Review: Nokia E71 - Ultimate Business Phone

Nokia E71 : Blackberry killer ?

The E71 comes from the stable of business smart phones of the Nokia E-series. Even though its name suggests that it is a successor to the E70 (equipped with large, unfolding, two-part QWERTY keyboard), the E71 follows the E61 and E61i design, offering large, 320×240 pixel, 2.36″ screen and monoblock QWERTY keyboard of the “Blackberry” type. It’s noticeably smaller

Classy look

To drill down into the details of this smart phone. What is immediately noticeable when one touch this phone for the first time is its high build quality and a feeling of sturdiness. The E71 has a durable and rugged kind of feel when placed on one’s hand, and it’s not just a feeling; it’s true. Plastic parts, so common in previous models, have been limited in E71 to minimum, with the only plastic elements being the keyboard and small fragments of the back side, but even those parts have been made from a hard and durable plastic that doesn’t creak or bend when squeezed.

Front & Back

The front side of the casing, containing the large screen and keyboard, is surrounded by a stainless steel frame painted with glossy, dark-silver colour. The battery cover, taking most of the back side of the casing, is also made of durable metal. One other innovation for the E71 is that when the main display is key locked and timed out, rather than a traditional screensaver appearing, the display blanks completely. The time setting for this is to simply press and hold the D-pad and the time appears in large letters. This is a much more elegant solution than the old non-backlit, small-fonted solution.

QWERTY Keyboard

Another noteworthy thing is that the E71 is finally a true world phone with full quad band (GSM/EGSM 850/900/1800/1900) and also all WCDMA frequencies (850/2100, 900/2100, 850/1900), which is something really important in this quickly shrinking world. The alphanumerical keys of the QWERTY keyboard are quite small, they’re strongly convex, which provides good separation and clear feeling of where one key ends and another one starts.

The E71 is equipped with BP-4L battery of 1500 mAh capacity, the same as found in e.g. the E90 Communicator, Internet Tablets and the E61i.

Multimedia

After the E90, the E71 is another Eseries phone model that brings Eseries closer to Nseries when it comes to non-business functionality like e.g. multimedia. It also has a built-in Assisted GPS receiver and preinstalled Nokia Maps application (the new version 2.x). Even though high-end Nseries phones now offer 5 Mega pixel cameras, the 3.2 Mega pixel one in the E71 is still a lot for a business phone. And now it comes with LED Flash (E61 had no camera at all and the 2 Mega pixel one on the E61i had no Flash). Because of the phone’s form factor and the aspect of the display, one takes pictures holding the phone “normally”, i.e. in the portrait mode (as the screen itself has horizontal aspect), without having to tilt it as it’s usually the case with phones having 240×320 pixel screens.

Camera can be better

It is disappointing to not find a dedicated button for the camera. Though the camera is supposed to be the least used feature in a business phone, it sure does deserve a dedicated key could have been assigned at the side for the camera. Also, a 3.5mm headset plug would have really been better choice than the 2.5 mm one

Another slightly disappointing thing is that video recording quality is limited to QVGA / 10 fps. It’s definitely not because of hardware limitations (as there are Nseries phones with the same hardware, providing VGA / 30 fps video recording) but its most probably meant to reserve this feature for the Nseries

Decent camera (with crippled video recording and slightly washed-out colours) is not all the E71 offers when it comes to multimedia. It also has FM radio. It generates high-quality stereo sound via headphones but there’s only one speaker located on top of the device, so in the loudspeaker mode it’s actually monaural (but very loud and clear).

No accelerometer

Another thing that distinguishes the E71 from high-end Nseries phones (but also from its predecessor, the E66), is lack of the accelerometer. It’s probably because Nokia decided that with that shape of the phone and the design of its keyboard it wouldn’t be of much use when it comes to automatic screen rotation

Encryption feature

Another interesting feature is the “Encryption” application letting one encrypt all the contents of phone memory and/or the memory card, preventing data stored in them from being accessed by unauthorized persons. Just select the disks to be encrypted and how/where you want to store the encryption key and that’s it.

Business and Personal Modes

The E71 also has a new “Modes” application (integrated with Profiles) which basically allows you to quickly switch the phone between two modes: “Business” and “Personal” (names can be changed). In both these modes one can configure the theme, wallpaper, Active standby (Home screen) functionality (application shortcuts, plug-in) and with just one key press switch all these settings at once. It’s a very nice idea letting one have two separate configurations, e.g. for business and private, after-work use, affecting not just the look of the UI but also e.g. shortcuts to applications or active Home screen mailbox you use at work or after it, and switch between them in no time. This way during business hours you can have e.g. shortcuts to Quick Office, VPN, Calculator, Calendar, To-do etc. and your company email account set as standby screen mailbox, and all this with some ’seriously looking’ theme and wallpaper suitable for your work, and then, right when you’re leaving your office for home, you can switch the phone to your favourite theme, some crazy wallpaper, Active standby shortcuts to applications you use after work (e.g. Maps, some games, weather forecast, etc.) and your private email account. Great idea!

Smart Dialling

Another new thing is Smart Dialing. Start typing first characters of the contact name on the Standby screen and a popup window will show up with contact entries from your phone book matching the entered string.

Intranet

Among preinstalled applications one can also find “Dictionary” and “Intranet”. The latter provides support for Virtual Private Networks and the former is a dictionary application coming with the English database (and/or with the language matching the country of sale) and with possibility of downloading additional languages from the Internet, directly from within the application.

Nokia Maps

It’s really great that the E71 joins the camp of AGPS-enabled devices and comes with the new 2.x version of Nokia Maps preinstalled. It also retains E61i’s 1500 mAh BP-4L battery which means that the E71 will still run somewhere halfway its power resources when most of Nseries devices will be running out of power

Final Say

The E71 fills a very important gap in the line up of 2nd generation Eseries device. While the E90 is an extremely capable device, its form factor and price point make it rather niche. The E51 is a great entry level enterprise device, but lacks the power that a full size keyboard provides. The completed portfolio of 2nd generation Eseries devices (E51, E66, E71, and E90) has a real sense of maturity about it. This comes from the hardware (variety across the range, build quality and feature set), but also the software - the enterprise applications, and crucially, the enterprise device management options have been significantly improved. The Nokia E71 is set to give Nokia’s Enterprise rivals (Blackberry and Windows Mobile - and, yes, in time the iPhone) some sleepless nights.

All this and the executive has to shell out Rs.22, 949.Well not a huge part of the manager’s pay check, is it?