I Love My New Nokia E71

Quick Summary: Not only do I love my new Nokia E71 smartphone, I am also writing this post on it.

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Nokia E71 smartphone

I’ll not have access to a PC for almost a fortnight, starting August 1, and I was really worried – no blogging for a fortnight! – until I tried blogging from my new Nokia E71 smartphone.

I’m writing this post on my E71 on a Vodaphone GPRS connection.

It’s not the same as writing on a laptop, of course. The WordPress administrative interface took a couple of minutes to load, the qwerty keyboard is a little cramped, I can’t cut and copy text and doing fancy formatting is somewhat cumbersome.

However, the page download speed is only a little slower than the speed on the Tata Huawei data card attached to my laptop. My typing speed is already quite nifty after a day of playing around with the E71 and I have made almost no typos in the entire post. The qwerty keyboard, in spite of its tiny size, is easy to get used to. The screen resolution is wide enough, without being a wow! factor, and the navigation is never confusing, even if it is sometimes cumbersome. If I really want to, I can even do some really fancy formatting, with a little effort.

Before I tried blogging on the E71, I had spent part of the day surfing the web on it. Most of my usual haunts – GMail, GoogleReader, Facebook and Twitter – work well on the E71, as does search.

The E71 is so internet focused that it seems that the music and the camera functions are an afterthought. But I anyways prefer to use my iPod and Nikon D40 for listening to music and shooting pictures, so that’s ok. The E71 works perfectly for what it’s supposed to do – be a productivity tool.

By the way, I almost forgot to mention that, with its sleek metallic design, the E71 is one stylish productivity tool!

Published on July 18, 2008 in Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .. View Comments
  • Mark
    "I can’t cut and copy text"

    Select text by hitting shift and using the control pad thing. Then you just use ctrl+c, ctrl+v and ctrl+x like on a PC for copy, paste and cut. ctrl is the second function on the "Chr" key at the bottom right of the keyboard.
  • @Kiran: I really want the iPhone 3G but there's the little question of AT&T;'s 2 year contract. Plus, I have to return my office phone tomorrow and I would have been without a phone for two weeks.

    @Balaji: Thanks for the WPhone tip. Wordpress now has an iPhone app. It will be interesting to see if it works on my Nokia E71.

    @Hari: Yes, the Nokia E71 has totally changed how I create and consume content. I'm now accessing my feeds and e-mails almost entirely on the phone.

    @Kaustav: Dude! The bluetooth keyboard totally rocks!

    @Olaf: Yes, I had heard about the E61i's slow processor. E71 is usually great, but the GMail app hangs sometime.

    @Amit: Like there's no end to acquisition, there's no end to relinquishment too, and the only absolute ideal in both cases is to give up your life for your pursuit.

    When I watched 'Into the Wild', I felt fake. My own experiment seemed but a shadow in front of the extremes to which Chris went.

    So, of course, my off consumption experiment is fake.

    But it's fake because I need a (any) mobile phone to begin with, not because I want a high-end smartphone like Nokia E71.

    It's a version of the breakfast cereal argument I once had with a reader: if I consider breakfast cereal to be a necessity, I might as well buy the high-end, branded version that I like, instead of the cheap store brand version that tastes terrible to me.

    From the beginning, my experiment has been about wanting fewer things, not cheaper things. There's a difference between the two, even though it's a subtle one sometimes.
  • not quite off consumption, I gather. and unwilling to clarify too.

    bright.
  • whatever happened to off-consumption? :\
  • Olaf
    I'm still using the E71's predecessor, the Nokia E61i, and it's been invaluable as a productivity tool! Use it for everything from browsing, to email, instant messaging, video, social networking tools and even some word processing.

    I have also added a bluetooth Garmin GPS receiver, which works wonders with the Nokia car windscreen mount.

    Its only drawback is the slow processor, which leaves a little to be desired...
  • That's an excellent phone. I use a Nokia N82 with a Bluetooth keyboard which is excellent for typing a lot of text very fast. Not so relevant for you on the E71 as it has a QWERTY keyboard but the layout and size of the BT keyboard is very nice. Works particulaly well for bloggers using a non-QWERTY phone. Here's a photo:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/astrolondon/264286...
  • My brother recently bought this phone. As you said, its truly a wonderful stylish productivity tool!!
  • Ever since I heard about this phone about 6 months back, I've been in love with it! Eagerly waiting for the day when my current contract expires and I can upgrade.. although I don't really have a good data plan to go with the phone :(

    RE: Wordpress on your phone - check out WPhone. Although optimized for the iPhone, it works very well even otherwise.
  • Considering that you are moving to the US in another 20 days...don't you think buying an iPhone 3G in the US would have been a better choice?

    And even Nokia E71 would have come at a much cheaper rate with a one year contract here!
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