Nokia E71
Review by Julian Prokaza on Fri 25 July 2008
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Summary
- Cheapest price
- £229.99 from Amazon Electronics UK
- Rating
5 out of 6- Good
- Excellent keyboard; stunning design; crammed with features
- Bad
- No BlackBerry Connect support; 2.5mm headset socket; Micro-USB port
- Verdict
- The E71 is a fabulous business smartphone that's packed with featurs, but Nokia's decision to omit BlackBerry Connect support severely limits is potential market.
- Manufacturer
- Nokia
Review
Although the Microsoft Exchange support that’s part of Apple's new 2.0 firmware now makes the iPhone and iPhone 3G a more plausible choice for business users looking for a sleek and shiny smartphone, the lack of a keyboard is still a deterrent for some savvy users. One alternative obvioulsy lies with Windows Mobile handsets, but now Nokia has another.
Wafer-thin and clad sleek stainless steel, the E71 looks every bit as stylish as Apple’s latest effort and while it may not have the same large, lush touch-screen, it does have that vital business smartphone ingredient – a keyboard.
The value of a physical keyboard is not to be under-estimated if you spend large chunks of your day (and night) tapping out emails and as good as the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is, some people are far more comfortable with the real thing.
Although it’s quite compact with very closely spaced keys, the E71’s keyboard is actually rather pleasant to use. The hard plastic keys are taller than they are wide and their ample travel ends with a palpable click. Their steeply curved profile makes each key distinct under a fingertip, through this type of keyboard is more comfortable to use with two thumbs.

A 4x4 group of keys in the middle double-up as the number pad, but the number legends could stand to be a little more obvious, since their pale grey background doesn’t really stand out against the dark grey keys.


You’ll need to press the Function key at bottom left of the keyboard to type numbers on anything other than the Home screen, as you do to type the smattering of punctuation symbols on the right of the keyboard. For some reason though, Nokia has relegated some frequently-used symbols to a separate pop-up panel, activated with the ‘Chr’ key at the bottom-right of the keyboard.
So, this means that five key-presses are required to type the ‘@’ symbol, and seven to type an underscore – which is very annoying for such frequently used characters. The pop-up panel does also show your most recently typed symbols in a row for speedier access, but we can’t understand why Nokia didn’t just put these symbols elsewhere on the keyboard for Function key access – just like the sensible arrangement on its predecessor, in fact.
Price checker
- Amazon Electronics UK£229.99
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Nokia E71 specification
- Operating system
- S60 3.1 Edition
- Processor
- Unknown
- System memory
- NA
- User memory
- 110Mb
- Memory expansion
- microSD (8Gb max)
- Screen
- 2.36in TFT (320 x 240)
- Bands
- Quad-band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 900/2100 HSDPA
- Camera
- 3.2mp (CMOS) + front-facing camera
- Connectivity
- 802.11g, Blueooth 2.0, infra-red, microUSB, 2.5mm Nokia AV
- Other
- A-GPS, FM Tuner, media playback, Flash Lite 3 and MPEG4 playback
- Quoted battery life
- Talk time – GSM: 10h 30m; Standby time – GSM: 17 days; WLAN: 166 hours (1500mAh battery)
- Size
- 114 x 57 x 10mm
- Weight
- 127g
Comments
You guys are biased. You write that Nokia is muscling it's way into the qwerty phone market, even though it's been making magnificent communicators for many years now, long before any other qwerty phone arrived.Furthermore, it seems to me Nokia is just now longer pre-installing the blackberry client, which does not necessarily mean there is no BB client that can be installed.You are fools to so prematurely dismiss such a cutting edge piece of technology.
Hi AJIf you can point me at a Qwerty keyboard candybar smartphone (ie like the Blackberry) that Nokia made before the E61, I'll amend the piece. Similarly, if you can explain how you can install the BB Connect software on the E71, I'll make the appropriate changes, too. -Julian
"So, this means that five key-presses are required to type the ?@? symbol, and seven to type an underscore"Actually, there is a @-key so it's only one key-press.. and at least for me, the underscore ended up being the first of the frequently used characters, so that's two key presses..
I have had an E71 for about a week now (before that 6110). I have never owned a crackberry but have navigated a colleagues a few times. Crackberry's a much more complicated gadget to navigate, IMO and it has fewer features. I spent a lot of hours researching devices before taking the plunge in an effort to get one that will do as much as possible, as efficiently as possible and E71 hasn't disappointed - it's a great device.
You mention that only your folders appeared when you installed MS Exchange - is this a limitation on the E71 or is there a way to get folders synced too?Thanks
That should have been '...only your inbox and NO folders...'
hi guys,Im looking at getting this mobile but I wondered, i get an e-mail that is sent to my e-mail address for my website on my laptop, is there a way that it can go to my E71 aswell? How does that all work? This will be the main reason I will be getting this mobile so your help is appreciated.Cheers
hican anyone tell me where the underscore (_) is on the E71?thanks
the e71 is available to preorder in the UK on [url]http://shop.nokia.co.uk[/url]
Get one email address ie gmail and forward everything to that.
Then us the E71 email client to recieve your gmail acc.
ps its a great phone.
I just got myself an E71 and for the most part I love it. What annoys me is the lack of multilingual support. What is the use of a Japanese dictionary, when the E71 can't even display the Japanese characters? I browse websites of several different languages, and it would be nice if the browser could display those characters.My own web searching has indicated that I just need to change the default font to a unicode supporting one, but as yet I've found no way to do that. Any ideas?
Hi Am asloUsing the Nokia E71 & am not able to find the (_)Key.Can Anyone out there tell me.
I love the look of this but I'm just a regular phone user but want a QWERTY keyboard - WHY are these always designed towards business users therefore making the phones and price plans really expensive?Would I be nuts to get this phone if not using for business purposes and if so PLEASE can anyone tell me if there IS a mobile phone with a QWERTY keyboard for us non-business users out there? Thanks
Even i don't know, please mail me when you come to know.
What key is the underscore ( _ ) on a Nokia N63 phone? Ctrl/chr doesnot have underscore(_).

