PDA Reviews

For the past few months, when you say a good PDA, you will automatically think of Blackberry 8820. It had the best style a keyboard can have and its quality seemed to be totally unbeatable. But as time flies by, you get better rivals increasing the competition and hence the quality of their products. This is a cyclic process and its only because of this cyclic process that we get to see major improvements in the industry of gadgets. Having said that, you might be asking who has come out with flying colours, beating Blackberry 8820, it is Nokia’s E71.

Nokia E71 is the successor of Nokia E61 and was released after a long wait. The long wait shows the efforts of the engineers of Nokia’s total dedication in making the phone simply a gorgeous device.

Design:

It looks fantastic, slim and everything else that represents the word “stylish”.  Nokia E71 PDA Smartphone has a chrome trimmed front which is flat and the screen seems to almost have a mirror finish and has a metal finishing to its rear. Unlike its predecessor, it is extremely slim, slimmer than the Apple iphone. It slips easily into your pocket and can go un-noticed. Being thin and compact, we cannot find a single thing that Nokia has sacrificed to make it attain that form factor. A slip case also comes along with the phone, it does not have much impact over the “slim factor” of the phone. But, having a metallic finish means, it is a finger print magnet.

Great keyboard:

Ergonomics is very important in design of any gadget and Nokia E71 has not failed to give its best in ergonomics too with its remarkable engineering. Stuffing all the keys in a narrow chassis but the point is in making it usable. Nokia E71 PDA Phone has done just that. The key-pad has a rubbery feel which adds grip to the typing and the keys are slightly domed in order to increase the ease of typing. The layout of the keys are very sensible. It does have the QWERTY style and the most commonly used symbol keys such as period, @ and comma are placed in such a way that they can be accessed instantly without holding on to the shift key. The nice white backlighting on the key-pad is very helpful while reading.

Predictive text is included, which you might be thinking is not necessary for a QWERTY keyboard. But, this works in a different way and still being helpful as is with the case of the iphone. If you were typing fast and mis-spelt a word, then it would suggest the word and do the auto correct for you. It also helps you save a lot of time. It suggests words for you halfway through your typing and all that you would need to do is, simply hit on the spacebar which would select the suggested word and you can keep moving.

Navigation:

There is no scrolling trackball like the one available in blackberry but the directional pad provided is very easy to use. The control cluster has the directional pad, the four shortcut keys (two each in the either sides of the directional pad), a pair of soft keys and the call and hang-up keys. Though the call and hang-up keys look smaller, it will not be posing any problem while using it. The four shortcut keys are well sized. The middle key also serves as a notification light which glows until you have cleared an event or until the expiration time you had set for the light finishes, in case you had missed any event. It is a good innovation to get rid of the age old annoying status light.

Crystal clear display:

There is nothing marvellous to describe about the display of Nokia E71 Smartphone. It is just a 2.36″ display having a resolution of 320X240 pixels. The display is not a touch screen, yet, the quality is outstanding by being bright and clear with just the required amount of contrast. Since the screen is transflective, it can be viewed without ant troubles even in bright afternoon sunlight. Pictures and video look very clear in the screen. The screen will be particularly appreciated while some heavy browsing.

Memory:

It has an internal memory of 110MB and the expansion slot is provided too. There is a micro SD card slot just above the micro USB port on the handset and hence you will be able to expand the memory of your Nokia E71 to the highest capacity of memory card currently available in the market. The data transfer speed to the memory card over the USB is on par with its previous models.

Connectivity:

Nokia E71 not only supports GPRS, EDGE and standard 3G, but also has full HSDPA support with 850MHz and1900MHz UMTS. For it to be used when you move to any part of the earth, it has the quad-band technology.

The other means to connectivity to external world includes WiFi 802.11 a,b,g, Bluetooth 2.0 and a FM radio tuner.

Having so much of connectivity involved, would you expect Nokia to leave out the GPS? Yes, E71 has an A-GPS (assisted GPS). This uses the location information gleaned from the cell you are connected to which provides a quicker satellite fix. The speed of the GPS is so good that even dedicated satellite navigators do not have. Since E71 has nokia’s own mapping software preinstalled, you will not have to worry about downloading Google maps. It acts like a proper satellite navigator giving you proper turn by turn instructions. But, this is available only for free three day trial after which it requires seven pounds subscription for each month.

Multimedia:

Nokia E71 sports a 3.2 mega pixel camera with LED flash on the rear along with a VGA video call camera in the front.

Similar to its predecessors, Nokia E71 Business Phone has a single speaker in the upper left of the phone but has a better quality than them. It sounds louder and good for ringtones and alerts. Music sounds just fine and not the best as the bass is completely missing giving a tinny sound.

Talking about the call quality, it is an absolute pleasure to make a call in Nokia E71. Being a PDA, it does not compromise as a phone. Nokia, excels as a phone as it should.

Operating System:

Coming to the OS, E71 uses the Symbian’s S60 3.1 platform, which provides you with lightning speed responsiveness. Being speedy, E71 has not compromised on its battery life. It manages to remain speedy with the HSDPA data support having a very decent battery life.

Quick office offers support for viewing and editing office documents, PDA files and ZIP utility. But there is no support for Office 2007.

The visual makeover done for the messaging application looks good. All the texts are presented in a very readable manner and mails look great on the phone.

e-mail support:

Coming to the part of software, it is an E-series device and can it be without email. Nokia E71 is equipped with POP3 and IMAP accounts which are a breeze to connect to. The E71 also includes Nokia’s Mail for Exchange email client by default. This allows you to connect to Microsoft corporate email accounts and receive your push email. You can also sync contacts, tasks and calendar info too. There is no support for Blackberry connect which was offered by Nokia E61.

Browsing:

Surfing the Net is better than with most built-in browsers available today. Pages are displayed in full and, interestingly, the E71’s browser supports Flash and lets you watch YouTube videos, although it seems to be fairly sluggish and the audio streams faster than video.

Battery:

Nokia E71 uses 1530mAh lithium polymer battery. You will get up to four days with a single charge on average usage. It that not completely impressive? But one disappointment is that, you still cannot charge your Nokia handset via USB.

Nokia E71 comes with 24 months warranty.

Verdict:

Nokia E71 has very minor faults, which can be totally ignored. Its beautiful engineering and ample connectivity options are simply mind-blowing. With its good battery life and display, it satisfies the basic needs too.

Being loaded with so much of features, you must have thought that it must be heavy on your wallet too, if that is the case, then you are wrong, it is reasonably priced. And as you must have guessed, yes, it is certainly recommended by us.

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Nokia E71 PDA Phone - Technical Specification Details

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