I bought my E71 three months back and I am quite happy with it. Before I start, let me tell you that I feel a phone should potray the owners personality and hence the phone I carry is very important for me. I like phones which are feature loaded, business friendly, light weight and most importantly they should indicate that they belong to a lady. I had a HTC touch before my Nokia E71. HTC touch is truly truly a phone for women. But it only lasted for a year with me. It started giving problems in its 10th month and by 12th, it was out!(PS: I dont look at phones to last for a lifetime. 1-1.5 years is good for me)
As far as E71 is concerned, I shall start by highlighting the compromises I did in my preferences when I bought this phone.(You cannot get everything you want in a phone, do keep your mind open)
Compromise 1: Since I was used to a touch phone, I wanted a touch screen phone.Unfortunately there are not many good touch phones in the market for women. The problem was the fact that the finger sensitive screens did not work with my nail tip(I figure women usually use their nails and not fingers on touch phone.well I do!) I finally compromised my preference and settled for a non touch phone.
Compromise 2: I wanted a phone which would help me check my official mail. I have something against blackberry phones since they have too deep an image of a BUSINESS phone. I like business phone features with multimedia stuff thrown in. But I did want a blackberry connect. Unfortunately, Nokia E71 does not even have blackberry connect. Since I have Lotus for office mails, I cannot even configure my office mailbox on my phone!
So, I have made these two compromises, but am still quite happy, coz I got some good stuff in this phone:)
Good stuff 1: I got a qwerty keyboard. The keys are raised in the center which makes it convinient to type.
Good Stuff 2: It has MAPS! The phone came with GPRS enabled MAPS. I never thought a GPS system could work so well pn a phone in India. The MAPS applcation of Nokia gives maps which are very detailed. But the navigation system is just about ok. Thanks to MAPS, I feel confident while exploring new places in this new city. Now I know my way through all the roads:) I even give my husband tips on shortcuts now! The navigation voice is good. It guided me correctly once to a new place 20 kms away from my home! However sometimes the navigation goes berseck.It is definitely not too realiable. But the map keeps tracking my position and it is completely a womens-must-have!
Good Stuff 3: Browsing internet is easy. good navigation.
Good stuff 4: The battery lasts for a day for me.This is quite good for my kind of usage. Well, honestly I am a bad judge at this one since I have moved from a touch screen. Now, I can just live with any kind of phone battery life!
Good Stuff 5: It is light weight(lighter than most of the business phones in the market) and it also comes in WHITE color. That truly makes it the Simi Garewal women’s accessory!
Now now, the E71 is good and all, but let’s not start jumping about it. Check out the Bad/Rethinkable stuff below.
Bad/Rethinkable Stuff 1: The camera is not good. Although it is a 3.2, the picture has a greenish tinge. I tried fixing the setting, but there weren’t too many options. So the final picture is not too good.(But unfortunately it is still better than my HTC!)
Bad/Rethinkable Stuff 2: I still am all ga-ga on the windows mobile functionality. the ease of copying stuff from a word doc and putting it in a sms, or opening a PPT!.I miss all that in a Symbian:(
Bad/Rethinkable Stuff 3: The phone like all high end phone. hangs! It ususally hangs when too many apps are open simultaneously and a call is recieved.
*Bad/Rethinkable Stuff 4:
4.1.** There is a new phones in the market that I like. The black berry 8900(It is a business phone with multimedia.change of image for BB[finally])
4.2. Nokia E75 is in the market!Go figure!
I am still exploring my Nokia E71 and shall add more stuff to this review over the months.
Hope this review was helpful ladies. Do drop a comment.