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 0 Comments

Samsung F480 Tocco Unboxing

Wow, it is such a slim and sexy touchscreen phone. Looking like a Armani phone but actually longer, the Samsung F480 Tocco is packed with better user interface like the TOUCHWiZ together with drag and drop capability. Sounds like perfect? Let’s get some hands on testing and see how it works.

Here is an unboxing Samsung F480 Tocco. It comes with a Battery, a Charger, a USB cable, a handsfree, a leather LCD cover attached to the back of the battery case cover a CD and Manual.


The advanced heat sensitive touch TOUCHWiZ interface looks great on the 2.8 inch display with only three physical buttons -- call answer, call end and menu shortcut button. There's a secondary camera on the top of the screen for video calling.


The back of the Tocco is a full stainless steel case. The design of the back is very clean and cool. There is also a 5 megapixel camera with an LED photo light.


Tocco equipped with built-in 200MB memory and microSDHC extended memory up to 8GB to suit your memory needs.
Here’s the MicroSD card slot.


Here is the extra battery lid with a leather protector. You can avoid scratching and contaminating the screen, but at the same time, it will prevent you from using the phone with ease especially when making calls.


Here is the back of Tocco covers with the extra leather protector.


Let’s move on to the screen.
The Tocco’s touch screen is capacitive, even faster and more responsive than previous Samsung touchscreen phones. Also has adjustable haptic feedback where the phone vibrates slightly when you touch on it. I really like the slick animations when you move between screens. For example, when you switch from the main menu to the new widgets screen, the display revolves with a pleasing 3D animation.


Reach the widgets screen then.
It is probably the most innovative aspect of the handset. There is a dock on the left-hand edge from where you can drag various applications on to your home screen to personalize it. Widgets range from a music player to digital and analogue clocks, as well as games and a picture viewer. Up to seven widgets can sit on the home screen at any one time. I love it because it provides a neat way of grouping together the stuff that you want to access most often.


The phone has got a 5 mega pixel auto focus camera with flash.


Let’s try the camera.
Besides autofocus and an LED photo light, it has face detection.


I was surprised with the smile detection function. It automatically takes a picture when it spots a smiling face in the shot.


And Tocco has a built in camera stabilizer. A steady picture is captured even if you do not have the steadiest hand when taking a shot.


Actual photo image taken by the 5 mega pixels camera in an indoor environment. The image looks sharper than the other Samsung phone. Comparable to the Nokia camera phones.


Another shot by Tocco.


The downside of the phone is that it does not have WiFi or GPS. Also unlike other touchscreen phones, Samsung F480 is heat sensitive that can only be used by finger touching. The good thing about it is that it will eliminate mistaken touches. The bad thing about it is that if you are a pretty girl who has long and pretty finger nails (like one of our colleague help testing the unit) you cannot use the phone… Oh well, life is not perfect, neither is technology.

# posted by plemix @ 7:25 PM 0 Comments