Nokia E71 Unlocked Phone with 3.2 MP Camera, 3G, Media Player, GPS, Wi-Fi, and MicroSD Slot--U.S. Version with Warranty (Gray) Review

I've been using the E71 for a month now. It has been an awesome device
so far. After using Nokia phones for years (121, 8260, 3590, 3100) I
stopped finding their phones appealing and switched to other brands.

The E71 replaced a Palm Centro, my first smartphone. Wanting 3G, Wifi,
GPS and a better overall platform with full keyboard in a bar format,
I spent months researching phones and it came down to the E71, Palm
Treo Pro or Blackberry Bold.

Pros

1. The is a very versatile phone. There aren't many features missing that
aren't on other phones of similar design. The biggest missing function is
a touchscreen, but the directional pad is excellent so it more than makes
up for the lack of touchscreen.

2. The build quality is great, very solid, no creaks, no worries about case breakage, or durability.

3. Battery life is excellent. I can easily go 2, or sometimes 3 days between charges with a reasonable level of voice and data activity.

4. Network speeds, including WiFi are very good, but my only comparison is to the Centro that had Edge only and no WiFi. Browser performance is great, pages load very quickly (I'm on AT&T).

5. The browser is no Safari (iPhone) but it's still excellent. Better than my wife's Blackberry browser. It's missing Java applet and flash support for playing website videos (except youtube) but no native mobile browser that I know of does either. Skyfire will give you that flash support using a server based rendering engine and its performance on the E71 is pretty good considering what you're getting. This should be one of your first downloaded apps.

6. I've had less than a half dozen resets in a month which was far less than my Centro and what I consider acceptable considering what is packed into this phone. The multitasking support is excellent, 1-button task switching. Symbian is a great software platform, rich in applications, very mature, stable, very large user community.

7. It's an excellent phone, great reception in weak signal areas, great
audio quality, everything you can expect from a Nokia device.

8. The size is optimal for a bar type phone. It's comfortable in the
pocket. The tradeoff is a smaller keyboard and screen than the BB Bold,
(but a better keyboard than the Treo Pro) but if size is a concern,
the E71 is a winner among bar phones with full keyboards. And it's
super thin!


Cons

1. The music player is weak. I have an 8 GB Sandisk MicroSDHC card and have had to format it at least once and reload all my music because the player had trouble detecting new files after around 900 were downloaded. Since formatting I haven't seen the problem again and I'm over 1030 files, so it could be related to my not formatting the memory card after initially inserting. Could also have been corruption during file transfer.

2. No touchscreen but the D-pad makes up for it.

3. Camera is so-so. Don't buy this if a camera is important to you. For
quick snapshots it's adequate.

4. No native threaded SMS application. However this can be overcome by downloading Conversations for free from Nokia labs. Doesn't match Palm's threaded client, but it's ok and you get used to it.

If you're looking for a feature-rich, well-built, stable, no-lag, pocketable phone that's also very good at making phone calls, this is your phone.

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