It’s been about a month since I have been using the new Nokia E71. To say the least, I am more than happy with the phone.

I was using a Nokia E62 earlier, and the new phone gives me everything that was lacking in the E62. To being with, the form factor and the styling is a huge improvement. It is a much sleeker and better designed phone. The E62 felt as if one was holding a brick. Though the full qwerty keyboard is a bit cramped, the new design of the keys have an intuitive feel and make typing a breeze. Gone also is the sluggishness of the old E62.

The applications that I really dig on the phone are:

• Email – with great support for IMAP-IDLE for an almost Blackberry like push email experience. Support for multiple email accounts, although I haven’t discovered a way yet of download mail for all POP accounts with a single key press.
• Web browser and RSS reader – great experience now that I have a power of a WLAN enabled phone, I often don’t have to switch on my laptop at home.
• Voipbuster – I have set this up as my default VOIP service and am making full use of 120 day free calling feature. Beats the default application – Gizmo anyday.
• WorldMate – Great world clock, weather and currency convertor
• GPS– I have been experimenting with GPS for work and this is just great for capturing Latitude-Longitude coordinates.
• Nokia Maps – Used the voice navigation features ( I believe it is free for the first three months). Great novelty to show off to family and friends but with mixed results. I have seen the navigation feature get terribly confused with narrow parallel lanes and with the traffic diversions that Delhi Metro has created. Also, it can’t find a road to the new Hyderabad airport (Technically, the new airport is not in Hyderabad but in Shamshabad, maybe that’s why) – But overall a great app and I was surprised at the level of overall accuracy of Delhi maps.
• Google Maps
• Sportstracker – Great for tracking your walks / jogs. I actually went for a morning walk thanks to this app, though only once
• Fring – Great for Skype calls using the WLAN and for chat using the Airtel GPRS connection.

I haven’t tested the camera at all. As a serious amateur photographer, I do look down upon mobile phone camera’s, but it does have some nifty features like white balance control, flash modes, different scene modes including portrait, night and night portrait.

The only down side seems to be small screen size, but then life is all about compromises. Another minor peeve is that the screen and the back cover seem to attract fingerprints and I seem to be cleaning the phone first every time I pick it up. But, all in all, I think the Nokia E71 does offer great value for money.

Tags: GPS, Maps, Mobile, Navigation, Nokia E71