A Review Of The Nokia E71

My Nokia E71 arrived on Tuesday, I’ve had a few days to play around with it so thought I’d write up my impression of it so far. There will be a few negatives within this review but that’s not to say its a bad phone, its just that there are already lots of reviews out there focusing on the specifications and features of the phone so I’m not going to go over ground that has been covered by others, and much better than I could do. If you want to read a really good review check out the one by Steve Litchfield on allaboutsymbian.com

I had never seen or touched the E71 until it arrived, it 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. Compared to my old E61 which I bought it to replace its in another league, it beats the E61 in every aspect except maybe the keyboard. So on to my likes and dislikes.

Likes:-

Look, feel, build quality, form factor are all amazing. Its a very solid device, so squeaks when using it, no rattles when you shake it, its the best built phone I’ve used, and probably the best build quality of any s60 Nokia EVER!

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.

Now for the negatives.

Things I don’t like or could have been improved:-

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.

That’s it really for negatives, it would be nice to have a better camera etc but for a phone that’s mainly aimed at the corporate market the camera is more than adequate, it just doesn’t match up with the likes of some of the N series phones with 5 mega pixel Carl Zeiss optics.

Everything else about the phone has been covered elsewhere so I’ve only focused on things that I have experienced but not seen mentioned elsewhere. The E71 is a fantastic QWERTY phone, I absolutly love using it, 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.

This entire review was created on the E71 using the built in version of QuickOffice and the phones keyboard.

I ordered a Pogo printer from Amazon on Tuesday and it arrived today. For those that don’t know what it is more info can be found here.It’s a pocket photo printer that uses special ZINK photo paper 3×2 inch (slightly smaller than an average business card). The paper has three layers of coloured crystals that are activated during the printing process by firing pulses of heat at the paper. This means that there are no ink cartridges to refill or replace, you just load it up with a 10 pack of paper and you’re ready to print.

The printer is Bluetooth enabled so photos from most camera phones can be sent directly to it, or you can print via USB from any PictBridge enabled camera or phone. Polaroid quote it as being able to print a photo in 60 seconds, this maybe the case via USB but using Bluetooth it will take longer. I did two test prints today, both from my N95-8GB using Bluetooth, the photo’s were 956KB and 983KB  and both took just under 90 seconds to print. A break down of this time was roughly 40 seconds to send the photo to the printer, 15 seconds while the printer processes the data before it starts printing, 25 seconds to print the photo.

It can be powered from the mains or from the built in (replaceable) rechargable battery, a fully charged battery should be enough for 15 prints, I can’t confirm this though as I have only done 2 prints.

If you are wanting realistic prints like you would get from a full sized photo printer then the Pogo is not for you.  If you want a small compact printer that fits into the back pocket of a pair of jeans and allows you to print out photos/stickers wherever you are and have a bit of fun then the Pogo is perfect. Of the two prints I have done so far the one of the pink flower is the best, it has near perfect colour reproduction and the clarity of detail is fantastic. The other one is not as good but it’s not poor either, the bread roll is a bit yellower than it should be but other than that the photo is fine.

As a fun little printer the Pogo is a fantastic device, I really hope that it takes of so that Polaroid will continue to develop the technology.

——–Update——–

I’ve now tested the battery life of the Pogo. Polaroid claim it will do 15 prints, from a full charge, I got 20 prints and the battery was still going. As I was using it away from a power source most of the time I didn’t want to risk the battery going flat on me while I was out so after the 20^th print I recharged it. Even if the battery had died at that point it still exceeds Polaroids quoted number of prints by 25%.

I’ve been trying an application called Wavelog, it’s a blogging application for s60 phones. I wish I had tried it when I did a mobile blogging comparison test then I could have written about it earlier. Other than Shozu it seems to be the only option of composing a blog entry which includes images and easily uploading them from a phone. There is a trial version available but it only allows text to be uploaded, if you want to include any kind of media (images, videos, sound) then you need to register it which costs $10, quite cheap, well it would be if it was any good.

The trouble is that the trial works fine, once you have written the blog entry on your phone it uploads fine and everything looks great. It’s once you pay for the full version and include images that the problems start, and because there is no way of testing its media upload function without purchasing a licence you have to pay for the privilege of finding out how crap it is.

Below is a screenshot of a post I made earlier with an image, the text doesn’t flow across the full width of the page and the image is tiny, it looks ridiculous. I’ve tried all the different layout options, with the image below and to the right of the text but they all give the same result and look like shit.

It does work well if all you want to upload is text, but http://m.wordpress.com does it better because it allows tags which Wavelog doesn’t support.

One of my contract ends this month so in May I phoned up to cancel it, the guy I spoke to tried his hardest to get me to upgrade rather than cancel but as I already have another contract with them I stuck to my guns and went through with it.

On Monday I got a phone call from their 10day retention team, as soon as realised who they were I thought well I’ll see what you offer me but I’m not going to change my mind and I will go through with the cancellation, how wrong was I. If I hadn’t already been sitting down I would have fallen down with shock at the offer. If I continued my contract they would give me for £10 per month, 600 cross network call time minutes, 100 text messages and a FREE Nokia N95-8GB. I was speechless, I already have an N98-8GB but for £10 a month that was an offer I just could not refuse. It arrived today, so now I just have to decide whether to sell it or keep it. I had intended to sell it but now I’m probably going to keep it as I always carry more than one phone and could use this one for high power consumption tasks like video playback, push email, mobile web server etc, saving the battery on my other one for calls, text and internet.

Yesterday I bought a new Bluetooth headset to replace my aging Plantronics Discovery 640. I wanted something small, without an ear loop and preferable one that had a portable charger. This limited my choice dramatically but I finally decided on the Nextlink Invisio G5.

The Plantronics I had been using could be worn with or without an ear loop but I found that after a while the weight of it started to pull it out of my ear if no loop was used, particularly if I tilted my head or moved it sharply. From reviews I’ve read about the Invisio G5 this wouldn’t be a problem because of the soft rubber spring that fits inside the groove of your ear to help hold it in place.

The G5 measures 3.3cm in length and weighs just under 6grams. It’s smaller in real life than I had imagined from photos I’ve seen of it. Once in your ear you can hardly tell it’s there, you can feel it for the first few minutes but after that you get used to it and forget that you’re wearing it. This is the opposite of headsets I’ve used in the past which are comfortable when you first but them on but can become painful of irritating over time. I wore it for 5hrs last night and so far 6hrs today without and discomfort at all. Even though the length is small it does stick out from your ear quite a bit. If you look at the photo below you can see that the tube/column between the main body and the ear piece is quite long. Once it’s in place there is roughly a 1cm gap between the headset and your face, roughly enough to slide your finger between. At first I thought that this was going to be a problem and that it would keep falling off but because it hardly weighs anything once it’s in place it’s there to stay.

The G5 once charged has a reported talk time of 4hrs and standby of 150hrs. Now the neat thing about this headset is it’s portable charger. It looks like a large Zippo lighter. You charge the charger up (if that makes sense) then pop the G5 inside it, close the lid and the headset begins to charge. A fully charged “zippo” will recharge the G5 up to 5 times, increasing its talktime to 20hrs and standby to 30days, all without needing to be near a power supply.

So far it’s all been positive for the G5 but it does fall down in a few places. It can be paired with 8 devices at a time, try to pair more than 8 and it will start to forget the most least used ones. This is great I’ve never had a headset before that could pair with that many at any one time. The problem is that it can only connect to one device at a time. This isn’t really a problem for me, I have 2 phones on me at any one time but only use one of them for voice calls, the other is purely for email and data, but it could be a problem for those that carry a business and personal phone, both of which they make/receive calls on.

Voice quality isn’t outstanding, don’t get me wrong it isn’t bad but I have heard better. I was on a 35 minute call last night, though I could hear the other person quite clearly it was slightly tinny compared to some other headsets. The other person also said I sounded a bit more muffled than usual but it was still clear. In the past people have said that when on a headset my voice has been garbled, or there has been an echo, so a bit muffled really isn’t that bad.

As long as you don’t need to be connected to more than one device at a time I’d give the G5 an 8.5 out of 10, only let down slightly by the voice quality.

Last week I received my latest phone bill from 3UK. Inside was a promotional flyer advertising a free USB broadband dongle with half price monthly fee for existing customers. Up until now I had been using my N95-8GB and bluetooth tethering it to my laptop for Internet access, but for half price this was an offer I couldn’t turn down.

There are 3 price plans to choose from, 1GB per month for £10 £5, 3GB for £15 £7.50 or 7GB for £25 £12.50. Currently I had a 1GB broadband lite plan with my phones contract, this cost £10 per month, I could drop that down to x-series silver for £5 which would still give me internet on my mobile and take out a 3GB plan with a free broadband dongle for the promotional price of £7.50 per month, thus only costing me an extra £2.50 for a whole lot more and a USB broadband dongle. See what I meant when I said it’s an offer I just couldn’t turn down.

So on Saturday I went to the 3 store and picked up a Huawei E169G USB modem. The software installation was simple, it pre configured the IAP so no settings to enter. The only problem I did have was that the first time I tried it I got an error 619 message. A quick call to customer services and they got it sorted, it turns out the sim card hadn’t been properly activated in store. After that I was up and running and I must say it works really well, I haven’t done any speed tests but it does appear to be quicker than when I was connecting with my phone via bluetooth.

I do wonder what will happen to WiFi providers like The Cloud as these devices and plans become cheaper and more popular. Currently in the UK The Cloud charge £9.99 per month for unlimited access, they have thousands of hotspots, but outside major cities they are few and far between. For example my local town center has 5 cloud hotspots, not exactly blanket coverage. As most people use hotspots for sending/receiving email and a bit if time in a browser reading the news and RSS feeds it isn’t very data intensive, they probably use less than 1GB per month. So even without the promotion they could have broadband where ever they go for the same price as a monthly cloud subscription and not be restricted to finding a hotspot. Companies like The Cloud are seriously going to have to change their prices, offer special deals or some other intensive if they don’t want to go out of business within the next few years.

Back in February I started trying to use my N95 8GB as my main media device instead of my iPod Touch, well it’s nearly two months later and in all that time I’ve hardly listened to my iPod, it’s probably only been used for about 10 hours. I’ve been an iPod owner for about 4 years and I’ve really enjoyed using them until this last year. This started with the release of the 3^rd gen iPod Nano and iPod classic, nice devices but old 3^rd party hardware to output video to a TV stopped working, then the iPod Touch was released and they removed mass storage mode, then they released the iPhone apps for the Touch and we had to pay for them, unless you bought a new one and then they came preinstalled. I had my Touch jailbroken so this didn’t affect me as I could and did install them for free but the vast majority of owners don’t even know what jailbreaking is, never mind how to do it.

It has been said in the past many times that Apple are locking people into using iPods because music purchased from iTunes won’t work on any other player, this was before they started selling the + tracks. This is partly true but they don’t force you to buy music from their store, you can quite easily convert your own CD’s or purchase MP3’s from stores like Emusic or Amazon. I’ve never agreed with what has been said but now I think maybe there is a bit of truth to it and it was part of their plan. Recently they seem (in my opinion) to be thinking “we have the best selling media player on the planet so we can do what we like, people will put up with it and still buy our products”. Well not any more, not for me anyway, I’ve had enough of them and I’m quite happy using my phone as my main music player.

Some of the reasons I prefer my Nokia over my iPod are

• It supports more audio/video formats
• It’s easier to put content on it where ever I am, either OTA or from another computer
• It’s one less device to carry
• I don’t miss calls when I’m listening to music
• The built in speaker is good for listening to podcasts without headphones
• It will play iTunes+ tracks so all my previous purchases still work
• I don’t have to be near a WiFi hotspot to download content, it works fine with a HSDPA connection
• I can purchase Audible books from the phones web browser then download them directly to the device without going near a computer
• Music purchased from the Nokia music store is easier to remove the DRM without loss of quality than regular iTunes tracks are

The iPod is still a good device and for some people it is the best media player there is, but for me personally I have found something better for my usage and needs, and that is the Nokia N95 8GB

On Saturday I woke up to find that my Digifusion Freeview PVR had died over night, nothing I did would revive it so by mid day I decided to give up on it and go buy a new one.

Normally when purchasing something like this I would do at least a few days research to compare features, price and user reviews. This time though time wasn’t on my side, the new series of Doctor Who started that evening and it HAD to be recorded. This meant that online stores were out of the question, I was restricted to buying from a local store and it had to be in stock for immediate collection. This narrowed down my choice considerably, I was hoping to get a Topfield TF5800 but nowhere local had then in stock, so I was left with a choice of Humax, Sagem, Thompson or Grundig. After reading a few reviews I decided to go for the Humax PVR9200T.

After a few days with it I’m very pleased. The main benefits of the Humax over my old Digifusion are,

• · Twice the HDD capacity
• · Better reception/picture quality
• · Series Recording
• · Search feature within the EPG
• · Playlist of recorded media
• · USB to transfer recordings to a PC
• · Much nicer user interface

There are some things though that I preferred on the Digifusion

• · It had a 14 day EPG, the Humax only had 8
• · EPG could be switched between multi channel timeline or just a single channel

Over all though the Humax is a much better device and I’m pleased with the purchase.

JoikuSpot is an application that can be run on any S60 WIFI enabled smartphone to turn it into a mobile hotspot. It works be using your phones packet data connection and allows other devices to connect to the phone via WLAN to get on-line. It’s been around for a few months but until now there was no way to create a secure connection, it was completely open. This meant that if you were in a coffee shop using it with your laptop there could also be another dozen people connected to your phone and there was nothing you could do about it.

Yesterday a new version was released, version 1.2 and it now has WEP encryption as one of the options. The program is still in beta, when you first run it you are asked if you want to activate it for 90 days trial or enter a registration code. According to the JoikuSpot website this is just to ensure the beta will expire at some point, another release will be out within that 90 day period. At the moment it only supports http/https protocols so no pop/imap email or ftp, these are planned though for a future release.

I’ve had it working with my laptop, eeepc, n800 and iPod Touch. All of the others except the Touch I could connect to my phone via Bluetooth, but as the Touch doesn’t have Bluetooth it now meant that I have one more internet enabled device that is truly portable and can get on-line from anywhere.

Some networks, 3UK for example, allow you to use the internet, email etc on the phone when you drop back into 2.5g coverage on their partner network, but don’t allow the use of external devices that use the phone as a modem on anything less than 3g. Occasionally I have found it will work, but most of the time a connection can be made but no data is transferred, web browsers time out etc. With JoikuSpot because it initiates the connection directly on the phone rather than the phone being treated as an external modem as far as you service provider is concerned you are just using the handset and it allows all data to low freely, if slowly.

It’s a great little freeware program that’s handy to keep on your phone. I hope it remains freeware once it’s out of beta, but for a small fee it will be well worth the asking price.

From time to time I watch videos on my iPod Touch and N95-8GB, the trouble has been that videos created for the iPod either won’t play on the N95 or they don’t play well. Yesterday I spent the afternoon downloading and testing various video encoders to try and find one that created a file that plays well on both and I have found IMO the best two for the job. My criteria for the encoders were that they must be quick, create a video file that plays equally well on both devices and most importantly, it must be able to create a video in exactly the same aspect ratio as the original. It’s no good if the final video is 320×240 and it keeps the aspect ratio by adding black bars top and bottom because this then means it won’t work properly on the Touch in full screen mode.

Converting AVI, MPG etc.
I couldn’t find a freeware program that I liked, so I finally settled on WinAvi. It has several profiles to convert video for iPods, PSP and also 3gp and MP4 formats. I found that using the MP4 profile with audio set to 96, video bitrate set at 512 and for video size I chose original video size this produced a decent quality video that plays just as well on both devices. It also has batch encoding and its fast, a 45 minute TV episode was done in about 8 minutes.

Ripping and Encoding DVD
This time I found a freeware solution using Handbrake. Handbrake wont work on copy protected DVD’s so first they have to be ripped to your hard drive using something like DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor, both freeware. With Handbrake I used the iPod Touch profile but changed the encoder from H.264 to Mpeg4, video bit rate set to 512 and audio to 96. With handbrake you can just specify the width of the output video and it will adjust the height accordingly so as to maintain the original aspect ration.

I’m very pleased with the end result of both programs, they both produce a video that looks great on the Touch and N95 8GB. I don’t plug either device into a TV to watch movies though I did test it with the N95, the quality was acceptable on a 28” though If I watched on a TV more often I’d use a higher video bit rate, I used 512 because it keeps the file size down and produces a decent on device video quality.