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Nokia E71 is made in a candy bar form factor, coming equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. It closely follows the steps of its predecessor, Nokia E61i. The handset had shrunk to a mere 10 mm of thickness, at the same time retaining the full width, which makes it feel even more comfortable in the hand. However this comes at a price: the screen size has been reduced to a diagonal of 2.36 inches (Nokia E61i had a 2.8” screen). Making a comparison between E71 and E61i it’s important to say that the serious cut in overall size, especially thickness, that E71 got is an extremely generous compensation for the cut in screen size. The ergonomics has in fact increased. The assembly quality is on the highest level, no part feels loose, the handset feels like a monolith. The battery bay cover is in fact a thick plate of stainless steel, you have to press quite hard on the two locks on both sides of the casing in order to loosen and remove it.
 
According to Nokia managers’ statements, Nokia E71 was intentionally designed for providing maximal comfort to people who give their preferences to one-handed text input, and practice proves this to the limit. E71 isn’t too handy when it comes to two-handed text input, but all the single handers get a real reason to rejoice. The button size is still the same with Nokia E61i, though the slightly reduced width did away with the inter-button spaces, the keys are packed tightly one to another. The buttons are shaped in a manner reminiscent of E61i, but the material of which they’re made is closer to what E61 had. The plastic feels harder and not as comfortable. The number of buttons remains unchanged – that’s the very QWERTY keyboard that you had a chance to see in Nokia E61i… save for a few smaller features. For example, switching to low-case letters is now done by pressing the bottom left button. However the changes are so negligible that it takes less than several minutes to get used to them.
The new product is based on the same platform with Nokia E51, powered by a Freescale chip operating at a frequency of 369 Mhz, which provides more performance than the predecessor had. A nice addition, surely, is the high-quality 3.2 Mp auto-focusing camera that is capable of recording VGA videos at 22 FPS and is equipped with a LED flash.
 
Shifting the spotlight to the software side, we see Nokia E71 based on S60 3rd Edition FP1, boosted with a few positive tweaks uncommon to other devices stemming from the same platform revision. For instance, it’s possible to switch between different desktop modes: Business and Standard. Each mode has a unique theme and a configurable set of applications which submit data to the desktop window indicators. During standby, pressing the navigation button brings up a large clock. Among the rest of miscellaneous features of Nokia E71 are a 2.5 mm audio jack, a microUSB slot and an onboard GPS receiver. Despite of the decrease in dimensions, the same old type of battery is used, providing a 1500 mAh of power, which stands for a five-day continuous use cycle under a moderate workload.
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Nokia E71 at Smape.com – live action video
As a brief conclusion, we want to check out that E71 is more than just a successful sequel to E61i. The new fascinating possibilities work perfectly in a combination with amazingly small dimensions, cleanly outweighing the inconveniency of a relatively small screen. The actual handiness of the QWERTY keyboard is still disputable. One-handed input is now greatly improved, but devoted two-handers might experience the opposite experience. All in all, the handset turns out to be a very nice solution bound to succeed on the market, effectively being the best smartphone with a full-sized, conventional QWERTY keyboard. Be prepared for the full Nokia E71 review coming the few next days.
Specifications:
• Networks: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100
• Screen: TFT, 16M colors, 320 x 240 resolution, 2,36''
• ОС: Symbian OS 9.2, S60 v3.1 UI
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, IRdA, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (A2DP)
• Camera: 3,2 Mp, auto-focusing, LED flash, VGA video acquisition at 22 FPS
• Multimedia: MP3 player, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, FM/RDS
• Navigation: GPS & A-GPS
• Battery: BP-4L 1500 mAh
• Size: 114x57x10 mm
• Weight: 127 g
Author: Anton Spiridonov, editor@smape.com SMAPE.com
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