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.

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.