I just bought one of these phones. I'm a computer professional, writing software and running big and small software projects since 1965. My point in saying that is not to try to impress you, but rather to point out that I'm not a novice when it comes to technology like this.
The hardware's nice. Build quality appears to be excellent and it just feels like a quality product. Symbian has a reputation for being confusing, but there's some method to the madness (I'm referring here to the user-interface) and it's supposedly well-engineered under the covers. But some of the choices in the apps aren't good. For example, to try to make the setup of email accounts easy, it knows about the popular providers, like gmail. gmail lets you talk either pop3 or imap4 with a separate email client and, in fact, provides some different options for each (with pop3, you can enable it on the gmail site so that your client sees only mail arriving after the time you enabled it; imap4 has no such option). The email client on the E71 decides for you that you are going to use imap4; there's no way to change it, at least that I could find. Consult the documentation? You've got to be kidding. It reads like it was written for 5-year-olds by 5-year-olds. This is a complex device, providing a lot of features, and the documentation is so dumbed down, perhaps to avoid scaring non-computer-types, as to be near useless, in my opinion.
One of the features of this phone is the GPS receiver. To be useful, GPS receivers need map data, yes? If you install a brand new MicroSDHC card in this phone and then attempt to download map data with the Nokia Map Loader on your PC, it will sit
there in a loop saying "Waiting for device". It turns out that you need to first attempt to download map data via the phone, to initialize the directory structures on the memory card which, for some unfathomable reason, the Map Loader doesn't do. Did I learn this from the documentation? Not a chance. I found this out by googling and got the info from discussion groups populated by similarly frustrated Nokia owners and one or two who stumbled across solutions. Having dealt with that problem, I begin downloading map data for the US. After successfully downloading the data (about an hour on a broadband connection; it's a little over 1 Gb), the Map Loader begins loading it into the memory card in the phone (there's a little progress bar). After making a tiny bit of progress, I get "Unexpected error. Sorry for the inconvenience". Gee, that was informative. Does it preserve the temporary file on your computer after this error and use it on a repeat attempt? Not a chance. So, another hour downloading. And the "unexpected error" happens again. So, I google again, and surprise, surprise, there are a whole bunch of frustrated folks out there who have seen the same thing. Well, one of these good folks devised a workaround, which I've yet to try.
Maps are just one aspect of this phone, but I'm afraid that it's symptomatic of the general level of software quality supplied with this device. If RIM put out stuff like this, we'd never have heard of Blackberries.
Unless you are willing to put up with some pain (think Windows 3.1/MSDOS), I'd pass on this phone, or any other Nokia phone with the same software suite.
[March 13 update]
Well, it's been two days of struggle and I still don't have the US maps loaded into this thing. If you try to download the maps during the day, you are wasting your time. The download will invariably hang. Downloading is only possible late at night and first thing in the morning. I'm guessing that there's a bug in their protocol (I'm assuming they are using something of their own, because ftp works reliably), as well as a bandwidth issue with their website. As for the "Unexpected error", I'm still getting them, despite having disconnected all other USB devices from my PC (USB is a bit of a crock and I have seen situations where USB devices interfere with each other, but not with properly written drivers, such as for the iPod, a Palm, HP scanners, etc.). I'm in the process of trying a different PC and if that fails, I will switch to talking to the phone with Bluetooth rather than a USB cable. If that fails, I'm going to send this thing back to Amazon. Again, if you are not very computer-savvy *and* a masochist, skip any Nokia product with this software suite.Get more detail about Nokia E71 Unlocked Phone with 3.2 MP Camera, 3G, Media Player, GPS, Wi-Fi, and MicroSD Slot--U.S. Version with Warranty (Gray).
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