Nokia E71

Review by Michal Jerz

Announced today and scheduled to start shipping in July, the Nokia E71 is a new, long awaited phone belonging to the business-oriented Eseries line. 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.

What comes to your mind when you touch this phone for the first time is its high build quality and a feeling of sturdiness. Taking the device to your hand, you get the feeling that it has a durable and solid construction, and it’s not just a feeling but 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. 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, it also made of durable metal.

The E71 weighs 126 g and it’s very skinny (114 mm x 57 mm x 10 mm). It’s noticeably smaller than the E61i it replaces, which is generally a good thing as it’s simply easier to carry, except for that it also affects the size of its screen (down from 2.8″ to 2.36″) and keyboard. But as (IMHO) both still stay within tolerable range, it’s not really something I’d complain about too much. Instead I’d rather praise that the E71 is finally a true world phone with full quadband (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.

It’s hard to assess the design of the keyboard as it’s very much a personal thing. Blackberry type keyboards have small keys so people with fat fingers may have some problems with using them. One thing, however, is unquestionable: the keyboard of the E71 as regards its mechanical parameters works really great and provides almost perfect tactile feedback. The keys have well chosen “way”, pressing them is not too long and not too short, they’re resilient and provide clearly perceptible “click” feeling. The same applies to the d-pad, which is firm and stable. Compared to its “younger brother” announced at the same time, the E66, d-pad and other keys of the E71 work definitely much better. Even though, as mentioned, 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. I’d risk saying that from the build quality and mechanical operation point of view the keyboard of the E71 is one of the best I’ve used, especially the d-pad which is simply perfect.

When the phone is on standby and the screen is turned off, it notifies you that it is alive by blinking the white LED placed inside the d-pad, which looks very nice, much better than if there was a separate diode located somewhere on the casing. The LED can also notify you about selected events like missed calls or new messages. The d-pad also has a useful function: press and hold it while the screen is turned off to show a large clock along with some device status information.
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. It’s the “strongest” of all currently offered Nokia batteries, providing much more power than commonly used BP-6MT (and such) batteries. So E71 users shouldn’t have much to worry about when it comes to battery life.
The phone uses ARM11-based single-core Freescale processor running at 369 MHz, the same as found in many high-end Nseries phones. The Freescale CPU doesn’t offer hardware 3D graphics acceleration like the OMAP2420 processor used in N82 or E90 (so sorry, the full OpenGL ES version of Quake won’t run on it ) but its faster clock (369 MHz vs. 332 MHz of the OMAP) should compensate for it and even provide additional performance in some tasks like e.g. UI speed.
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 Megapixel cameras, the 3.2 Megapixel 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 MPix 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. There is also no separate camera button and the central button of the d-pad is used to take pictures and start/stop video recording. It’s good and it’s bad at the same time. Good, because I hate having to rotate the device to take pictures, and the central button of the d-pad is in good location making it easy to take pictures. Bad, because, unlike separate camera “shutter release” buttons which are usually two-step ones (press halfway to obtain focus, press all the way down after obtaining the focus to take the picture), the d-pad button is obviously one-step only, so it’s not possible to carefully autofocus on the object in the viewfinder, see the results, re-AF if needed, etc., but instead the camera does everything instantly as you press the d-pad. This often results in pictures being out of focus or the focus being set on something different than what you wanted it to be on. OK, you can use the “T” key to autofocus in the viewfinder and only then press the d-pad button to capture the image, but it’s far from being comfortable and it’s hard to avoid any movement of the camera while doing so, which, especially in low lighting, affects proper focus the same way as when using the d-pad alone, without using the “T” key.

Even though the E71 has the same camera resolution (and probably the same camera sensor) as the E66 announced at the same time (to be reviewed later this week), there is a huge difference when it comes to colours of pictures and videos taken using these two phones. While pictures and videos made using the E66 are well saturated and vivid, the ones coming from the E71 have faded, washed out colours and lower contrast. But it’s most probably a software thing (different image processing) and the tested phone did not have final, commercial firmware, so it may change before the E71 starts shipping.
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 it’s most probably meant to reserve this feature for the Nseries. However, as Nokia already made an exception with the VGA/30 fps capable E90 Communicator, I expected the same from the E71. Fortunately, even though low resolution, the recorded videos are of good quality, with no apparent compression artefacts and such. 10 frames per second is, however, too little to fluently reproduce fast movements, which is quite apparent on the sample videos of quite lively moving dogs below.
There is also no TV Out connector, but it’s not present in any Eseries device, not even the E90, so no suprise here. However, I think that Nokia should not consider the TV Out as purely multimedia/entertainment feature as it can be of great use for business purposes as well (presentations, etc.) and they should think about adding it in future Eseries devices. Some business oriented Windows Mobile devices, like e.g. the new HTC Advantage X7150 (to be reviewed in comparison with the E90 in the upcoming weeks), have the TV Out function by default, so why not enrich Symbian OS-based business devices with it?
While we’re still at the camera, I’d like to say that I consider the lack of protective, manually controlled lens cover in the E71 a huge advantage. Why? Because it’s actually a myth that it protects anything. Devices without it still have a protective glass/plastic over the lens (so no, it’s not the lens that may get scratched or get dirtly if there’s no cover, it’s an additional plastic). Maybe it’s not the case with you, but I forget to close the damn cover all the time (e.g. in the N82) so it doesn’t do any good anyway, and even if I remember to close it, then I have to open it prior to taking a picture, which annoys me like hell. So until we see AUTOMATICALLY controlled lens covers in mobile phones, I rather prefer devices without ones and the E71 scores a point here.
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 and standard 2.5 mm audio jack. 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 monoural (but very loud and clear). It’s also worth mentioning that the built-in ringtones are very nice, of high quality and properly chosen for a device of this type, something I always miss from UIQ 3.x phones, including the new G900 to be reviewed soon.