall

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The BlackBerry 8820 has been one of the best slab-style QWERTY smartphones for so long now, it's hard to imagine anything overtaking it. Its combination of ease of use, long battery life and excellent keyboard contributed to a maximum score of 10 out of 10 when we first looked at it last August, and our opinion hasn't changed much over that time.

But times move on, new handsets are released, and inevitably - eventually - a new champion comes along. That new champion, it would seem, is Nokia's E71 - the long-awaited successor to the E61. Why? First, this is a simply gorgeous phone. With a solid metal rear, chrome-trimmed front and flat, almost mirror-finish screen, it's one beautiful piece of design.

And, not only does it look fantastic, but it's also very slim and pocketable. Unlike its E61 predecessor, which was about as broad-shouldered as a phone could get, the E71 is as slim-waisted as an iPhone and 2.3mm thinner, too, at a mere 10mm. It may boast a full QWERTY keyboard, but you can slide it into a pocket and barely notice it. Even the slip case it comes with doesn't add to the bulk too much.

It's a remarkable piece of engineering ergonomically, as well. Cramming a full keyboard into a chassis this narrow is easily enough done, but making it usable is much more of a challenge. Nokia has achieved that and more with the E71: the keys, like the E61 before it, are slightly rubbery so your fingers don't slip off them when you're trying to type; they're slightly domed, so you can press one easily without hitting a neighbouring letter by accident; and the keyboard is blessed with a sensible layout too - important symbols such as the full stop, comma and @ characters are all accessible instantly, without the need to press shift - an ailment all too many other phone keypads are afflicted by.

The keyboard, then, is easily a match for the 8820's excellent offering, but how about the rest of the device? Well, there's no scrolling trackball, but the directional pad above the keyboard is easy to use and works well. If anything, the buttons for picking up and hanging up calls next to the pad are a little on the small side but they're easy to get used to. Combine those with the four well-sized shortcut keys and the pair of soft keys and overall you've got a very comprehensive control cluster.

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clifford said on 12th August 2008

If you are planning on buying the E71, do not do it from the nokia online shop. If there are any issues with delivery or the order, the staff are most un-helpfull. They are used to... more

joeypesci said on 14th August 2008

Upgraded my contract to a better one for only £5 more than I was paying and a free E71. I haven't put the sim in yet as the contract don't start till Tuesday. But played with the phone connecting to my home wifi. I have to say, I'm disappointed. The phone is no where near as good as everyone is raving. Have never used Symbian before I realise why, it's shit. It's really not user friendly and I'm an IT engineer.

My wifi at home is hidden and has mac filtering. The problem is the hidden. Means I have to go into connections most times to connect to the wifi from there. In other applications they seem to be incapable of seeing the hidden wifi you've setup in connectivity.

Mail for exchange is a nightmare to setup. Has a big bug in it that makes your profile disappear. You have to exit it before it will reappear. Also the error today 'cause Mail For Exchange to totally disappear as if it wasn't installed.

I couldn't install most of the software at first, then found via connecting the phone to Nokia Suite, that I think it was 'cause Nokia Suite wasn't actually installed on the phone. Had to do that before Nokia Suite would work. Once I unplugged the phone and plugged it back in. Nokia Suite refused to detect it. I had to reinstall Nokia Suite about twice before it would detect the phone again.

GPS appears to be poor. I went in the garden and it picked me up within seconds. I've just walked to the post box and back and it didn't pick me up till I got back to the house.

Within certain applications that require network access. Some won't allow you to connect to the net via the wifi and insist on a sim card being installed into the phone.

When playing games or applications with sound there appears to be no quick easy way to turn the volume down. The volume controls that control the media player don't appear to work for games, which is odd.

Overall the phone is a big disappointment and doesn't deserve the praise it's getting. And the Symbian OS REALLY needs to be reworked.

Upgraded my contract to a better one for only £5 more than I was paying and a free E71. I haven't put the sim in yet as the contract don't start till Tuesday. But playe... more

joeypesci said on 15th August 2008

I was pulling my hair out today, this phone REALLY is getting on my nerves. I've asked 3 if I can send it back for a different phone, they'd said yes within the 14 days.

Mail for exchange wasn't preinstalled I had to do it myself. Worse than that, I thought the bugs were caused by it being mail for exchange 2.0.4 so updated to 2.0.5. Made no difference, still the same "System Error". Attempting a Full Sync constantly produces a "System Error". It's shocking how any of this got past Beta testing or any of the raring reviews I've read for this phone. Mail for exchange is far from easy to setup.

I was trying again with Mail for Exchange. The nasty "System Error" bug just kept kicking it. Once it does your profile disappears and if you go into communications, mail for exchange also disappears as if not on the phone and you have to go back to the mail for exchange setup. You'll find your profile but you have to set the sync options up all over again, only for it to them do the "System Error" again (it's pot luck if you get it, but it's more often than not).

Once it did connect it synced my calender to the exchange but totally ignored all my 100+ e-mails and didn't copy them to the phone.

Surfing the net. Now this is suppose to have WLAN IEEE 802.11b/g, but it doesn't act like it. The load speeds are terrible. Not only that but I set it up to use works Access Point. They only use simple WEP (crazy I know) and it connects fine. I setup a copy of bookmarks the other day at work, using the phone on their AP. Worked fine. Then today I try to connect to those same bookmarks and get a gateway errror, on the same AP. Surf to those links manually typing them in and it's fine.

Regarding my comment about the hidden wifi in my other comment. You'd think that the whole phone would have access to the wifi settings you'd setup and that connection manager would store these. It doesn't. Connection manager seems to be nothing to do with managing your connection setups. And when in another program that want net access and searches for APs. It's totally blind to the hidden WIFI you setup in connectivity. So you are unable to choose it from the options, so can't connect.

E-mails. Why the hell is the delete option in a sub menu a few scrolls away? It doesn't make sense.

I managed to get POP3 working ok, so maybe it's worth keeping for that and the long battery life. But I really don't know how other reviewers, who review mail for exchange, missed all these issues out. One reviewer stated "The Nokia Director said it's great for mail for exchange" and the reviewer believed him. Erm, that was a NOKIA Director that said that, so of course he's gonna big it up :o)

Anyway. Even if you don't use what I've stated above, I still don't believe the phone deserves the praise it's getting. The OS needs a lot more work before it gets any praise like this. It's made me think about just moving to a Windows Mobile platform phone or ditching smart phones altogether as they clearly don't agree with me :o)

I was pulling my hair out today, this phone REALLY is getting on my nerves. I've asked 3 if I can send it back for a different phone, they'd said yes within the 14 days.... more

purephase said on 24th August 2008

Just got this handset on Vodafone contract (moved from N95 on T-Mobile. Those guys are really looking to give offers away at the moment. Got unlimited data, lots of calls/texts f... more

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