Nokia E71 Review

If you're interested in the Nokia E71 QWERTY smartphone, you've probably already seen a half-dozen reviews by now. If not, The Boy Genius Report and Engadget Mobile are two good places to start. I've been using this phone for a bit over a week now and thought I'd jot down some points I didn't find when I was wondering whether or not to plunk down for one.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, my previous phone was the Samsung Blackjack I. I really like this phone, but it was getting a little long in the tooth and couldn't do everything I wanted. I was sorely tempted by the Blackberry Bold, but at $349 with 2-year contract extension on AT&T it was only $20 cheaper than the E71 that was free and clear of any other obligations.

The bullet points:

• The default themes for the E71 are pretty ugly. Two-second fix: I recommend babinokia.com and Bandez Themes as excellent sources for replacements.
• Out of the box, there is no threaded SMS. If that's important to you, Nokia's Conversation beta might fit the bill.
• Since the office doesn't have Blackberry support, I don't lament the absence of Blackberry Connect on the E71 all that much. It does support Exchange out of the box however, and Nokia Email Service might be an option for you as well. Other push email options: SEVEN, emoze. Personally, I'm pretty happy with Gmail right now, and the new Gmail Mobile client is pretty good.
• General integration of the various applications is quite good. Example: my office's webclient throws up and refuses to open an HTML email. Forward it to the E71's email client, opens up without a hitch (though it does use the web browser to read the HTML as an attachment). Email contains link to PDF, link opens directly on the PDF viewer. Easy peasy.
  
• Web browsing is excellent, complete with Java and Flash support. Some reviews skip the built-in browser and go straight to Opera Mini but honestly I haven't had any reason to as of yet..I've got Mini installed but there just hasn't been anything the built-in browser couldn't handle. I thought that the d-pad would be a poor option for scrolling around a site in comparison to a touchscreen or Blackberry trackball, but it works great.
• Fantastic reception so far-the E71 can grab a 3G signal in my living room where the Blackjack could only muster EDGE.
• Back in the bad ol' days if you bought an unlocked phone you had to troll the forums to find the right web access settings. The E71 grabs them for you and so far has worked great on AT&T. I wish it had the ability to switch automatically to/from WiFi and the cell networks, but I can live without that. Psiloc Connect can handle it for you if you're so inclined.
• Speaking of WiFi, connections work great. It took all of 11 seconds to get connected to my network at home, and most of that was in getting the E71's MAC address to add to my router's filters.
• Keyboard is excellent. With the Blackjack I had to purposefully slow my typing down and really think about what keys I was pressing, which I find I'm not doing as much or even at all on the Nokia. Couple this with the auto-corrective text feature and I think after a month or two you could really blaze on this thing.

All in all I can't say enough nice things about this phone. If you're a Blackberry or iPhone fan, you'll probably find more than a few things worthy of a gripe. The phone isn't perfect-I wish the email client was a little more full-featured among other things-but being mostly platform agnostic I decided a long time ago that there's no such thing as a perfect device. Blackberries and iPhones have their warts too. But for me, this phone looks like it'll do what I want and it'll do it fairly well, and that's really all I'm asking for anyway.

Update Wed Nov 19 14:35:43 CST 2008: and word is that a version of the E71 is headed to AT&T. Little sleeker looking with the black (?) repaint, but the tradeoff is potentially heaps of bloatware and possibly a little crippling thrown in for good measure.