How would you change Nokia's E71?

Handset lovers in some regions of the world not named North America have been enjoying the luxuries of Nokia's E71 for some time now, but those of us waiting around for a version compatible with 3G here on this side of the planet have just recently been able to indulge. Make no mistake, though -- this piece of QWERTY goodness ain't cheap. Ringing up at right around 500 bones, USers have the right to have some pretty high expectations, and we're here to ask if those expectations have been met. Are you satisfied with the ultrathin smartphone? Is the display up to snuff? How's that keyboard? Are you kosher with the white keys? What else would you do to improve upon the E71? Leave it all in comments below.

[Mark Anderson @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:34PM]

1) 3.5mm headphone jack.
2) Full Blackberry support.

That's it.

[Mark Anderson @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:35PM]

Oh yeah, and drop the white handset. The steel one is much nicer.

[Hugh @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:43PM]

What is this at least partially blackberry support you speak of? Did they lease out the servers or something?

[Lorem.Ipsum @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:02PM]

No way am I dropping 500 if they don't have a standard headphone jack. I'm happy with my IPhone 3g anyway.

[Mark Anderson @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:50PM]

Sorry, I meant no Blackberry Connect service. At all.

[grrrrrreg @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:23PM]

Fix the keyboard.

Z goes under S.

Z GOES UNDER S!!!

[Richard Glitter @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:52PM]

Z Goes under S??? Not on any keyboard or phone I've ever seen... . Do you consider Shift to be under A?

[giuliop @ Aug 22nd 2008 8:04PM]

"Z goes under S."

Ah, so now we know who worked for Dell and screwed up half the keyboards of their Vostro line in the whole world: http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/01/dells-vostro-keyboads-putting-the-hurt-on-uk-touch-typists/

[Mustaine @ Aug 22nd 2008 9:29PM]

Actually Z and X are both partially under S on my keyboard. I guess this is what he's saying..a trapezoid layout.

[OziD @ Aug 22nd 2008 10:03PM]

bold:
http://www.chillnite.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/300_blackberry_bold.jpg

blackjack:
http://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/blackjack2/images/Samsung_BlackJack2_lp.jpg

MOTO Q9:
http://news.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/10381/467929.jpg

i could do this all day.

[dangerouslaser @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:36PM]

1) 3.5mm headphone jack
2) runs crysis

[GatgetMan @ Aug 22nd 2008 10:48PM]

Double Post... The root of all evil...

Still better rankings than the inevitable: "Make it an iPhone!" comment....

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:37PM]

1) I have never used one of these.
2) Nobody I know has ever even heard of it.

[matt @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:51PM]

Then I believe your post serves even less of a purpose than mine.

[Mark Anderson @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:50PM]

My boss has one. It's awesome.

[boss-hogg @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:57PM]

Yea....so....they don't sell the E71 ant Wal-Mart....maybe thats why you never heard of it.

[Nathan Mylott @ Aug 22nd 2008 8:28PM]

Well if YOU'VE never heard of it, the rest of us don't need to bother cause it's obviously not popular and no good at all if you haven't seen one before. That was valuable information, thanks for sharing.

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Aug 22nd 2008 8:25PM]

lol

Relax people. Just making a statement. I should have just said "iPhone."

[E71 User @ Aug 22nd 2008 10:16PM]

Having owned this phone for 2 days I must admit to being very impressed by it. I've owned many Nokia before and this is something special. The battery life is extraordinary.

Pros (Lightly covered)

Remote lock - phone gets stolen, use mates phone to send a pre-defined code, phone locks, thief gets code wrong 3 times, phone get erased, Great!

Aesthetics - All metal, perfect build quality, feels indescribably 'right' (like the iphone 3g)

Speed - No waiting for apps to load, so refreshing for the impatient like me

Breathing status light - Thank you Nokia for getting rid of the mega strobe, smoothing white glows are the way to go, not 'emergency blue panic' strobes

Connect PC to web - Plug Phone via USB to (windows) PC and a small programme is installed that let you use the phone as a 3g modem. I can get about 2Mb/s with this. (A mac version would be totally sweet as well)

Standard features - Good syncing with mac (there is an isync plug-in - http://nds1.nokia.com/files/support/global/phones/software/Nokia_E71_isync_plugin_1v1.dmg ), great email and messaging etc.

Camera isn't the best - Who cares, it's a business phone, heck many companies don't allow camera phones on their premises. It seems that they had to sacrifice the quality and size of the CCD or CMOS to get the phone so slim. Same goes for the headphone adapter- something had to go, but please ship with a mini to 3.5 adapter please.


Cons


Chat - Nokia, where did your excellent chat application go. You did it first, the iphone stole it, then you dropped it. It was so useful. Most SMS's are send as part of a 'txt conversation', a back and forth reciprocation of text as opposed to one off 'pings' Bring back chat!

Voice communication button - Located between the volume buttons this pretty button serves little purpose. Press and hold = voice activated features (the same thing that the top right blue button does) Am I missing something here? Was this designed for push to talk? If so, I'm on Vodafone UK and they seem so have removed the PTT/POC menu. For those interested, PTT/POC is available in the UK globalmobileradio dot com and http://www.intechnology.co.uk. It's a shame Vodafone don't offer it to the consumer market. They do offer it to their enterprise sector though.

No network manager - I have no reception at home but my E71 is set to auto-retrieve my emails. The only way I can get it to use my Wi-Fi instead of Cell is to dig deep into the email sub-menus and change the access point on both incoming and outgoing mail on both my email accounts. Annoying and time consuming.

What you should have is a smart network manager that checks the status of GSM 3g, WiFi, HSPDA (3.5g) and assigns the best one for the entire phone to use. E.g When I go to a location with no Cell reception the phone should AUTOMATICALLY fall back to WiFi to check emails, internet radio (not fully working on E71 yet but really great), remote sync (more to say about this).This is what the iphone does and although it's sometimes a little slow to fall back to wifi, it's totally transparent to the user and makes operation of that device much more smooth and graceful.

Perhaps a developer could build an app that does this and creates a virtual access point that all the other phone app can see and stay connected to by default. This virtual access point would then automatically switch between actual access point (mainly GPRS, WIFI, 3G) Steal this idea!

USB 1.1 - A joke right, sorry I don't get it

Give more power to the buttons - A certain half eaten fruit manufacturer released a phone with 1 main button (3 minor ones) replacing buttons with a big *ss screen, they sold millions of devices and caused a minor revolution. Suddenly buttons have become, like sooo last week. The E71 has loads of them, let us be able to take advantage of that. Give us more power to the buttons. E.g space bar should do something when pressed like light up the flash so we can find our keys, or like firefox, scroll down the page when browsing the internet. Allow the user to assign apps, bookmarks, macros to individual keys e.g In the standby screen, push and hold 'S' to start the Sports Tracker app and begin and new training routine. The keyboard can be so much more powerful.

Light/Flash - Perhaps the E71 drives the Xenon flash harder and brighter than it should. Would prolonged use kill it? If so what about PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). Basically make the light flash really quickly (50hz) to make it look like it is constantly on, only less bright and using less power. How about that, is it a hardware issue?

Unadvertised unsupported great features - Another comparison has to be made here between the E71 and iphone. Apple thoroughly advertise all the features of their phones and they SUPPORT them as well.
E.g Mobile Me - Not a new concept, in fact Nokia got their before they did ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyncML)

Infrared - Give us a reason to use this, supply the phone with TV remote software.

I mean, who knew the E71 could be synced 'over the air'. This could be so useful. E.g A family of 3 each has an E71 (or Symbian phone). They all share a single public calender as well as their own private one. Instant access to each others holidays trips, meeting etc. I know for a fact that this would go down well in my household. There are a few third party solutions to this but who can be bothered researching, checking forums etc. Nokia, partner with and manage one of them,(or just employ a group of jobless graduates and let them work it out by themselves) then offer the service under the Nokia name to your users.(stick a leaflet in the packaging with the manuals, CD'd etc)

Calender app not perfect- It should be if you expect people to ditch their Filofax's and Blackberries (the latter I know you are trying for) I admit it's good (combined with iCal OS X I'm trialing a digital calender system for the next few months) but some settings need work to speed up data entry. I'm assume you are aiming for the same speed as pen and paper, you are half way there so far.

Wow, well what was meant to be a quick 10 line comment but it got a bit too passionate. I guess the above can be thought of as a open brainstorm directed at Nokia, heck I'm no where nearly finished, if you are reading this from Nokia I'd love to help you improve this, get in touch phatenterprise (at) gmail.com

[Ayman @ Aug 23rd 2008 1:36AM]

@ E71 User

I have the E51 amazing features but no GPS or Keyboard to match
but for softwares you can add alot of applications

for chatting and VOIP, I use Fring www.fring.com , I access through it Skype, Yahoo, Googletalk, MSN, AOL,... as well as other features

for checking emails, i use Gmail for mobiles by google, and Yahoo Go!, I forward other emails to Gmails so i dont worry about different access points

for Web browsing, I just download Opera Mini...so far Amazing

[Lobolopez @ Aug 23rd 2008 6:11AM]

"Perhaps a developer could build an app that does this and creates a virtual access point that all the other phone app can see and stay connected to by default. This virtual access point would then automatically switch between actual access point (mainly GPRS, WIFI, 3G) Steal this idea!"

Already exists, its called Psiloc Connect and does exactly what you describe, I use it on my E71 and it works perfectly.

[Pdexter @ Aug 24th 2008 1:01PM]

If yanks haven't heard about it dosen't make it so for the rest of the world.
This has been selling like hot cakes here in Germany. Many parts of the world BB dosen't exist and many parts of the Europe Nokia's one qwerty device(E61i) is seen more than all BB phones together.

[scrunge @ Oct 5th 2008 8:20AM]

This is actually in response to "E71 User." I'm very late to the party, obviously, but hey, I just got my E71 3 days ago, so.

There used to be a feature called "Access Point Group" that was available on E60/E61/E65/others. It allows you to group multiple access points, ie. connections of any type, into a group. This in theory accomplishes what you described ("network manager") without much work. It more or less worked (see below) when I tried it on an old E65.

The problem was, not all application could use Access Point Group. If I recall correctly, the only application that was able to use it was the web browser. So, in an essence this feature was useless. I don't know why this feature was not exposed to developers, or why it's removed now. Nokia/Symbian certainly had the right idea for "network manager."

Perhaps that'd be one to E71 can be improved. That and bring back single-key lock. Why was this taken away in the first place?

[Michael @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:40PM]

I would make it an iPhone.








(Ok, I just had to do it... I answered that I'd make the iPhone a Nokia back when they did this for the iPhone.)

[Michael @ Aug 23rd 2008 9:15AM]

Awww, low ranked, really? It was obviously a joke. I'm a huge Nokia supporter. Use an N73 myself and absolutely love it.

[tony @ Aug 23rd 2008 11:34AM]

Didn't make it funny.

[Evangelion @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:41PM]

lol! Make it run Crysis!

[Nik @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:41PM]

AWS support.

[grull27 @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:42PM]

Bigger screen

[john @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:43PM]

1) better reception quality -- worst reception of any Nokia phone I've ever used

2) T-Mobile USA 3G support, with UMA

3) iSync plugin

4) Sync to Google (Calendar and Contacts) direct from phone, including on hosted google domains

5) Sync to Thunderbird and Sunbird (on Linux, Windows, and Mac)

(the rest are just me musing, not really realistic requests)

6) OpenSSH (not Putty) support, for port forwarding your VNC client sessions

7) Embedded SIP server for other devices to use it as a communication gateway

8) Embedded Jabber server for the same, only for SMS/MMS messaging

9) Able to share it's EDGE/HSPA feed via wifi, like Joikuspot, only built into the phone OS, and with better encryption/privacy than joikuspot offers

10) two SIM card slots, so you can send some traffic (voice and SMS/MMS) to one carrier and the other traffic (EDGE/HSPA) to another carrier

11) Maemo instead of Symbian

12) one model for the AT&T and T-Mobile support, not two separate models

[Epyon @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:24PM]

It has an iSync plugin. You have to get it from Nokia's European web site. For whatever reason they don't have it on their US site.

I just got the phone a couple days ago. Its great but the screen on mine is a little messed up. The backlight is weird at the top so there are a couple of dark spots at the very top of the screen. Not a deal breaker, just mildly annoying. Software on it seems a bit buggy. The browser has locked up on my phone a couple times and once yesterday I lost my data connection until I rebooted.

[ralfy @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:33PM]

3) http://nds1.nokia.com/files/support/global/phones/software/Nokia_E71_isync_plugin_1v1.dmg

[dextro @ Aug 22nd 2008 8:29PM]

For Google Calendar synchronization use GooSync. You need to pay to sync contacts but calendar has a free limited mode (it's limited to 30days ahead and before the current date if I'm not mistaken).

[Jah @ Aug 23rd 2008 2:57AM]

My Euro E71 used in the UK has outstanding call quality and battery life.

The only thing I would change is to upgrade a video recordng to the E90 level (DVD quality @ 30fps)

[Hugh @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:44PM]

No symbian, android perhaps?

[PJD @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:01PM]

I love my E61. What I would chage with the E61 and E71 is:

- VGA-Resolution - because reading PDF with a 320 Pixels-wide only is a pain
- Prozessor fast enought to run at least 500x300px DivX-Videos (the e61 can't - can the e71?)

Would be nice:
- TV out

I like the smaler case (even I have not seen it in real life) - but the improoved things are not enought for me. The bad receiption quality - I already have difficulties at my parents summer house just at the gates of berlin. It seems it stands directly between 2 UMTS-Antennas...

Thinking of getting HTC Touch Pro instead...

[Rich @ Aug 23rd 2008 5:14AM]

Why Android? What does Android bring to the table that Symbian doesn't have?

If the E71 ran Android, it wouldn't even be out yet.

[antitrust311 @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:46PM]

I agree 3.5mm headphone jack and blackberry support, update the U/I, and lastly improve the camera. BTW you can get this phone for $389 on Newegg.com. A whole lot cheaper than what Nokia is selling it for!

[Grant T Martin @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:57PM]

jetpack support

[Dan The Man @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:57PM]

850/1900/2100 Tri-band HSUPA for international roaming.

[zephxiii @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:58PM]

little bit bigger (screen at least as big as the Curve's), ditch the white version (ugly), fix the not so great camera, more N-series features, better reception, 3.5mm headphone jack, better video playback, and yea.

[Niz @ Aug 22nd 2008 6:59PM]

people say 3.55mm jack, better camera, but Nokia for some reason wont give it all. They put more business associated things on the E series and the multimedia associated features on the N series.

Why cant we have both surely Nokia does not expect us to carry two phones?

[Hugh @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:11PM]

Why sell one phone when you can sell two?

Capitalism at its finest....

[Sarig @ Aug 22nd 2008 8:37PM]

It might also be because while everyone wants more features, everyone also wants units to be cheap.

Pretty much everytime a smartphone is mentioned on engadget, most of the comments (ignoring fruity flamewars) is either about the price being too high, or some "vital" features missing. There's a connection here folks!

[nikhil shah @ Aug 22nd 2008 11:36PM]

thats what nokia does. floods the market with its handsets. i love nokia but that's how it's got the highest market share. besides, as they said above me, why sell a phone that does it all? no one would buy your other phones!

[E71foramonth @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:07PM]

bought E71 in Netherlands. Works well with AT&T in the states. I miss the seamless "push" of Blackberry email. The user interface is cumbersome at best. I find the screen resolution to be good. I've not had a problem with the camera. I have average reception, usually better than my wife's iphone. I REALLY miss the performance of my Blackberry for email.

[De @ Aug 25th 2008 1:42PM]

there are 3rd party push services like SEVEN and emozes

[Larry @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:12PM]

1) 3.5mm headphone jack
2) Shortcut keys moved to the bottom of the QWERTY keyboard.
3) Black model (?)

[Sahn @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:13PM]

The Z button shouldn't be directly below the A button. Shift the bottom row over one, and them perhaps put the comma or period on the left side of the keyboard. But I'm just being picky, and then I'd just be complaining that the period/comma buttons are separated.

Good device, though.

[E71head @ Aug 22nd 2008 7:14PM]

isync plugin right here:
http://europe.nokia.com/A4299040

TMOBILE 3G SUPPORT!

I ain't got no white keys. Just buy the good looking one in steel gray.

TOUCH SCREEN. Hey, why not.

3.5mm jack

Better camera
Better video