Now keep in mind, I’m a full-time student, so this isn’t going to be a full, professional review. I’m doing this review, courtesy of WomWorld Nokia (www.womworld.com).
I got my Nokia E71x (AT&T locked) in the mail via DHL today (Friday, August 14, 2009).
It came in a big plastic bag-type container, with the phone in its box and the return paperwork separately inside.
Once I took the device out of its packaging, I plugged it in to charge the battery. One thing, though- I do wish that Nokia made their charger prong a little bit larger; this style of charger looks like it could be bent easily. But, I had no problems with the charger. This is just a very minor thought.
Once powered on, the screen is very bright, and colors show up easily. One thing: I do like the glowing border around the center selection button when the phone is on standby. It’s a nice touch when I’m in a dark room.
The keyboard is a standard 4-row QWERTY, with the keys evenly spaced out. When pressed down, they provide a very tactile feel. I like keys that actually feel like they’re being pressed, and have a slightly audible “click”. The Nokia E71x achieves this just fine. When typing fast, however, I have found that my accuracy on this keyboard decreases until I slow down and focus on hitting the right keys.
The phone feels very nice in my hand, and its weight is just right. It’s not too heavy, but it feels very sturdy and able to be used in today’s ongoing lifestyle. The metal battery cover is nice; I do appreciate that. It adds to the phone’s comfortable weight.
Battery life was pretty good, probably better than most of the smart phones I’ve used. Using wifi and 3G extensively used the battery pretty slowly. Fully charged, it lasted about 6 days, though I assume it’s going to go down once I more extensively test the actual phone feature.
EDIT: with moderate phone usage, and wifi/3G, I was able to get about 3-4 days out of a full battery.
Web browsing using the wifi connection in my apartment was smooth and relatively fast. I like the cursor on the screen, and the fact that it fades after a bit, to make the screen easier to read. Viewing videos on YouTube was easy to do, and the videos show up fairly clear on the E71x’s screen. However, I did notice a slight lag between the audio and video that is not present when viewing the video on a regular computer. This was present while using both wifi and 3G, but I suspect this is because I don’t have a MicroSD card for best performance, like it suggests.
I do like the data counter in the upper right-hand corner, displaying how much data has been used. That’s nice because it helps users keep track of their data usage for their plans. On another note, I found it slightly frustrating that after entering a web address in the browser, I couldn’t go to it by simply pressing the “enter” key, like I do on other phones and computers.
Camera quality was above average, in my opinion. I took pictures and videos in a variety of light conditions, and the E71x performed to my (albeit modest) expectations. In the picture below, I found that the lamp didn’t completely block out the other objects in low light. Video capture and playback did not lag that much, as is common with other phones with this feature.
Overall, the Nokia E71x is a solid smart phone, and would be a good choice for someone who is looking for a multi-tasking workhorse. At $99.99 after mail in rebate (and $299.99 out of contract), the price is at the low end of the spectrum of smart phones with the same capability.
