Buzz! GOGO!

Nokia E71 looks slim and nice in photos but they don’t do it justice, it isn’t until you have one in your hand that you realise just how nice it is, and the build quality is the best of any phone I’ve used.

The auto word completion and word suggestion work really well once you get used to it. If I type theyer it automatically corrects it to they’re but with an option to choose exactly what I typed if I wish to chose it. It isn’t perfect but it comes very close and makes email creation much quicker and easier if you are wanting it to look professional and not just something you entered lazily to sent to a friend.

The keyboard once you get used to it is very nice and responsive, though the keys may be a little small and tightly packed for anyone with large thumbs. Due to it being more compact than the E61/E61i or the E62 entering text one handed is much easier, on its predecessors it was possible but awkward, not so with the E71, its just as easy as doing it with a regular numeric keypad.


For the negatives.

I said the keyboard was a pleasure to use but this is only if you have slim to average size thumbs, for people with large thumbs I can see them struggling with the compact nature of it. Also a lot of the symbols that were previously on the keys of the E61 etc are no longer there, £ $ € had a place on keys A S and D but now you need to go into the character menu to select them, just like you do on an N series device. Also the right hand shift key has been removed, not a problem for most people but for left handers like myself who used to highlight text using right shift and move the dpad with our left hand we now have to adapt to the right hand way of doing it.

The ports. It uses a micro usb port and a 2.5mm headphone port. Now I know the device is thin but surely they could have squeezed in a more standard 3.5mm and mini usb port. On the back of the phone where the camera is it bulges out slightly, this is directly in line with the headphone socket. All they needed to do was run this bulge the full width of the phone, move the usb port in line with it and they could easily fit in 3.5mm and mini usb.

E71 is a fantastic QWERTY phone, but would I have it as my only phone? Tough question, probably not. I do like my N95-8GB and the multimedia power that it has over the E71. On the first 2 day of owning it I would have definatly said no, but the more I use it the more I grow to love it. If it wasn’t for the 2.5mm headphone port and the inferior camera to the N95 then yes I could quite easily live with the E71 as my only phone.