Plemix

Nokia E71 Product Review

Well, as the iPhone become popular and stuck in our memory, in particular the way he dismissed the current generation of qwerty-thumb-keyboarded smartphones. Declaring them to have "too much plastic", everyone should start using the-whole-front-surface-as-a-screen type of phone. However the continuing popularity of the Blackberry form factor shows that, especially when someone's banging out text messages and emails all day on the move, you really can't beat the tactile nature and satisfaction of a real keyboard. We know that the competition among Apple and Blackberry is intense, but let’s not forget another major player in the domain, Nokia also has got acclaimed email (Blackberry copied) E-series phones. The new model E71 released and we have had it for photo shooting. At the first glance, it is small and extremely thin.

The package comes with a Battery, a Charger, a USB cable, a headset, a nice-looking leather case, a CD and Manual.


The E71 is clearly dramatically smaller and slimmer when compared to the other qwerty phones. There’s a 320×240 screen on the E71 and it looks very sharp, clear and easy on the eyes.


Below the display, there's a standard navigation array of two soft keys, Talk and End buttons, and a four-way toggle with a center select key. In addition, there are four shortcuts to the Home screen, Calendar, Contacts, and Messages. You also get a full QWERTY keyboard.


On the left side, you'll find a microSD expansion slot, which accepts up to 8GB memory.


On the back of E71 you will find a big piece of metallic back cover which added the luxurious touch for the phone.


There’s a 3.2 megapixels camera with semi-auto-focus and LED flash.


I find the auto-focus function of E71 is a bit annoying. For example, when you take a photo, you have to press a “T” on the keypad to focus the image first and then press the hefty sticker to function it. I was wondering why do I have to go through such a process to take a picture but other phones do it automatically or allow you to do it by pressing differently on one single button?


I was also disappointed by the picture quality. Although Nokia’s picture quality is a lot better than other phones but the photo taken were quite dark and the flash never kicked in to help. Because of the dark photos, the color never looked right. Well, to be fair the E71 is never claimed to be a camera phone. Here’s the actual photo image taken by the E71 in an indoor environment.


Another shot by E71.


By the way, E71 is tailored for business on the move. It comes in preloaded with the Nokia Maps 2.0 application, which offers plenty of navigation tools, including satellite and hybrid maps, and pedestrian and bicycle modes.


Also it has integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0.


And there’s a gimmicky function of E71. It is a barcode reader.
See how’s it function.
Here’s a barcode.


E71 is Scanning the barcode.


It can read out the information of the barcode. So fascinating. Isn’t it?


Other than those little things like why the flash never kicked in to make a brighter picture, and the screen become smaller (narrower) than the previous E-series, the E71 is definitely attractive and more user friendly as an email business phone. The chrome metallic body with a full qwerty keyboard on a extremely thin design make the E71 one of the best choice in the category. It can now be able to slip into your pants’ pocket without making you feel uncomfortable, isn’t it “normal” now? Also worth to mention is the solidness and the luxury phone built quality found in the E71, full qwerty smartphone is not a big piece of plastic anymore, Apple.

# posted by plemix @ 12:35 AM