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Nokia E71

Author	Jonathan Bray
Published	8th Jul 2008
Manufacturer	Nokia
Price	£262.08 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£307.94 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price	Click here

Design & Features
Performance
Value
Overall

29 comments

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The screen's size and resolution is nothing to write home about - it's just 2.36in across at a standard 320 x 240 and it isn't a touch screen - but the quality is outstanding. It's bright, clear, and transflective, too, so when you take it outside in bright sunshine it's almost as readable as it is indoors.

In terms of core componentry, the E71 beats RIM's finest too. It has full HSDPA support, on top of GPRS, EDGE and standard 3G. It's a quad-band phone, for use all around the globe. It has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an FM radio tuner, for when the email gets too much for you. And it has a 3.2-megapixel camera complete with LED flash on the rear coupled with a VGA video call camera on the front.

And, of course, what modern smartphone would be without a GPS receiver? The E71 is equipped with an assisted-GPS receiver (A-GPS) - this uses location information gleaned from the mobile cell you're connected to with the aim of providing a quicker satellite fix. I've seen this before and not been impressed; on the E71, however, it's an entirely different kettle of fish. I fired up Google Maps while sat indoors with only a partial view of the sky, turned on the GPS option and 15 seconds later the E71 had an accurate location fix. Not many dedicated sat-nav devices can boast speeds that quick, let alone phones, which often can take minutes on end or fail to get a lock entirely.

You don't have to go and download Google Maps, though - the E71 comes with Nokia's own mapping software preinstalled. Though this isn't as quick and responsive as Google Maps, you can use it as a proper sat-nav tool, complete with turn-by-turn driving instructions. But the latter is a £7 per month additional subscription after the free three day trial runs out.

Where Windows Mobile devices often stumble, at this point, is on responsiveness and battery life. It takes a lot of processing power to render Microsoft's OS nippy, but put a powerful CPU in a phone and the result is, too often, very short battery life. The E71 uses Symbian's S60 3.1 platform, so responsiveness isn't an issue - you're hardly ever left staring at an hourglass or its equivalent when launching applications or navigating around the phone's interface.

Latest 4 of 29 Comments

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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

DannyB said on 21st September 2008

Well i gotta say ive been so impressed with all the reviews ive trawled through recently and endless youtube vids on the E71 that ive ordered one, and will be arriving in two days ... more

NickH said on 17th November 2008

I have just got one and I would not give it quite this adulation. I am coming to this as a 6230i phone plus Windows Mobile PDA user. If you have never used a PDA/Smartphone before then I can imagine this will be a real trial. Even as a heavy PDA user I have found the menu difficult to fathom E.g. Bluetooth settings can be found in Connectivity-Bluetooth, Tools-Settings-General-Enhancement and Tools-Settings-Connection-Bluetooth. Sometimes you get to what looks like the same place but in one case there are extra tabs and the other not. It took me a couple of days before I noticed these extra tabbed pages showing in grey on a dark grey background at the top of some menus. And there is some weird stuff e.g "Device Manager" - about my carkit and heasdet right? No, this is about different "Server profiles" and Remote configuration and even though I work in IT I can't see what this is really about. It has a "Barcode Reader" duh why? Especially since I haven't been able to read a single barcode with it yet.
Here's an example from the manual to show how many levels of menu you sometimes have to wade through - "Menu > Tools > Settings > General > Security > Phone and SIM card > Keypad autolock period". And talking about the manual mine came with version 1 with 100 pages. There is version 2 on the Nokia site with 160 pages - an indication of how much extra explanation they have found necessary?
Some other gripes:-
No Games, not one! OK there are some free Symbian games but they are not easy to find and the ones I have found are rubbish. So to get decent games you have to pay.
There is no option to add voice tags for contacts. It cleverly works without you entering your own but if it won't recognise your voice then tough! If your friends with unusual spelling that the voice synthesizer can't work out like Letitia and Anatascia you will have to attempt to copy its version of pronunciation. If you have entries with similar names or 2 entries for the same person then again, hard luck!
It connects to my handsfree OK but sometimes when voice dialling (my bluetooth has no display) it says 'Dialling' but doesn't actually dial.
The camera is only average compared to some of my colleagues phones.
PC Suite does not let you do anything in the SMS 'My Folders' section. Neither the folders nor the messages are shown. This was all fine on my 6230i. Even the latest Beta version of the Nokia messages program "Nokia Communication Center 2.0" does not show them.
So can't quite see 10/10 ?

I have just got one and I would not give it quite this adulation. I am coming to this as a 6230i phone plus Windows Mobile PDA user. If you have never used a PDA/Smartphone before ... more

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