E71 Detailed Review Part 4: Conclusion

Well, my colleagues and I are into our 4th week of our collective seeding test and our conscience is that the E71 is a great phone that is (almost) perfect for business. Of the 5 engineers (myself and 4 colleagues) who participated in this test and review of the E71, three of us (myself included) could find no fault with the E71. It handled every task and test we could devise flawlessly. However, my other two colleagues identified what I think is the only chink in the E71s armor, the lack of Blackberry Connect. I don't use BB Connect and so it's absence from the E71 does not affect me. However, my other two colleagues rely heavily on BB Connect and it's absence from the E71, as much as they liked it in every other way, made the E71 a non-starter for them. Unfortunately, to be successful in the US business market, I have to agree with my colleagues. The lack of BB Connect will severely limit the adoption of the E71 in the US. That said, myself, my business partner and one other colleague liked the E71 so much we're all buying the US version (I've actually already taken delivery of mine).

The other question that I wanted to answer at the end of this test is whether the E71 can replace the E90. Prior to the start of this test I had used an E90 for nearly a year and am therefore very knowledgeable of the E90's capabilities. So my answer to the question is yes and no. Yes in the sense that I found nothing that I could do on the E90 that I couldn't also do on the E71. No in the sense that the wide screen and larger keyboard of the E90 makes document creation easier than on the E71. Both the E90 and the E71 are great phones and the market for both phones overlap somewhat. However, the E90, while not a perfect laptop replacement, does a better job replacing a laptop than the E71. However, for messaging, email, and reviewing & revising documents the E71 provides a very stylish tool with which to keep up with business while on the go.

E71 Detailed Review Part 3: 3rd Party Applications

The third part of my ongoing review of the Nokia E71 covers how well the E71 runs third party applications. I have been using the E71 as my primary mobile phone for just over two weeks and have installed all of my normal applications, which include the following:

1. Mobisophy Interactive Voice Call Master
2. Truphone (mobile VoIP)
3. Epochware Handy Profile
4. Epochware Handy Clock
5. Epochware Handy Weather
6. Epochware Handy Expense
7. Nokia Mail for Exchange
8. Nokia Email (beta)
9. Telexy SymSMB 3.50
10. JoikuSpot Lite
11. QuickOffice
12. PowerBoot
13. SmartLight
14. SmartphoneWare Tracker
15. mBrain Software Pdf+ (including PDFprinter)

First, all of the "Handy" applications work perfectly, exactly the way you would expect for very mature products. I have had these products on every smartphone I have ever owned and find them very useful. The Expense application is especially useful on business trips and allows you to generate useful reports right on your phone. You can also export the data as a csv file that can then be imported into Excel (or any other spreadsheet application).

I have been using Truphone since me E60 days when it was first released. I was concerned after I trialed the E66 for WOM World, and discovered that Truphone was not support on the E66 (the E66 is now supported by Truphone). However, Truphone fully supports the E71. It’s a great application, it's easy to install over the air after signing up on the Truphone web site, and provides crystal clear Internet calls. When I talk with an old college buddy in Sweden, also a Truphone user (for free), it sounds like he’s in the next room. When I go to a new location, I can run the Truphone application and be making mVoIP calls in less than a minute. Since I started this series of articles, I decided that I liked the E71 so much, I wanted to buy it. Therefore, last week I took delivery of a new E71-2 (the North American version) and have been testing Truphone over 3G in the Dallas area. Again, it works perfectly. The first time I used Truphone over 3G, I thought it was a standard cellular call because it was so clear with absolutely no latency.

The next application is the most powerful mobile application I've ever used, Interactive Voice Call Master (IVCM), which is basically a mobile PBX for your smartphone. As my profile says, I run a small engineering consulting company in Dallas, Texas but I have not used a standard landline telephone in over 4 years. This presented some problems as my company began to grow and I wanted a more professional system to handle incoming calls. I researched several virtual PBX solutions, all of which were more than I needed and difficult to setup. Then I ran across IVCM. This software will act as an answering machine, will filter your calls, and act as a simple PBX. I have both a White List and a Black List setup, where names on the White list are always put through as normal and names on the Black list hear a busy tone. Setting up the lists is easy and names can be easily selected from your contacts. There is also an option to handle "private" numbers where the caller ID is not sent. During normal business hours, I use the Complex Profile, which I have set up to allow incoming callers that are not on my White list (White list callers are put directly through to my phone) are given the option to select 1 for me, 2 - 5 for one of my colleagues, and 6 to leave a message. If the caller selects to one of my colleagues, the software transfers the call to their cell phone by setting up a three-way call. Private numbers are handled in the same way but can easily be given a busy signal instead. During non-business hours, all callers not on my White list are directed to leave a message using the answering machine function. This is a very powerful application a takes a fair amount of "horsepower" to run. Some of the smartphones I've used in the past have "choked" on this application and either crashed or closed the application (in spite of the option to run it as a system application). However, the E71 runs this application without even "breathing" hard.










The next application that I use regularly is SymSMB. I first used this application a couple of years ago but the new version, 3.50, is both much more mature and powerful. This application allows drives on your mobile to be mounted on your PC and your PC drives to be mounted on your mobile phone. Therefore, you can easily transfer files back and forth from/to your PC and mobile phone over wifi. I have even transferred large video files and it works very well and is actually faster than using even USB.

PowerBoot and SmartLight are both very useful little applications. PowerBoot will automatically start any application, native or 3rd party, every time you reboot your phone. I use it to start applications that have no autostart function like SmartLight and the native music application. I like the music application running in the background so that when I get in my car and the E71 links up with my car kit, all have to do is push a button on my car kit to listen to music over my car stereo from my phone. SmartLight is a little application that keeps the back light active on all screens except the active standby screen. I do a lot of reading on my phone, both business reports and eBooks, and found it very annoying to have the back light go out while I was reading something. Both of these applications run flawlessly on the E71.

QuickOffice is another very mature product and the editing version is included on the E71. However, I have upgraded to QuickOffice 5.0 so that I can handle Office 2007 files. While not absolutely perfect, round tripping documents between QuickOffice and MS Office is very nearly perfect. Only occasionally do I notice a formatting problem. If you use your smartphone to review and comment on documents away from the office, QuickOffice is the product to use. I have previously used OfficeSuite, which is similar to QuickOffice, but which I found generated more problems when round tripping documents. Regardless, both of these applications run well on the E71.

Next, I use Tracker to replace the default (native) task switching application. Tracker is similar to Best Taskman and is activated by a long press of the Home (menu) button. Then, like Best Taskman, it displays all of the running application along with a summary of your available memory. However, clicking left then shows the past 10 opened applications and a summary of placed & missed calls and SMSs. A second click to the left then displays an "alternate" desktop where you can add application or files to which you want fast and easy access. All in all, a very useful application that runs perfectly on the E71.

The next application, Pdf+, is a more powerful replacement for Acrobat Lite and easily handles large Acrobat files that Acrobat Lite will not open. Pdf+ also includes a PDFprinter application that allows you to create PDF files on your phone. I have tested this application with QuickOffice and it works fine with Spreadsheets and Presentations but not with Word documents. There seems to be a bug and when you try to create a PDF for a Word document, all you get is the first two lines of each page. I should mention that this is only a problem with QuickOffice 5.0, as it worked fine with earlier version of QuickOffice. There was an update to this software in May that was supposed to address this bug but it doesn’t seem to have fixed it. This is not, however, just an E71 issue. I have experienced this same behavior on my E90.

Lastly is JoikuSpot Lite, which is an absolutely brilliant application that turns your 3G mobile phone into a mobile wifi hotspot. It works by establishing an ad hoc connection between your PC and the E71. After this ad hoc connection is made, you can browse the Internet from your PC over your mobile phone's 3G connection. The Lite version only allows web connection but there is a premium version for 15.00€ that implements all of the standard connections, including VPN. I’ve only been testing this application on the E71 for a couple of days but so far it has worked flawlessly.

Well these are all the applications that I use and they all work perfectly on the E71, except for Pdf+, but this is not the result of a problem with the E71. The E71 also handles multitasking very well and is also very stable. In over two weeks of extensive testing, it has not crashed or locked up once. Nokia seems to have changed error handling on the E71. On occasion, an individual application will be closed by the system but the phone itself continues to operate fine. On prior S60 3rd edition devices I’ve used, individual applications did not seem to crash but the phone would crash or lock up. I believe that the error handling on the E71 is superior to earlier S60 3rd edition phones and is the reason the operating system is so stable.

E71 Detailed Review Part 2: Business Functions

I have been using the E71 as my primary phone for over a week now and have found it to be a very capable device. First let me talk about the basic business applications: Calendar and Contacts (the PIM functions). Both of these applications have been updated from what is available on other S60 FP1 devices such as the Nokia E90 and both are significant improvements. First, the new calendar views are very functional:

The Calendar application does not include Categories, which will not please the die-hard business email folks, however, I never use Categories and find that the E71 Calendar application does everything I need in a very functional way.

The contacts also incorporates improvements that allow you to quickly select the most common tasks with only a couple of clicks:

I especially like the new contact Groups. This feature incorporates the old "Team Suite" application into Contacts. I use this feature extensively as part of my daily business, to place conference calls. I have not used a conventional land line telephone in nearly four years but making conference calls using VoIP or Mobile phones used to be difficult and cumbersome. Team Suite was a major help and, with this function being incorporated into Contacts, making conference calls is now both easy and slick.

The next business critical function is email. It is this function that most dramatically changed the way I was able to manage my business when I first started using a Nokia E-series phone two years ago. I use Mail for Exchange (M4E) in conjunction with a Business Exchange account from Mail2Web.com and it works great. Mail2Web.com offers a GREAT service whether you're using their free Exchange product, their personal Exchange product (for a few $/month) or their Professional Exchange account. I have used M4E since it first became available almost two years ago and the Nokia M4E team has done a great job on this free application. It is updated frequently and, in conjunction with Mail2Web's free Exchange account, provides push email for free. Currently M4E supports Email, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks and works flawlessly. The only thing it's missing is support for folders (other than the default Inbox). This has, however, not proven to be an issue for me.

I have also used emoze in the past to get business email pushed to my phone from email accounts setup for me my various clients. emoze has always worked fine for me in the past but I have not had the opportunity to test this application on the E71 as I do not have any client email accounts at the present. I have also been testing the new Nokia Email service with my personal Gmail account. This application, even though it is still an early beta version, works very well and I expect it will eventually replace the native S60 email application.

While this application does not currently support folders either, I expect that it will eventually. It does however provide a very good interface for any Pop/IMAP account and does provide push functionality.

Unfortunately, neither of Nokia's newest E-series phones supports Blackberry (BB) Connect. While this does not affect me, as I have never used BB Connect, RIM has a major following, especially in the US. It's absence from the new E-series phones will have a significant impact on the uptake of the E66 and E71 in the US. Two of my colleagues participating in the Collective Seeding test were both surprised (they had both previously used Nokia E62s with BB Connect) and upset this this support was missing from the E71. As a result, I do not expect either of these two colleagues to move to the E71. This in unfortunate as I believe the E71 is superior in every other way and has received very positive comments in the areas of design, styling, and Web interface (the S60 browser) from everyone participating in the Collective Seeding test, including these two BB Connect users.

The E71 also includes the editing version of QuickOffice and this very mature product has functioned flawlessly. I have used it to edit Word & Excel documents and have had no issues in "round tripping" the modified files. While the screen "real estate" is not a generous as on my E90, the E71s screen is large enough to make creating and editing Office documents very comfortably.

Finally, I have been testing Nokia Maps 2.0. This application has come a long way since its initial introduction. When first introduced Maps was almost unusable. Commands were not organized logically, functions that should have been included were missing, etc. However, Maps 2.0 is a pretty complete navigation solution. After the initial GPS lock, which took several minutes, subsequent GPS locks took only 10 to 15 seconds. There are three possible views: one giving just the directions (turn arrows, etc.), a 2D Map, and a 3D Map. There is a screen that allows you to adjust the volume of the voice directions, you can save favorites, etc. The navigation display is clear, showing the Map and your position, as well as the next turn and its distance. The voice commands were also very clear and timely.

One of the nicest features of the Maps application is the flexibility of Nokia licensing. You can but a 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year license. The 1 day and I month license are only a few dollars and makes it perfect for use on day trips and vacations. The yearly license is also reasonably priced and comparable with TomTom, Wayfinder, and Garmin.

While very usable, there is some room for improvement in the Maps application. The Map colors are a little dark. Specifically, the road is a dark red and your route is a dark blue. The use of all dark colors makes it a little difficult to quickly identify your route. While not a fatal flaw, use of brighter colors would be better. There also appears to be no way to change the voice used to give directions. Again, not a major point but all other navigation applications I have used provide the ability to use different voices.

E71 Detailed Review Part 1: Phyical

This is the first part in a four part series of posts on the E71. The first part will cover the physical aspects of the E71 (build quality, keyboard, etc). The second part will cover the E71's capabilities as a business phone and will include PIM functions, messaging, document editing, creation of documents, and Maps. The third part will cover third party applications and will include applications that I feel are essential, including how these applications perform on the E71. The fourth and final segment of this article will be a summary comparison of the E71 with the Nokia flagship communicator, the E90.

The first thing you notice when you pickup an E71 is how good it feels in your hand. The build quality of this phone exceeds the build quality of every other mobile phone I've ever held. It is solid and thin, almost unbelievably thin. I don't know how the Nokia engineers were able to put so much into such a small package. The phone is mostly metal, including the back cover, with only a little high quality plastic at the top and bottom.

Next there is the keyboard, which was my biggest concern when I first saw the E71. You simply cannot have a large keyboard on such a small device. That said, after several days of heavy use, I have found the keyboard to be very usable. The keys are convex in shape allowing you to easily feel each key. They also have a good travel such that you know when you have actually pressed a key. My previous phone was an E90, a truly great phone, but with a keyboard that was only adequate. While bigger and somewhat easier to type on than the E71, the key travel was very short and it is sometimes difficult to tell by feel that you have pressed the key adequately. I don't think I'd want to write War and Peace on either the E71 or the E90 but the E71's keyboard does provides much better feedback than the E90's. Given the size of the E71's keyboard this feedback is an absolute necessity; without it, the E71's keyboard would have been unusable. As it is, the E71 is fine for email, SMS and reviewing documents but I would have to give the E90 a slight edge when it comes to creating large documents.

The E71's screen is very bright and clear, even in the strong sunshine of a Texas summer day. As a result, web browsing is simply a joy. I have only encountered one page that the updated S60 browser choked on a little and surprisingly, it was Nokia's home page. I fail to understand why Nokia's home page does not recognize their own browser but that's the way it is. However, reading CNN, AAS, Symbian Guru, and My-Symbian the browser has been great. YouTube videos play flawlessly, as do flash videos.

The E71's battery is huge and is actually the same battery used by the E61/61i/62 and the E90. In several days of very heavy use I have still be able to get through two days before needing a recharge. That said, one thing that was brought to my attention by one of my colleagues participating in the "collective seeding" test is that there does not appear to be an audible alert when the battery gets low. When this was first identified to me I thought my colleague must have been mistaken so I deliberately drove the battery to it's limit and there was no audible alert. A visual message appeared on the screen alerting me that the battery was low but there was no sound. I haven't figured out yet if this is because of a setting or if it's by design but I will pursue it further. It's not really a big deal for me but does seem a little odd.

The right site of the E71 consists of volume buttons, the voice dialing/command button and a 2.5 mm headset port. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the voice dialing button no longer brings up the voice recorder with a short press. This has been a complaint of mine on nearly every mobile device I've ever owned. A long press of this button (perhaps 2 seconds) activates the speaker independent voice dialing. This function seems to work better than on both of my previous S60 3rd edition devices, where it was essentially unusable because the repeat back of the name was so soft that it could not be heard and on my E90 where it actually caused the phone to crash. While still not overly loud, it can be heard and also brings up a dialog allowing you to select other possible matches. If a selection is not made within a few seconds, it dials the default number of the person whose name was repeated back. While this is an improvement from earlier S60 3rd edition devices, you are still stuck with calling only the default number. It would be nice if you were given an audible choice of which number to dial for a contact (i.e. mobile, home, business, etc).

The bottom of the E71 contains only the power port and the top contains a red power button and the loudspeaker, which works quite well. The left side of the devise contains the micro SD card slot and micro USB port, both covered by a plastic flap.

Update on E71 Reception Issue

This is just a short post that is a follow-up on yesterday's post on the E71 cellular reception problems. I had a lot of running around to do today and spent very little time in the office. This gave me an opportunity to test the E71's reception in a number of different locations. It is clear that if the signal is weak to begin with, holding on to the E71 from the bottom and covering up the antenna, will cause signal degradation and possible loss of signal. However, if the signal is strong, this is not a factor. In a strong signal area I even held the E71 against my body and the signal did not degrade. Therefore, reception should not be a major issue. If you are in a strong signal area you will not notice any signal loss, no matter how you hold the phone and if you're in a weak signal area, you can reduce reception problems by being careful in how you hold the phone.

I continue to be impressed by the speed of the E71 and web browsing is great. The screen is a good size for viewing web pages and is very bright and clear. I also love the upgraded calendar and contact applications. VoIP is similar to what I observed on the E66. It works fine with Truphone and Sipgate but Vonage is giving me a few problems. However, as I said in my review of the E66, I really believe that this is a Vonage issue. On a final note, I had lunch today with one of my colleagues who is participating in the "collective seeding" real world test. His main device is a Blackberry but he had previously used an E62. He was very impressed with the improvements made in the native web browser, saying that it was "quite good". This is pretty high praise as he operates an Internet company and designs and maintains web sites.

E71 Collective Seeding Test

The great and very cool people at WOM World have sent five E71s for me and four of my colleagues to use for a month (thanks Dons). I received the devices today and passed the out with great fanfare. My initial impressions however are a little mixed. The E71 is fast, thin, sexy, and fast. It's also very fast. I've never before seen any mobile devise even come close to the speed of the E71, there is literally no lag after executing a command. Web browsing is as fast on the E71 as it is on my desktop (a 2.93 GIG Quad Core). As I haven't had time for much more than setting up the E71, that's it for the pros so far. The con is that the reception problems reported on various web sites are accurate. The E71s antenna is located at the bottom of the device, where you would normally hold the phone. If you hold the E71 at the bottom you will experience signal degradation and possible loss of signal. I have performed several tests at my home, which despite being in relatively close proximity to a cell tower has always experienced flaky reception. My old Nokia 6310i and E60 had no signal most of the time but walking up or down the street just a couple hundred feet would give me full bars. However, the E61/E62 and my E90 usually had a good signal. As for the E71, I have observed that as long as you keep your hand away from the bottom of the phone, the E71's signal is comparable to my E90. I have not yet tested the E71 in an area where the signal is strong but I will to determine if the signal strength is a factor. Regardless, the placement of the antenna was an unfortunate design compromise on the part of the Nokia engineers and only time will tell how annoying it turns out to be and will depend on how easy it is to break old habits.

Over the next four weeks, my colleagues and I will be putting the E71 through it's paces, testing it's general usability, it's native applications, and it's performance in a variety of real world situations, including how it runs many third party applications. If there is a particular function or application that you'd like tested, please leave me a comment and we'll do our best to to test it out. As these are all the European version of the E71, I will be unable to test the 3G functions. Also, if you have any questions, leave me a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.

Review: Nokia E66

Well, I've just finished 2 weeks with the new E66 (thank you very much WOM World) and I have to say that I'm very impressed. My usual phone is an E90 Communicator and although I missed the QWERTY keyboard, everything else on the E66 was great. The first thing you notice when you pick up the E66 is how good it feels in your hand and how thin it is. The build quality is just excellent and it feels very solid with absolutely not creaks or rattles. Moving on to firmware and software, there have been some significant improvements. The three things that I liked best were the improvements to both the contacts and the calendar and the fact that Mail for Exchange comes pre-loaded. As Mail for Exchange is the first application I install on a new phone, this made transitioning to the E66 very fast. Basically 5 minutes after putting my SIM card into the E66 I was up and running. I have a business Exchange account (Exchange 2007) from mail2web.com and the new email wizard on the E66 worked perfectly. I simply entered the wizard, input my email address and password and my Mail for Exchange email profile was automatically setup. I also really liked the new calendar application. The displays show more information (some being very Outlook-like) and inputting new meetings was also easier. This was a big improvement from the old calendar. As impressed as I was with the email and calendar, I was even more impressed with the contacts application. First, the E66 introduces a new contacts function that allows you to enter the contact you're looking for directly from the active standby screen and then contacts that match appear on the screen. After 3 or 4 letters, you have the contact you want and can immediately dial the number. In addition to this predictive function, the contacts application itself has been greatly improved. Contact groups have been combined with the old Team Suites software to create a very easy and functional method of setting up conference calls. As I use my mobile phone as my primary business phone, conference calling is a very important feature for me and this works great on the E66. In addition to the above application improvements, I found the E66 firmware to be very stable. In the nearly 2 weeks that I used the phone, I did not experience a single crash and this was using all of the normal third party software that I use normally, including: Best Taskman Interactive Voice Call Master (IVCM) Best Profiles Y-Browser As the first three are tied to the IMEI number of my E90, I used trial versions. Best Taskman and Best profiles are great and mature products and simply work great. IVCM is an extremely powerful application that I use as the main telephone system for my small company. It intercepts calls, allows the user to select various options, such as leaving a message or transferring the call to me or one of my colleagues. It also allows you to set different profiles for nights and weekends. As I said, it's very powerful and even my E90 is pressed to handle everything. However, in the 7 days I ran IVCM on the E66 I had absolutely no problems. The faster CPU and, I think, optimized operating system, handled the load without any problems. In addition to the above third party applications, I also used the native SIP application that is standard in all E-series phones. This application has really come a long way in the two years since the first E-series devices were released and is now a very mature application. Again, the E66 connected to my wifi router and I made and received mVoIP calls routinely over the two weeks I used the phone. I normally use Truphone as my preferred mVoIP application, but the E66 is not yet supported. Therefore, I used my Vonage account, which I use because I can have a local number in Dallas, TX. I also use Sipgate to call Europe, as they have much better international rates. Sipgate worked flawlessly but I had a few problems with Vonage. I would routinely get a message when trying to place a call through Vonage saying that a connection could not be made. I believe this was a Vonage problem, especially since I never experienced this error using Sipgate, but I'm not certain. As for battery life, I have read a few early reviews of the E66 stating disappointing battery life and I have to say that the battery is the E66's weakest point. However, I was always able to make it through an entire day without having to charge the phone. Being in the US, I was not able to use 3G and therefore cannot comment on the affect that it would have on battery life. However, I was constantly connected to wifi, both in my office and at home in the evening. While I have never experimented to determine whether wifi or 3G uses more or less energy, I suspect that they are roughly comparable. Finally, I found that GPS (using Nokia Maps), the web, and auto screen rotation all worked flawlessly. In fact, friends were very impressed by both the auto screen rotation and the flash abilities of the S60 web browser. As I use my phone mainly as a business device, I did not extensively explore the multimedia applications. I did take a few photos and played back some TV shows that I recorded on my PC and transferred to my phone, both without problems. I also listened to some music and again had no problems. The business and email capabilities of E-series devices are the reason that they are my phones of choice and the E66 excels in these areas. The multimedia functions are not quite as good as my friend's N95 but you can certainly pass a two hour flight watching a movie or take an adequate photo of the kids. If you're looking for a new phone and don't need a QWERTY keyboard, I strongly recommend the E66. Nokia has built a real winner.