Mini-Review: Nokia E71

A while ago I finally got tired of my old cellphone and bought a proper one, a Nokia E71. This is a short mini review of it.

The phone itself measures at just 114x57x10mm, weights 127g and is enclosed in a very, very solid feeling steel casing. Besides its keyboard, a 2.4” 320×240 screen and a 1,500 mAh battery it also got a fast 369 MHz ARM11 CPU, includes a GPS receiver, a 3.2MP camera, a micro USB port, a micro SD slot and other gizmos. Additionally it supports UMTS, HSPA, EDGE, WiFi, Bluetooth, Infrared etc.

The only real complaint I got about the hardware so far is that the screen's resolution is just too small to comfortably read PDFs or browse the web (soup.io just isn't fun on it) but I guess I can live with that . Apart from that the keys are a tad small but I got used to it after a short time – also while I originally would have preferred a slide-out keyboard it's actually quite nice to have all keys available at all times. Last but not least the d-pad is a huge improvement over the usual nokia joysticks.

The phone comes with SymbianOS 9.2 / S60 3.1 and TBH I am not that impressed by it. Due to not having used any other smartphone OS for any extended period of time I might not be the right person to judge this, however, there are quite a few rough edges and usability issues which is just sad for an OS that has been around that long.

Besides the OS related issues I've yet to find a single good theme for the phone¹⁾ and the included ones all are more or less plain fugly. The software download tool (“Laden!” for us germans) provides a rather laughable small collection of semi-useless software, there are no commercial games available for the E71²⁾ and it just takes too much time to fix annoying default behaviors (like preinstalled programs using GPRS&co per default without even asking if you maybe would like to use WiFi instead).

On the upside Symbian is by far the most common smartphone OS which guarantees having most software available for it. Also, despite its small flaws its just fine for day-to-day tasks.

Having a synchronize-able, electronic calendar to manage all my appointments (and lectures!) with was one of the many reasons I wanted to get a smartphone – sadly its never just that easy.

The preinstalled standard calendar is sufficient for basic usage but isn't exactly great on speed, configurability or providing an overview of anything. Luckily there are (commercial) alternatives: SBSH's Papyrus (aka Calendar) and Epocware's Handy Calendar which both use the built-in calendar to store their data. On the upside this allows you to use the built-in calendar synchronization tool and the appointment-widget on the phone's homescreen. On the downside the built-in calendar can't handle categories or multiple calendars which isn't exactly great for appointment management or getting an overview.

Additionally there is no easy choice between the two calendars. On one hand Papyrus got categories (which are not saved in the default calendar and therefore not synced) and numerous configuration options but on the other hand it lacks a widescreen suitable monthly overview (which Handy Calendar got), is rather ugly (if that matters to you) and often just can't keep up with the clean interface of its competitor.

Synchronizing the calendar is sadly not as easy as it should be – while the E71 supports SyncML the tools available for Linux (which are mostly based on OpenSync) sadly are unable to sync the E71 over bluetooth or HTTP³⁾ ATM, however, USB synchronization is supposed to work. See the OpenSync Device Compatibility Listing for more up to date information.

To sync my E71 with Sunbird I therefore had to build this chain:
E71 ↔ GooSync ↔ Google Calendar ↔ Provider for Google Calendar⁴⁾ ↔ Sunbird.

If you just want to backup your calendar, don't need to access it from a normal calendar program and can do without a good webcalendar you might be satisfied with Ovi or MyFunambol. Both don't exactly excel at being webcalendars but are very easy to setup.

Despite its small flaws I'm quite happy with my E71. For a price of approximately 360€ it delivers a very solid package that doesn't have to hide itself from any over-hyped touchscreen smartphone.

After using the phone a few months more I must confess that all the issues and inabilities of S60 are adding up. While the hardware is still great I just can't recommend it anymore till nokia manages to get S60 right.

• Opera Mini
• Putty
• Python
• emTube
• Talkonaut

I’ve been using it for a month now, and I’m completely sold. This is the best phone I’ve ever had. I love it.

Joel Spolsky

Since I focused on the functionalities that are the most important to me in this review and completely ignored other features (e.g. mail client, exchange integration, VPN client, camera, media player, …) maybe reading other reviews might be a good idea before buying your own E71

• Joel on Software
• Engadget Mobile
• All About Symbian.com
• Symbian in motion (offers some valid negative points)

• The phone (and symbian in general) can multitask which is kinda cool
• The phones key lock tends to unlock occasionally by itself when I put it in its standard sleeve and in my pocket