Having set a general tune within this rather narrow segment, Nokia took to experimenting with product parameters: mainly form factor and size. By the end of this year, a side-slider equipped with a QWERTY keyboard is going to enter the market, following the idea of HTC S730 Wings; this is Nokia’s first attempt of experimental design in this sector, so we wouldn’t expect too much functionality from this product (at least it wouldn’t exceed the capabilities of the currently available solutions, save for a likely firmware update). As for the retired E61(i), Nokia E71 has come to replace it in the established role. One of the obstacles which originally prevented the series from reaching a mass-scale level of sales was the somewhat uncomfortable width of the handsets; the hardcore enthusiasts rather profited from it, because it contributed to the comfort of continuous two-handed input (imagine you spend an hour a day typing messages and e-mails on your smartphone – that’s the thing), but the less techy buyers were partially repulsed by a size bigger than available solutions had (you wouldn’t want to carry something bulky in your pocket for 24/7 if you only type a few messages per day – here’s the back surface of the coin) Nokia E71 is meant as a compromise aimed at resolving the situation and keeping the old audience while attracting masses previously unconcerned with this product family. It’s estimated that the majority of people who bought E61(i) will switch to E71, and a new audience equaling to around 30% of the currently established one will join them in enjoying the new handset by Nokia.

	Nokia Е71 specifications
Supported Networks:	EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS/HSDPA 850/2100
Storage:	120 Mb of user memory, a microSD expansion slot, a 2Gb card bundled.
Screen:	2,4" , QVGA (240х320), 16M
Connectivity:	USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, A2DP support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Camera:	3,2 Mp (up to 1536x2048), AF, flash
Battery:	BP-4L 3.7V 1500 mAh up to 10,5 hours of talktime up to 410 hours of standby
Size:	114 x 57 x 10 mm
Weight:	127 g
Guiding price:	€350

Indeed, Nokia succeeded in doing magic of sorts. A tiny feat of magic: the new gadget is the smallest existing QWERTY smartphone available from today’s market. As compared to E61i, the new phone was considerably shrunk in size to a point where it literally sinks into your palm and doesn’t reveal its presence in the pocket neither visually nor to the touch. Still the thickness is very balanced with the other dimensions.

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Design and ergonomics

I’ve been having a Nokia E61i since the official announce day, so this article is going to be a pure comparison between the two. The continuity of tradition is something that the users of E61(i) would most care for, in fact the successiveness ratio is something close to 95%. A few positive changes to ergonomics were introduced alongside.

The size of the smartphone is 114x57x10 mm – a very slender build for a device with such prominent specifications. The dimensions are very balanced, the mobile is comfortable to wield single-handedly. One finger is enough for basic input like navigation and message typing, so you no longer to do sophisticated acrobatics in order to get anywhere, every button is reachable without shifting the phone up or down the palm. Some people complained about the large space below the keypad, which in opinion actually serves to the user’s advantage, reducing the risks of accidentally dropping the phone and increasing the comfort of handling the bottom row of buttons.

The materials and their quality are another big plus. Nokia E71 has slightly more metal pieces than the predecessor, though the distribution of these inserts is more reasonable. For example, Nokia E61i will eventually suffer cracks and splits around the top corners and the sharp edge below the keyboard – all these parts are covered with paint; this paint was several times more wear-resistant than the kind used in Nokia E65, but even it couldn’t endure a long period of active usage. E71 has all these spots replaced with a plating of stainless steel, all the angles rounded so there are no sharp edges any more. Hence no splits or cracks. The small plastic piece on the back surface isn’t painted, thus the maximum damage it could suffer is just a worn spot; you will never see a material of another color surface from underneath. The plastic is very firm, of a high quality, with a silver-colored glare. By the way, there are alternate colors available, in which the smartphone is issued: black and white. The different coloring is applied to plastic elements including keyboard and also affects the etching texture on the back surface: the black one sports a dotted pattern, the white has thin stripes. Both colors look good, but personally I would prefer the white version, it appears as if conjured from the air. The black one looks too mean and sober to challenge the charisma of its white counterpart. The etching covering the back metal surface helps to disguise scratches, Nokia E61i apparently had a less practical approach to the issue – its smooth matte surface would never work as well.

Let’s look what kind of stuff is nested there on the handset edge. The memory card slot is now located outside, covered with a protective flap. There on the same left edge is found the microUSB slot, covered with a similar flap. These two flaps are made from a material of a controversial quality: too soft, which may result in looseness in the long run. The infrared port is obviously an archaic element, only present in the model to satisfy the keen on tech and to comply with the business standards which seem to be lagging behind the time. The bottom edge has a wrist band hole (a nice addition) and a charger slot (2 mm). The right edge is where you will find the 2.5 mm headset slot (no standard 3.5 mm jack adapter is to be found in the sales package, so you will have to buy that yourself). A bit lower you will see the volume controls and the voice control / voice recorder activation key. The upper edge is the home to a speaker shielded with a wire mesh and the power button. Surprisingly there no dedicated camera launch button, the focusing is done by pressing the central OK button, like in Nokia 8800 Arte.

The back surface hosts the camera block: the 3.2 Mp auto-focusing unit itself, a flash and an self portrait mirror (how come? in a business smartphone!). The battery bay cover is fixed by two locks on each side, so any looseness is excluded. The interior surface of the cover has a padding of sorts, which tightly press against the battery. That’s why in general Nokia E71 produces the feel of a monolith being, the quality of assembly and materials is almost unmatched (still mind the weak plastic flaps). That’s an appreciable advantage even over the very high quality of E61i:

That’s all as far as the materials go, not let’s pass on to the rest of the features.

Screen

Unfortunately, the screen size was sacrificed to improve the overall ergonomics through a general handset shrinking. Fortunately, it doesn’t cripple the usability as much as some might think. Okay, it’s a bit less comfortable to read books and it’s not so good for web browsing. ICQ feels like it felt before with E61(i). But in a general sense, a smaller screen size hardly pretends to be a real downside – the rest of the functions and applications work just as fine as they used to on a larger screen and you get no real discomfort.

The screen matrix displays more quality, the color palette is closer to life, the maximum brightness level is even higher. The picture is smooth, crisp and shows no signs of pixelization.

The screen is no longer sunk into the casing, so this non-existent niche will never make home to dust, it’s easier to wipe and doesn’t ask for a protective film to be applied to (the native one, which comes with the product in the box, is already attached to the screen and seems to be very durable, at least it feels like one bought and applied manually). The protective screen is so firm that a heavy tap on it doesn’t make the LCD beneath go ripples. The screen framing looks like polished mirror, and therefore is rather prone to dirt, though that’s none of a big deal. The screen behaves nicely in the sun, the information stays perfectly legible.

Keypad

This is probably the most important section of the whole article. Initially I thought that the keypad was ungodly severed; for a few minutes I hesitated whether I should switch from E61i to N71 at all. Practice proved the contrary. In real life, the new keypad works just as fine as long as you keep in mind that it was tailored for single-handed wielding, and now you can type anything using nothing but your thumb. Still you will have to engage the second hand to switch the button combinations, and the upper case letters are a compromise: they take two taps each, but this is still easily achievable with the sole thumb of the palm holding the phone.

Convicted two-handers will probably be disappointed: the greatly reduced width in a way tells us that a second hand is a wrong addition to the scene due to the lack of space; the buttons are tightly packed in a block without any intermediate spacing, so the risk of stray keystrokes is especially high with two hands.

The button material was switched; they now have a shape reminiscent of Nokia E61i – bulging, easy to feel, yet the button plastic feels more like E61. It’s harder and less comfortable to touch, a bit more slippery, the thumb slips over to a neighboring button at times. It is hardly explainable from the positions of reason why on earth they decided to replace the bright blue key markings seen in E61i with some bleak grey stuff, but this is the way things are. Now let’s talk about the functional aspect of the keyboard.

These are the principal things you should always keep in mind. It’s up to you to decide if the keyboard is worse or better than in E61(i), but my only real problem were the merged Ctrl and Chr which require constant switching between upper and lower keys, the rest of changes have a zero learning curve to say honestly. The old keypad of E61 still seems to me a better solution, yet my thumb came on terms with the E71 keyboard very shortly, so I’m content with it: among the latest QWERTY-based market entries, this keyboard cleanly wins the first place in terms of comfortable operation.

The keypad has a white even backlight, everything is perfectly visible in the dark.

What have we got for a navigation block? It became for more functional, there are no slightest faults on this front at all. The E-series now has Nokia’s traditional ying&yang symbol replaced with an icon looking very similar to a neat cottage, effectively being a version of Microsoft’s generic Home icon. Pressing it will instantly bring your to the desktop from any application, a second press will bring up the menu.

In addition to the standard set of keys, Nokia E71 offers a few ‘One Touch’ buttons working as customizable application shortcut. They surround the navigation button (just like in Nokia E71), its size and tightness are quite balanced for quick and easy operation. The associated applications are Calendar, Contact Book, Messages. You can easily rebind the buttons so they would call on something else, an option unthinkable of in E65. The buttons response to instant and prolonged pressing in different ways, and both types of response are configurable. Thus, a button may launch Application X on a quick tap and a totally different Application Y if you hold it pressed a few moments longer. In this way, three One Touch buttons works as six different shortcuts.

In the middle of the navigation button sits the missed event indicator. It doesn’t just flicker in an idle manner, like in N78, but when you see it flicker you get to know that an event was left unattended, something like a missed call, a missed incoming message, an MMS or an e-mail – a total of four kinds of events. If an event is missed, the indicator starts winking at you every 5 minutes or 2 hours, or at any other interval between these two extreme values, configurable in the settings. Disgracing all the rumors, I also have to add that there’s no Navi Wheel just because it’s simply non-existent in this model.

Battery

The handset utilizes a standard BP-4L battery with a capacity of 1500 mAh, which is a nice score for a smartphone as slim as 10 mm. The battery is the same one passed down from Nokia E61i, fortunately it wasn’t affected by the all-embracing shrinking which made almost every other part smaller. As promised by Nokia, the mobile can endure up to 10.5 hours of GSM talktime, which is equal to 17 days of standby. An average duty cycle (an hour of talks, four hours of mp3 music, a hour of fiddling with the camera, menus and miscellaneous features) lasted for about three days before the phone asked for a charge-up. That’s quite fair for this type of hardware and battery, and is slightly better than the predecessor’s result.

Model	Nokia Е71	Nokia E61i
Regular Duty	3,5 days	3,5 days
Multimedia cycle, video (3GP)	3:45	3:12
Multimedia cycle, audio (MP3)	13:20	10:10
GPS	6:45	-

Connectivity

The model offers a wide range of communication features. The smartphone has a data cable microUSB slot, a 2.5 mm headset jack and a slim charger slot. The USB version is 2.0, the Mass Storage mode is fully supported – adding another option to the general choice of the connection type: Mass Storage / PC Suite / Media Transfer / Connect PC to Web. Both the memory card and onboard storage are available in any of the modes. Even if engaged in Mass Storage mode, the phone retains the full functionality and may be used in any other way simultaneously.

Nokia E71 is designed to function in EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks as well as WCDMA 850/2100, unsurprisingly. HSDPA is supported. On the whole, the device has a very rich pool of connectivity features, everything necessary including even the not-so-necessary infrared port.

According to the specification sheet, the Bluetooth version is 2.0 + EDR, all the generic profiles are supported:

• A2DP
• Audio/Video Remote Control
• Basic Imaging
• Dial-up Networking
• File Transfer
• Generic Access
• Generic Object Exchange
• Handsfree
• Headset
• HID
• Object Push
• SIM Access
• Serial Port

The support for the A2DP profile allows for a wireless stereo headset to be used with the device, and in practice this works just as well as supposed.

The Bluetooth data transfer rate reaches 130 Kb/s. The Bluetooth device visibility period is configurable with the limit of one hour, the least possible value being one minute.

A Wi-Fi b/g support is commonly found in business smartphones, a rule to which E71 is not an exception. The WLAN availability check can be done automatically every 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes if configured accordingly in the options; the corresponding status icon is displayed at the top of the screen. These network checks drain the battery power, so excessive checking is not always advisable, to say the least. The WLAN Wizard is a simple yet effective application which helps to configure a network connection as quickly as possible. The available security standards are WEP, WPA, WPA 2. IP telephony is a technology which uses to transfer voice signal and data through the networks utilizing the IP protocol, in our case this stands for a walkie-talkie functionality: the phone is available to broadcast the signal not only over GSM/3G networks, but using a local Wi-Fi connection as well. This is implemented through the use of SIP protocol, developed by the MMUSIC (Multipart Multimedia Session Control) expert group of the IETF committee (Internet Engineering Task Force). The available settings are switching between automatic and manual VoIP system login, a choice between GSM and IP networks to set as the default signal carrier on pressing the Dial button.

A SIP address is the new field which every contact record has in the phonebook. According to the SIP protocol specifications, four alternate spellings are allowed:

Performance and memory.

The performance rates of Nokia E71 is practically identical to the rest of the company’s smartphones based off the single-chip ARM11 platform running 369 MHz CPUs. That’s a long leap forward from the results of Nokia E61/E61i. The difference in speed is so pronounced that you can’t force yourself to use E61/E61i once again after you’ve switched to E71. Messages, menus, gallery pages, phonebook and the rest of standard windows open up almost instantly. The low performance was the weakest spot of E61/E61, which is gone for good in E71.

Model	Nokia Е71	Nokia E61i
Jbenchmark 1.0.1 Score	5753	3476
Text	1653	964
2D Shapes	1386	890
3D Shapes	796	487
Fill Rate	359	220
Animation	1559	915
Jbenchmark 2.0.1 Score	592	263
Image Manipulations	375	205
Text	684	313
Sprites	463	281
3D Transform	946	547
User Interface	644	126
Jbenchmark 3D HQ	192	115
Jbenchmark 3D LQ	372	210
Triangles ps	60706	39386
KTexels ps	3623	1224
Jbenchmark HD Gaming Score	1506 (5.0 fps)	92 (3.1 fps)
Smooth triangles	113635	66126
Textured triangles	94297	55621
Fill rate, KTexels	2216	1383

The model runs one of the latest versions of the Symbian operating system – 9.2, S60v3 FP1 to say more precisely. Fast but is not supported, though even regular booting takes mere 20 seconds.

Of the overall 128 Mb of RAM, 70 Mb are available to the user after the operating system has booted up. Nokia 6220 Classic, N78 score the same results, that’s an amount of memory which is enough in most situations. The Heap Size and Jar Size per a launched application are unlimited. The amount of ROM storage amounts to 256 Mb, half of which is occupied by the OS files and programs, and the other half is free for recording user data.

Software implementation

Nokia E66 and E71 are the last Feature Pack 1 smartphones, all the following models being based off FP2. Is it too big a reason for getting up set? Perhaps so. Feature Pack 2 has a lot of cool things and fixes to old problems included, along with a set of nice additions and changes to the interface. You will be missing that with E71. On the other hand there are a few features not even included in FP2, which you get with the ‘outdated’ E71. For example, the customizable missed event indicator, new options for the phonebook and a revamped desktop…

…Not the whole desktop, but the new alternate modes available for it. There are two optional ways of setting up your desktop: personal and business. Nothing extraordinary, but the usability is greatly improved. The thing is: each of the modes has a configurable set of desktop shortcuts, a unique configuration of the active standby mode, an independent interface theme and wallpaper. The default Business configuration includes everything which has to do with business: e-mail, Wi-Fi, VoIP, Search shortcuts, the active standby mode is configured to display data from the PIM, Tasklist and two selected e-mail accounts.

In the personal mode, the desktop isn’t so crowded with indicators, most reminders are turned off. Either desktop mode is fully customizable: feel free to change the shortcuts and turn on and off any available feature. Switching between the two modes takes less than two seconds; the Switch Mode action shortcut is found thrice: in the Customization tab, in the main menu and on the desktop itself, neighboring other shortcut on the shortcut bar. Very convenient, yet I can hardly imagine a person switching between the two modes all the time.

Now let’s see what’s there in Home Screen, the new approach to your phone’s standby mode. The actual state of things now comes much closer to what the word ‘desktop’ is supposed to say – in addition to the application shortcuts, a variety of everyday tools were added there to minimize the user’s efforts at controlling every aspect of their mobile life… here come various plugins, an IP telephony toolbox, a voice mail manager, an e-mail manager and such like things. Once properly configured, the plugin windows become minimized; an unwanted plugin window can also be hidden manually by pressing the Delete button. The menu button now stands for Home Screen, pressing it, - quite expectedly, - brings you back to he Desktop and not to the phone menu, as it used to be. Pressing it for a second time however will bring up the menu, if you are already on the desktop. This approach seems to me more user-friendly than the traditional one, I’d say the manufacturers will eventually adopt the same desktop design which will come to dominate on the market in the foreseeable future.

One of the bars available in the active standby mode is the Search bar, combining web search and internal storage search functions. The application interface is slightly changed from what is seen on other smartphones by the company, but the essence remains the same. Search can be done applying a number of categories, e.g. across the web or in one’s own, locally stored content, in the messages, in the calendar events and so on. In some sense the application is analogous to the Smart Search function of Samsung phones. Indeed this is a very smart feature, now always at hand on the active standby screen.

The bottom part of the screen is where the three small icons are shown during standby, acting as indicators for missed calls, text and voice messages. That’s an add-on of sorts to the active standby mode, which is independent from the contents of Feature Pack 1 or 2; it’s only available with the E71 and E66 smartphone models, but is expected to be feature in a number of future models. Pointing at either icon shows the number of calls, the caller’s name, part of the message text and exact delivery time. The same applies to voice messages. These icons can be optionally hidden, though it’s better to keep them on the desktop – since they’re extremely useful.Just like in other devices based off the S60 platform, the navigation can be done through the means of voice control which quickly adapts to your voice without any learning stage, however the adaptation can be turned off in the setting which would prove useful in case the phone is used by several people. The voice control mode is activated by holding the right functional button. There are five applications on the default shortcut list (Modes, Mailbox, Bluetooth, Voice Recorder and Camera) but in fact any other application form an exhaustive list can be added. Also there’s an option to read aloud your messages and two alternate voices available (Martin and Ellen), the speech speed and volume can be adjusted to the user’s liking.

There are four interface themes available, all sporting solid yet pleasing looks. The set of icons the same for all the themes; the icons looked to me a bit bleak and unoriginal.

The phonebook implementation won’t be reviewed in this article, everything is just the same as in a dozen other smartphones based off FP1. Save for a small exception which I will mention. Pop-up windows now appear while viewing the contact list, etc. To the side of each person’s name a small arrow icon is shown, pressing the right arrow brings up a pop-up menu of actions. That’s quite convenient since the main window doesn’t vanish.

PIM and Office Applications

Unfortunately the PIM has remained the same original application available on most S60 FP1 smartphones. The calendar and the tasklist had its interface slightly changed, but there are no global improvements at all.

The measure converter and calculator have a standard implementation. The converter can handle different measures of weight, length, area and so on; the calculator can handle the most basic arithmetic but little more.

The alarm clock has quite a number of settings as compared to what we had in pre-FP1 devices like Nokia E61i. Besides a one-time signal, the alarm clock supports a schedule on a weekday basis, the signals can be one-time and repeating, it’s possible to set a signal to be played once a week or daily, on a specified weekday only, on workdays or on weekends. Although the application doesn’t allow configuring a signal to be played on a manually selected number of days, limiting the user to the options listed above. There’s an option to set any weekday save for Sunday as a workday. Any custom ringtone can be used for an alarm clock signal.

There are four viewmodes available for the calendar: by month, by week, by day (an hourly schedule is available in the latter mode) and also by associated tasks: a comprehensive tasklist is shown on the screen, listing all the events and the expiration dates in a chronological fashion; a list of incomplete tasks is shown on the desktop in the active standby mode, each event type indicated with a different icon. There’s an option to wipe the expired events (all or those preceding a specified date)

Four types of events can be associated with a particular date: meeting, reminder, anniversary or task. Upon adding a new event, the user is asked to specify the place/subject, start and end time and/or date, alarm signal, repeating signal, synchronization type (personal / shared), everything looks very simple yet efficient. Once an event is specified, a colored corner is added to the date record which displays a pop-up with detailed description if you hover the cursor over it; if you jump to a specified date, a full schedule for that date is shown. Upon adding a new event, a reminder signal can be set to play daily, weekly, once in a fortnight, etc. Also you are prompted to specify an expiration date for the signal – once the day comes, the reminder deactivates itself.

The office applications are in essence the classical QuickOffice for viewing Microsoft Office files: Word(*.doc), Excel (*.xls), PowerPoint(*.ptt). A number of Office versions are supported Office (97, 2000, and XP) though the compatibility doesn’t embrace all the existing versions. The document editing functionality is included.

An enhanced support for user groups is one of the most significant improvements, a separate Groups manager application is now available to the user which allows for an easier control over contact management - this part of the device's functionality is way more advanced than similar features in other phones. The user can Create, Delete, Edit or perform five types of Actions: Call, New Message, Group Web Page, PIT and teleconference. The further logics hiding between this idea is pretty clear: the Call is used for making successive calls the group member in order to connect all of them into a common pool of teleconference participants (the maximum number of participants is limited by the technical specifications of the local mobile network), the New Message serves as a mass mailer delivering messages to all the members of the group (a single SMS to all to all them simultaneously, for instance), the Group Web Page selects the shortcut to the group's dedicated web page from the Bookmarks menu.

Similar to Nokia E90, this phone supports the Active Notes application, which is a further step on the way of making the interaction between human and machine not only more efficient, but also more comfortable and natural. It's a serious business application after all, a certain part of the audience won't take much interest in it, but the opportunities granted by it definitely shouldn't be neglected in this review. So, the Notes found in many a device before were no more than text files with the set of options limited to Print and Send, while Active Notes allows for almost any type of multimedia object to be inserted into a note's body: images, audio and video files, you clients' and partners' biz cards and what not - the output data is wrapped into a HTML file. Such an expanded can be viewed with a web browser or sent by SMS (in this case only the text part of the Note is sent), MMS, Bluetooth or the IrDA. The Notes Manager lets you move them from the SIM card memory to the phone memory and back again, move them between folders, create custom folders. A note can be associated with a record from your phonebook or even a group of contacts (only one Note can be associated with a record, if you further try doing this with another Note you'll be prompted to specify another contact record(s) to associate it with since the selected one is already 'occupied') The corresponding menu item in the application settings menu lets you choose the type of storage used, the view mode (list or icons), note display status during a call (once you activate the Note icon, a special symbol pops up nearby, showing that it's associated with a particular contact).

The voice recorder is of the standard type common to many Nokia handsets, it’s very simple to handle; there’s no maximum record length limit (Nokia E61i had a limit of one minute). The only customizable setting is the data storage location. The record quality is pretty high. The voice recorder can record phone talks; the record start button is located on the right edge of the casing.

There’s an automated dictionary/translator application available, which can also pronounce the selected word. The font size is adjustable in this application as well.

Nokia Web Browser

One of the main features brought to you by the FP1 update is the availability of an improved web browser. The famed Konqueror project was laid in the base of this version of the browser, which was also engaged in creation of Apple’s Safari Web Browser. NokiaWeb browser offers every feature necessary for comfortable web surfing: HTML 4.01 (full support for tables, frames, forms), JavaScripts 1.5, CSS 1 and 2, RSS. Depending on the region of sale, different language packages are integrated into the btowser.

The following graphics formats are supported by the application: GIF, JPEG, BMP, WBMP, PNG. The audio file support includes MIDI, WAV, MP3, ACC, EACC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, Real Audio. The browser makes use of the native security protocols and algorithms of S60 and Symbian OS.

A web page can be viewed in the minimap mode, the red square indicating the area to which you will skip on returning back to the 100% viewing scale. The browser sports a good performance in this mode, only taking about two seconds to load the minimap in detail. A certain setting lets the minimap to be shown on the screen during page scrolling on top of the main image. In this case you can comfortable scroll through the page seeing your exact position, the minimap in this mode is semi-transparent. Just as in other smartphones, a quick setting access panel (which can be optionally hidden) serves to let you into the options with maximum speed and easy.

The History log enjoys a stylish implementation, the earlier visited pages all are given tiny previews, each preview window comes with a header to make recognition as easy as it comes.

The bookmark service is well designed and it’s just what you need for comfortable work. Two types of bookmarks are available: common and adaptive. Common bookmarks are created by the user in a way similar to bookmarking web pages in PC browsers like Internet Explorer or Opera. Adaptive bookmarks are created automatically depending on the relevance of the recently visited pages, structurized in a way that lets the user to see them sorted in groups each comprising pages from the same site. An adaptive bookmark can be converted into a common one. Both types can be sent as links via SMS.

The menu navigation system is well-planned, the numeric keys are also used as shortcuts to different browser functions.

The main changes introduced in the Feature Pack 1 as compared to the previous version of the platform consist in the availability of the following options:

The listed changes are rather significant, the browser has got through some substantial reworking; we hope for further improvements like text highlight and copy capabilities or a manual choice between opening the link in the current or a new window. Currently the browser ranks among the best preinstalled web surfing applications available on today’s smartphones.

GPS

Among the biggest advantages you get with a latest Nokia smartphone is the availability of a dedicated GPS receiver, and E71 is no exception form the rule. The GPS unit is served by a copy of Nokia Maps 2.0. A detailed description of the standard GPS functionality available on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 is currently available on the site; Nokia E71 doesn’t have any specific features different from it. The supplied license is limited to three months, after which you will require a subscription – everything just as usual as in other Nokia smart gadgets.

Multimedia capabilities.

You wouldn’t expect a lot of multimedia functionality in a business-oriented smartphone. The availability of a 2.5 mm jack is a plus, you can always attach a 3.5 adapter to be able to work with a standard headset. The audio quality is quite good, greatly improved from the poor realization of this feature in E61i. Nokia 6210 Navigator and 6220 classic are the two more likely candidates for a comparison, the quality of the sound goes on par with E71. The sound isn’t really great, yet it is still pleasing good not to get on your nerves – in fact, this is the level of an average mp3 player. You aren’t getting the high audio quality of Nokia N78, the sound options are by and large limited to a five-band equalizer, but that’s still a major step forward from what the predecessor had to offer in this department. The side position of the jack is something of a miss, try to keep the phone in the pocket while listening to the music and you’ll see why.

The interface is just the standard one, common to all FP1-based smartphones. The five-band equalizer allows for creating an unlimited number of user profiles. Sound balance is also adjustable, going alongside such options as enhanced stereo effect, bass boost and reverberation. Sorting options include: by performer, by album, by genre and so on; looped and random playback are available. The visualization is unavailable.

The following media formats are supported by the phone:

MP3	+
WMA	+
Polyphonic	+
XMF	+
AMR (Voice Tag)	+
AAC	+
AAC+	+
e-AAC+	+
i-Melody	-
SMAF	-
Midi (SMF)	+