Written by Brandon on Thursday, May 14, 2009

Diary: Going S60 on the E71


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So, as many of you know I’m a tiny bit of an iPhone fan. I spend a lot of time on my iPhone reading and writing emails, checking RSS feeds and all kinds of other stuff. You may also know that just a short while ago we had a review unit come in for a Pantech Matrix Pro and that came to me. I did the best I could, and while I loved the hardware, after a year+ of iPhone OS I couldn’t handle the pitfalls of WinMo… So I sent my review unit to Doug.

Doug, as all of you know is a Winmo guy. Well who knows why, but he went out and bought himself a Nokia E71 NAM around the same time I got the Pantech. As luck would have it, Doug didn’t really like S60… So here we were two people with two bits of hardware we loved but OS’s we just didn’t.

We may not be rocket scientists, but luckily it didn’t require them for us to figure out that maybe we should swap and see if that worked out better. Doug has had the Matrix Pro for a few days now so I’m sure you’ll see his impressions coming soon. I on the otherhand just got the E71 yesterday… And I’m lost.

So if you’re an S60 fan, I’d love to hear how you’re making the OS work for you. I’ve got some cool stuff setup already, but any tips and tricks you’ve got I wanna hear em…

oh… And i typed and published this whole post on the E71. The keyboard isn’t too shabby….

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dgoldring
May 14, 2009

Nice, Brandon. I especially like the fact that you mobile blogged the whole thing. :)

Doug


Brandon
May 14, 2009

Its actually not too bad of a device the more I use it. I don’t think its going to beat out my iPhone but I will honestly say if this hardware ran the iPhone OS… well I’d own both.

:)


dgoldring
May 14, 2009

Yeah, I agree with you on that. This hardware wth the iPhone interface would have been very cool. I would really like to see an iPhone with a front keyboard like that. :)

doug


Daniel
May 15, 2009

That “iPhone” you are looking for, it is called Palm Pre, Doug. :)


dgoldring
May 15, 2009

Yes, Daniel. I do believe you are right about that. :)

Doug


Ravi
May 15, 2009

Brandon – I am considering e71. Expecting your detailed review soon…


El Marko
May 15, 2009

First things, first: IMHO, the Palm Tungsten T3 was probably the best PDA created. But, we know what Palm chose to do – basically, implode – and so now I’ve been cast adrift to seek a replacement. Maybe one that can make phone calls, too. So, I picked up an E71. I’ve found it to be quite a mixed-bag. First, I had to deal with one of the most serious Symbian flaws: No categories. Or, I should say, no way to sync categories with any other device (particularly Outlook, running on Windows). So far as I know, the PocketTorch product AquaSync, which works with the decent AquaCalendar, is the only product that (more or less) can pull off this stunt. So, if you’re an adherent of GTD, you’re not totally stuck in the desert, if you have a Nokia phone.

It’s good there are a lot of third party developers, for Symbian apps. Remarkably, Nokia’s native email and SMS apps (even Conversation) barely operate on the E71. Their email app no longer allows me to read emails, without clicking “reply” in order to see the message. Awful. ProfiMail is the mail replacement, Free-iSMS is the messaging replacement. GoogleMaps runs better than Nokia Maps. LCG Jukebox allows you to scroll into audio files and so, in that respect, is better than Nokia’s native music app, if you listen to podcasts. Opera Mini is a terrific alternative to the native web browser. Twitter on Gravity is, I have to say, real nice.

The E71 has voice recognition and voice dialing that operates far worse than the old Motorola V710. And Nokia considers themselves to be a manufacturer of phones?!

And, don’t get me started on the rant against Nokia PC Suite. It’s awful. Heaven forbid, you should want to connect your phone to a Vista x64 machine. God knows what horrors await Windows 7 users. As it is, my PC cannot “see” my phone’s installed memory card and I have to reboot the phone, whenever I’m done with Nokia PC Suite. It’s awful, awful software. What I wouldn’t give, for a Chapura product.

The E71 is great hardware, but really pretty poor software. A lot of promise, which only occasionally delivers. Nokia needs to shift development from the Beta Labs to work out the problems with their phone’s basic OS.

End of rant.

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