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.