- Jul 15, 2003
- 80,287
- 17,081
- 136
I got the E71x from AT&T, despite the all crying that they disabled and locked an aweful lot of nice features.
http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=1659
AT&T only has the black version and while its nice, I would have preferred white or silver.
A full review will be posted in a few days but for now I'll start first impressions.
-Build-
Excellent. Even nicer than the 6301, and I loved that phones body. Very solid and sturdy. Stainless steel over most of it, the few sections with plastic are high quality. Difficult to get battery door off, but it snaps back in solidly. Feels very thin compared to height and width. Slips in and out of my pocket easily. Might be a little heavy for a shirt pocket.
Standard Nokia power button on top. Side volume buttons are small yet easy to push. SD and USB flaps are good quality and easy to open.
Nokia insists on using their special power plug, that skinny little thing which goes into the bottom. I understand there is a charging station available for the phone.
Buttons are small but I have small hands, so pressing them isnt too difficult. They have dedicated @ and . buttons so web browsing and emailing doesnt require extra clicks BUT, the numbers are shifts of the regular keys, so entering numbers while in a text message or email is a hassle.
I like the hard keys for HOME, CALANDER, ADDRESS BOOK, and MESSAGES. Feels like a proper PDA phone. Most others make you play around with soft menus to get those functions. 4 way keypad is easy to use and always registers my presses for ENTER when I want, and never accidentally. The SEND and END buttons as well as the 2 soft keys were actually a little difficult to hit, which is a shame because those are going to be used frequently on this phone.
-Screen-
Nice and big compared to a regular phone, but for a high end smart phone it seems a little small and low-res. You can read the specs on the PhoneScoop page but it will suffice to say that most of the newer Blackberries are better, and thats an important comparison because this device is designed as a BB competitor. It should not be compared to the iPhone or Pre or G1, because that isnt fair. Interestingly it is a 16 million color display (24 bit) as opposed to 65 thousand (16 bit) which is a bit unusual for something thats not an iPhone killer or dedicated multimedia phone. I would have settled for 16 bit so its a pleasant suprise for me.
-Battery-
I just got it this morning but after a few hours of webbing on the Wifi I noticed it didnt kill the battery instantly. Thats nice because other 3G wifi phones often do horrible things to the average cellular battery. There are no true hi-cap batteries available, but spare regular batteries are cheap and plentiful.
Battery meter is pretty on most themes and easy to read. Seems to be fairly accurate.
-Interface/UI-
This is the most important part of a smartphone so I will take my sweet time describing it and make several updates.
Overall its pretty and generally simple to navigate, but I can see the S60 interface is aging poorly. They really need to do some major updating, like Palm did with WebOS on their Pre.
You have to dig through an aweful lot of menus to find and change things. If you are used to Nokias using the S40 or S60 interface it wont be a big deal for you. But I just got my mom a Curve for her birthday (she uses it at her law firm) and was able to play with it for a whole day. While the BlackBerry interface isnt the best in the world I found settings more easily and didnt have to dig through quite as many menus to change things. As an example, on the E71x you have to go MENU -> SETTINGS -> CONFIG ->GENERAL ->PERSONALIZATION ->IDLE SCREEN MODE ->SHORTCUTS just to change the desktop shortcuts. The cool thing is once you put the SETTINGS and THEMES and such on the desktop for easy access, this becomes a little faster.
Also when you change the Idle Screen Theme from Horizontal Icon Bar to Vertical Icon Bar, you get better access to settings right from the desktop. But you wouldnt know that until you dig for this stuff and change it and then go back to look at it.
With the desktop changed to Vetical you get can easily see your main Shortcuts, Calander with upcoming appointments, Music Player, Personalization (which includes all the important shortcuts for Theme, Profile, Wallpaper and changing the top level shortcuts) and finally Wireless wizard. Having quick access to wireless settings is good because you will want to use WIFI as often as possible.
Along those lines, a few nitpicks I have (and there will be many) is the phone almost always asks which type of connection I want to use whenever I browse the web or something. I wish there was some way to tell it to always use available Wifi and not ask me to confirm. Perhaps this option is possible but I would have to dig through the maze of settings to find it.
Setting up email could have been easier because I first had to download the client (which should already be installed) and then set it up and then setup individual accounts. Setting up individual accounts is a pain because it cant be done from the Messages shortcut. You have to dig deep in the phone settings to set up email accounts.
Having said that, it was much easier than Microsoft Outlook and had quick access to my Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. Eventullaly I will also add on my schools email (which is GMAIL based so it should not be difficult). Browsing between email accounts is a breeze, you just push left or right on the D-pad and then up & down to look at individual emails. While looking at an email you can slide back and forth easily to look at others. Deleting emails was easy once I realized the Backspace key on the keyboard was also the delete key for messages.
It had some IM clients like AIM, Windows Live Messenger and YAHOO! Messenger. I understand you can download clients for other IM's and also Twitter and Facebook and such. Apparently these appear on the same list as your email accounts and IM accounts, along with Text and multimedia messaging. Compared to my LG Voyager that made me bounce all around and do different things to access different apps, thats pretty darn convenient. It does not syncronize all contact info into one place like the Pre, but then again this isnt a Pre competitor. I did not use the corporate email client: Mail for Exchange. I have read its pretty easy to use.
More later
-Applications and web browsing-
I had to download the email program, and have been told there are others to get if I feel like searching for them.
The Media Net and Media Mall are a pain to use. They frequently freeze up whether I'm on 3G or wifi. Managed to get Opera Lite and I like it better.
AT&T ships this with several programs, some of which are better than others. Theres a Yellow Pages app that takes a while to load up but once its running it is pretty slick. Its supposed to read your GPS and do searches in the immediate area. Didnt work for me but in the location box I just typed in 20111 and it automatically knew I was talking about the Manassas ZIP code. Found all the Papa Johns in the area in about half a second. From the search results it would let me immediately call or get driving directions. This phone takes a long time to read the GPS signal compared to my Voyager, but thats a minor nitpick considering how bad the Voyager is overall.
Also, the VZ Navigator seemed to be a little easier to use and find stuff than the AT&T Navigator, but thats probably just because I am used to Verizons system. I will say that the apps load much faster on the E71x, and thats a huge bonus right there.
The AT&T NAV like most other programs, required me to do a login before I could use them. Thats a huge hassle especially because I havent memorized my own number yet and finding it was a pain.
Like the Voyager on Verizon, most of the multimedia stuff required a download and all the free junk was well, junk. The 200 dollar phone isnt enough, nor is the 70 bucks a month. They want you to pay more and more for everything else. Unfortunately, downloading apps is a pain, even over wifi. Almost everything I tried to do got me the popup error message: "MEdiaNet: No reply gateway". That got annoying after a while. I may need to go back to the store and talk to the dude.
There's something called Cellular Video but it doesnt work.
Whenever I try using an app that requires downloaded data, it always asks me if I wanna use wifi or something else. I have played with plenty of wifi phones and they never bugged me about how I wanted to get data. They would automatically find wifi if it was available, and use whatever they could to get the data. They didnt bug me about the how or why at every turn. This slows down everything I do a great deal. I suspect its AT&T's fault.
In the special Games & Apps folder I have the same problems. Using the two special links to get more apps doesnt work. They freeze up and I have to hit cancel to get out. The games are all demos. They dont have full versions of any basic or simple games. My-Cast weather was already loaded and I dont think I have to pay extra for it. Like all other pre-loaded AT&T programs it only asks me once if I want to allow data and the option for Always Allow is there.
Wait.....
Nevermind. When I tried to exit it said it was a demo version and would expire in 7 days. I dont feel like paying for weather when I can get that for free. Luckliy I already found several free mobile websites for weather and saved their bookmarks. But still, having one program you can access instantly for up to date weather is kinda convenient. I heard that on big screen devices like the N95 and N97 you can have desktop widgets or gadgets that give you realtime weather all day long.
There is a mobile Wikipedia program and that appears to be free. I dont care much for the quality of information in Wiki, but what you do get is well formatted and easy to read. Searching was a snap and results popped up instantly. Again, I could Always Allow data transfer.
The Adobe PDF program looks functional. Doesnt look like it will let me search stuff across the web. Appears to be free. (Which would make sense.)
I had to download the full version of QuickOffice 4 but it looks like its completely free for AT&T customers. I can do Words, Excels, and I think PowerPoints. They constantly push you to pay for version 6. Creating and saving Doc's and Spreadsheets was ridiculously easy. Making Power Points was a bit of a hassle. I cant imagine how I would do this without a huge screen and a mouse, but its there.
Many programs like the Mobile TV and XM radio didnt work. They'd ask to use wifi or 3G for data, then start running, then....... nothing. Nothing happens.
This thing is constantly dropping my Wifi connection, and it seems only certain apps are allowed to use Wifi. And you have to give permission each and every time. And they are still slow, like browsing Reuters in Opera or Media Net.
I liked some things on my Verizon Voyager. When you went to the web it first popped up with a little home screen that had basic stuff without using the fill web. You could easily get weather and Reuters news and other basic things with one-button pushes. Then something changes and Reuters was shoved 3 levels down and everything else became a huge hassle.
When I wanted news on the E71x I had to go to the web browser, go to google, find some mobile news sites (Reuters was the easist), load up their main page, and then start browsing news. Perhaps if I dig around online I can find a quick, easy and free news & weather application. Until then its too slow and too many steps to get basic information. Again I blame AT&T for this. Their own apps are inferior and they make using 3rd party stuff a pain.
The Opera browser is fast and easy to use. Going Back and Forward is fast and has a neat little sliding animation so you know what your doing. But again, the phone wont let you download apps or zip files or anything with Opera. It tries to default to MediaNet when a download is requested and that botches up the process. Installing apps is a pain too. You have to acknowledge and give permission so many times that I suspect most people would give up on all but the easiest programs.
Also, for some strange reason it seems most sites with mobile apps dont look good through a mobile browser. Getting around and finding download links is a real pain in the butt.
I will likely take pics tomorrow, when the sun is out. Or maybe not. Maybe I should take pics right now while its cloudy and there is no glare.
If there is anything specific you guys want me to comment on, please ask.
http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=1659
AT&T only has the black version and while its nice, I would have preferred white or silver.
A full review will be posted in a few days but for now I'll start first impressions.
-Build-
Excellent. Even nicer than the 6301, and I loved that phones body. Very solid and sturdy. Stainless steel over most of it, the few sections with plastic are high quality. Difficult to get battery door off, but it snaps back in solidly. Feels very thin compared to height and width. Slips in and out of my pocket easily. Might be a little heavy for a shirt pocket.
Standard Nokia power button on top. Side volume buttons are small yet easy to push. SD and USB flaps are good quality and easy to open.
Nokia insists on using their special power plug, that skinny little thing which goes into the bottom. I understand there is a charging station available for the phone.
Buttons are small but I have small hands, so pressing them isnt too difficult. They have dedicated @ and . buttons so web browsing and emailing doesnt require extra clicks BUT, the numbers are shifts of the regular keys, so entering numbers while in a text message or email is a hassle.
I like the hard keys for HOME, CALANDER, ADDRESS BOOK, and MESSAGES. Feels like a proper PDA phone. Most others make you play around with soft menus to get those functions. 4 way keypad is easy to use and always registers my presses for ENTER when I want, and never accidentally. The SEND and END buttons as well as the 2 soft keys were actually a little difficult to hit, which is a shame because those are going to be used frequently on this phone.
-Screen-
Nice and big compared to a regular phone, but for a high end smart phone it seems a little small and low-res. You can read the specs on the PhoneScoop page but it will suffice to say that most of the newer Blackberries are better, and thats an important comparison because this device is designed as a BB competitor. It should not be compared to the iPhone or Pre or G1, because that isnt fair. Interestingly it is a 16 million color display (24 bit) as opposed to 65 thousand (16 bit) which is a bit unusual for something thats not an iPhone killer or dedicated multimedia phone. I would have settled for 16 bit so its a pleasant suprise for me.
-Battery-
I just got it this morning but after a few hours of webbing on the Wifi I noticed it didnt kill the battery instantly. Thats nice because other 3G wifi phones often do horrible things to the average cellular battery. There are no true hi-cap batteries available, but spare regular batteries are cheap and plentiful.
Battery meter is pretty on most themes and easy to read. Seems to be fairly accurate.
-Interface/UI-
This is the most important part of a smartphone so I will take my sweet time describing it and make several updates.
Overall its pretty and generally simple to navigate, but I can see the S60 interface is aging poorly. They really need to do some major updating, like Palm did with WebOS on their Pre.
You have to dig through an aweful lot of menus to find and change things. If you are used to Nokias using the S40 or S60 interface it wont be a big deal for you. But I just got my mom a Curve for her birthday (she uses it at her law firm) and was able to play with it for a whole day. While the BlackBerry interface isnt the best in the world I found settings more easily and didnt have to dig through quite as many menus to change things. As an example, on the E71x you have to go MENU -> SETTINGS -> CONFIG ->GENERAL ->PERSONALIZATION ->IDLE SCREEN MODE ->SHORTCUTS just to change the desktop shortcuts. The cool thing is once you put the SETTINGS and THEMES and such on the desktop for easy access, this becomes a little faster.
Also when you change the Idle Screen Theme from Horizontal Icon Bar to Vertical Icon Bar, you get better access to settings right from the desktop. But you wouldnt know that until you dig for this stuff and change it and then go back to look at it.
With the desktop changed to Vetical you get can easily see your main Shortcuts, Calander with upcoming appointments, Music Player, Personalization (which includes all the important shortcuts for Theme, Profile, Wallpaper and changing the top level shortcuts) and finally Wireless wizard. Having quick access to wireless settings is good because you will want to use WIFI as often as possible.
Along those lines, a few nitpicks I have (and there will be many) is the phone almost always asks which type of connection I want to use whenever I browse the web or something. I wish there was some way to tell it to always use available Wifi and not ask me to confirm. Perhaps this option is possible but I would have to dig through the maze of settings to find it.
Setting up email could have been easier because I first had to download the client (which should already be installed) and then set it up and then setup individual accounts. Setting up individual accounts is a pain because it cant be done from the Messages shortcut. You have to dig deep in the phone settings to set up email accounts.
Having said that, it was much easier than Microsoft Outlook and had quick access to my Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. Eventullaly I will also add on my schools email (which is GMAIL based so it should not be difficult). Browsing between email accounts is a breeze, you just push left or right on the D-pad and then up & down to look at individual emails. While looking at an email you can slide back and forth easily to look at others. Deleting emails was easy once I realized the Backspace key on the keyboard was also the delete key for messages.
It had some IM clients like AIM, Windows Live Messenger and YAHOO! Messenger. I understand you can download clients for other IM's and also Twitter and Facebook and such. Apparently these appear on the same list as your email accounts and IM accounts, along with Text and multimedia messaging. Compared to my LG Voyager that made me bounce all around and do different things to access different apps, thats pretty darn convenient. It does not syncronize all contact info into one place like the Pre, but then again this isnt a Pre competitor. I did not use the corporate email client: Mail for Exchange. I have read its pretty easy to use.
More later
-Applications and web browsing-
I had to download the email program, and have been told there are others to get if I feel like searching for them.
The Media Net and Media Mall are a pain to use. They frequently freeze up whether I'm on 3G or wifi. Managed to get Opera Lite and I like it better.
AT&T ships this with several programs, some of which are better than others. Theres a Yellow Pages app that takes a while to load up but once its running it is pretty slick. Its supposed to read your GPS and do searches in the immediate area. Didnt work for me but in the location box I just typed in 20111 and it automatically knew I was talking about the Manassas ZIP code. Found all the Papa Johns in the area in about half a second. From the search results it would let me immediately call or get driving directions. This phone takes a long time to read the GPS signal compared to my Voyager, but thats a minor nitpick considering how bad the Voyager is overall.
Also, the VZ Navigator seemed to be a little easier to use and find stuff than the AT&T Navigator, but thats probably just because I am used to Verizons system. I will say that the apps load much faster on the E71x, and thats a huge bonus right there.
The AT&T NAV like most other programs, required me to do a login before I could use them. Thats a huge hassle especially because I havent memorized my own number yet and finding it was a pain.
Like the Voyager on Verizon, most of the multimedia stuff required a download and all the free junk was well, junk. The 200 dollar phone isnt enough, nor is the 70 bucks a month. They want you to pay more and more for everything else. Unfortunately, downloading apps is a pain, even over wifi. Almost everything I tried to do got me the popup error message: "MEdiaNet: No reply gateway". That got annoying after a while. I may need to go back to the store and talk to the dude.
There's something called Cellular Video but it doesnt work.
Whenever I try using an app that requires downloaded data, it always asks me if I wanna use wifi or something else. I have played with plenty of wifi phones and they never bugged me about how I wanted to get data. They would automatically find wifi if it was available, and use whatever they could to get the data. They didnt bug me about the how or why at every turn. This slows down everything I do a great deal. I suspect its AT&T's fault.
In the special Games & Apps folder I have the same problems. Using the two special links to get more apps doesnt work. They freeze up and I have to hit cancel to get out. The games are all demos. They dont have full versions of any basic or simple games. My-Cast weather was already loaded and I dont think I have to pay extra for it. Like all other pre-loaded AT&T programs it only asks me once if I want to allow data and the option for Always Allow is there.
Wait.....
Nevermind. When I tried to exit it said it was a demo version and would expire in 7 days. I dont feel like paying for weather when I can get that for free. Luckliy I already found several free mobile websites for weather and saved their bookmarks. But still, having one program you can access instantly for up to date weather is kinda convenient. I heard that on big screen devices like the N95 and N97 you can have desktop widgets or gadgets that give you realtime weather all day long.
There is a mobile Wikipedia program and that appears to be free. I dont care much for the quality of information in Wiki, but what you do get is well formatted and easy to read. Searching was a snap and results popped up instantly. Again, I could Always Allow data transfer.
The Adobe PDF program looks functional. Doesnt look like it will let me search stuff across the web. Appears to be free. (Which would make sense.)
I had to download the full version of QuickOffice 4 but it looks like its completely free for AT&T customers. I can do Words, Excels, and I think PowerPoints. They constantly push you to pay for version 6. Creating and saving Doc's and Spreadsheets was ridiculously easy. Making Power Points was a bit of a hassle. I cant imagine how I would do this without a huge screen and a mouse, but its there.
Many programs like the Mobile TV and XM radio didnt work. They'd ask to use wifi or 3G for data, then start running, then....... nothing. Nothing happens.
This thing is constantly dropping my Wifi connection, and it seems only certain apps are allowed to use Wifi. And you have to give permission each and every time. And they are still slow, like browsing Reuters in Opera or Media Net.
I liked some things on my Verizon Voyager. When you went to the web it first popped up with a little home screen that had basic stuff without using the fill web. You could easily get weather and Reuters news and other basic things with one-button pushes. Then something changes and Reuters was shoved 3 levels down and everything else became a huge hassle.
When I wanted news on the E71x I had to go to the web browser, go to google, find some mobile news sites (Reuters was the easist), load up their main page, and then start browsing news. Perhaps if I dig around online I can find a quick, easy and free news & weather application. Until then its too slow and too many steps to get basic information. Again I blame AT&T for this. Their own apps are inferior and they make using 3rd party stuff a pain.
The Opera browser is fast and easy to use. Going Back and Forward is fast and has a neat little sliding animation so you know what your doing. But again, the phone wont let you download apps or zip files or anything with Opera. It tries to default to MediaNet when a download is requested and that botches up the process. Installing apps is a pain too. You have to acknowledge and give permission so many times that I suspect most people would give up on all but the easiest programs.
Also, for some strange reason it seems most sites with mobile apps dont look good through a mobile browser. Getting around and finding download links is a real pain in the butt.
I will likely take pics tomorrow, when the sun is out. Or maybe not. Maybe I should take pics right now while its cloudy and there is no glare.
If there is anything specific you guys want me to comment on, please ask.
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