Nokia E71 - The go-everywhere phone (Nokia E71)

Member Name: ajmarriott

Product:	Nokia E71
Date:	19/10/08 (268 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great GPS, Email set-up easy, Fast, Multitasking

Disadvantages: Small keys take getting used to.

I went to two shops to look at phones and was skeptical about this phone having owned the Nokia N95 (see other review) and being so disgusted with how poorly it performs all the tasks it should do easily. This phone also does everything, but well.

Lets start with the design. The design of the phone is similar to that of a blackberry, although the keys are a little smaller and take some getting used to, which is fine. The screen is nice, wide and clear too which makes reading emails excellent. The build quality of the phone is excellent. It feels heavy and solid which for me is everything I want in a phone. The back is made of metal and the rest of the phone chassis is a solid plastic which does not feel cheap at all. The keys feel really smooth and all the keys click nicely.

The camera is okay. It's 3.2mp which is very good and performs pretty well. It is used for the inbuilt 2d barcode scanner which is an up and coming technology where you can simply point your phone at a billboard or article in a magazine and the details will be saved to your phone.

The reason I bought this phone was initially for the email. The email is great. It connects to either my wifi or 3g depending on where I am and notifies me when my email comes in. The guy at the vodafone shop told me it was incredibly hard to set up email on this phone, but I bought mine from 3, who included their own email set-up software which is fantastic and so easy to do! The emails are easy to write using the keypad after you've got used to it and since your contacts on your phone synchronise with your email contacts its easy to find who you want.

Since the N95, Skype and Windows Live messenger have been updated and are now a pleasure to use, especially with the new larger interface on the screen. They run very nicely and you can close them leaving them running and use other applications on the phone.

The internet okay, it could be better to browse but it is very fast and easy to access on the go. The flashplayer built into the phone is excellent and means you can easily watch rich multimedia web apps.

To end I'll describe the GPS. I bought mine from 3, which came with 3 months of free Nokia Maps. These are fantastic. I can go out all night and when I wish to go home I can select my programmed home option and it will give me turn by turn voice directions for walking! It also serves as an in-car sat-nav which I would recommend it for over a normal Navman or TomTom as it picks up GPS quicker using the assisted GPS function and also provides you with an updated internet library of places.

Summary: This phone is how the N95 should have worked, but didn't. Buy it.

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