First Impression: Nokia E71
I’ve had the E71 for a few hours now and so far compared to my previous phone the Nokia E61i, the E71 is better in every aspect. For those of you who own E61i’s you will be glad to know that the E71 is a much much faster phone, MUCH faster. Everything launches in a split second and moving from menu item to menu item and opening or closing an SMS is all instantaneous. The size of the device is also smaller, width wise its around 20% less fat and its also slightly less thick. The camera is finally usable and the keyboard although smaller than the E61i doesn’t feel cramped or strange in any way. I’ve also noticed the phone is a lot more customizable which is a plus and its also smarter. For example in the main screen if you no longer want to display SMS notifications, you just highlight it and press the delete button and it will ask you if you want to hide it from the main screen. The power button has now moved to the top which is a good idea since I had a bad habit of accidentally shutting the phone with my ear, not fun specially if you are in the middle of a conversation.
On the negative side the GPS seems extremely slow and unpractical. The phone also loves finger prints and smudges which is very iPhonish. The case also seems more fragile. I’ve dropped my E61i so many times and I am not sure the E71 can handle as much abuse. Overall though I am really impressed with the phone. I was expecting it to be better than the E61i and it has exceeded my expectation in every way so far. Oh and its no longer showing me MTC on the main screen, its finally showing me Zain KW!
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94 Comments, add your own...
1. chika | July 8th, 2008 at 12:09 am
mabrouk! I actually asked it last week and they told me not in yet so I discarded the whole idea and was surprised to read both Marzouq’s and your posts :/ I stopped using Nokia a long time ago
2. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I only started using nokia again because of the e61i.
3. moose | July 8th, 2008 at 12:11 am
mark the phone is made of metal so im sure it can handle more abuse than the e61i.
btw is the camera as good as other 3 megapixel cameras?
4. Pure | July 8th, 2008 at 12:13 am
OH.NO i was hoping to get a descent GPS : (
btw congrats : )
5. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 12:14 am
3MP phone cameras or actual digital cameras? In both cases though I wouldnt know, this is the highest MP i have ever had in a phone and i dont recall ever owning a 3MP digital camera. A 2mp yes, back in 2001.
6. Pure | July 8th, 2008 at 12:16 am
decent**
7. letsbehonest | July 8th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Nokia has not produced any good phone in the last 10 years, their phones are unintuitive, overloaded with poorly integrated features and slow. Only phones with Windows Mobile are worse.
BlackBerries and iPhones are innovative, well thought through and give a great user experience.
The only Nokia phones which are impressive are their 30$ low-end models. They are robust and have a good battery life.
8. Abdullah | July 8th, 2008 at 2:15 am
hey mark i have a question. how can i synchronize my gmail account to my E71? and congrats to every proud owner of the E71 :)
9. Armani Exchanger | July 8th, 2008 at 4:01 am
experts says that the bad things about it are:
1. Counter-intuitive camera autofocus.
2. Media browser could do with a little upgrade
3. Easy Dial feature not available.
Just something to share..
10. fix-you | July 8th, 2008 at 5:22 am
got mine so far im lovin it no im not talkin about mcdonalds im talkin aboute71 lol.
11. Saeed | July 8th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Mike, I do really envy you lol :D
12. DeReD | July 8th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Mark, what the audio like.. the ring tone quality and loudness.. is it on par with the Sony Ericssons???
13. Ahmad | July 8th, 2008 at 8:41 am
How much is it?
14. JoJo | July 8th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Mark, As far as I know the MTC/Zain logo is not phone related !! It is SIM related & you must have gotten a new Zain SIM recently
15. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 8:57 am
DeReD: Its as loud at the E71i which was loud except now its clearer, better quality sound.
Ahmad: KD159
Jojo: I haven’t changed the sim, its the same MTC-Vodafone sim I’ve had for ages.
16. kadavul | July 8th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Mine is mtc sim since 2003. It is now showing Zain KW.
17. Abdullah | July 8th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Mark, do you know where i can change the AR/EN preset keyboard to the EN keyboard only?
18. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 9:47 am
with my e61i i purchased the keyboard online for like kd5 and swapped it out myself. will probably do the same again
19. MYK | July 8th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Hey Mark,
Mabrouk!! I got mine yesterday too but didn’t blog about it because my blog is messed up. Anyway, I’m loving it too. I bought mine from Sharq for 169KD under i2’s warranty, which is just as good. Only problem is I couldn’t get mms nor mi settings to work. Any luck from yourside? If you manage to get it to work, please blog about it.
20. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am
yeah i just went to zain website and made them sms me the details for mms and gprs. i put my phone as e90 but i think if u put it as e61i it should work also
21. mohammed | July 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am
mark i was wondering whether i can install a navigator software into it,i was also wondering whether it works in any networks such as lebanese network,jordanian etc as i have an iphone at the moment but i was thinkin of buyin another one to use on my travels,is it worth buying an e61 is there any iphone nokia e61 comparrision review?
22. MYK | July 8th, 2008 at 11:13 am
http://www.kw.zain.com/ZAINIM/portal/ContentPage?msn=4%232&pid=11821&cpt=pgm&BV_SessionID=@@@@0087761516.1215504667@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccfadeeihmkmjmcflgcehfdffmdffh.0&loc=en
Where do you choose which phone you want the settings sent too?
23. JoJo | July 8th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Mark,This is good , finally MTC / Zain sorted out the double identity . Just as a point of interest re-insert your SIM in the old phone & see if you get MTC or Zain,,,Tks for taking he trouble
24. Yousef | July 8th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
GOT MY E71!
25. Stafa | July 8th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Yousef, where from?
26. 7amad | July 8th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Mark thanks for the great post….I stopped buying nokia phones for moer than 3 years now. Im going to return to buying nokia from this post and how the features of the phone are great and how they could help me in the university…Thanks again Mark.
27. TanGo | July 8th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
MYK - to have your MMS work properly, dial 99999 and your message should be MMS , then Zain will SMS back and ask you to save message. Once you do that,, Voila.
Same thing for roaming - you just SMS the owrd Roaming
Future distributed 60 units yesterday evening (2 to each branch) and they are selling at KD159. I got mine from their Kuwait City branch earlier today.
I asked for English-Only keyboard,, they have none!
28. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
for a second i thought u said you found an english only keyboard! and i was going shit i should have asked for that :)
29. Yousef | July 8th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Stafa I got it from the Phone Center. They’re phone number is posted in the previous post. I reserved it in the morning and picked it up a while ago.
However, Mark, I was charged 180 KD for the phone, not 170 KD. Maybe ripped off? But still worth it.
30. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
did u check and see if dealers still had any in stock?
31. Yousef | July 8th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I asked the guy if the stores around him had any. He said no he was the first one, and he only had a few with him. He said it was hard to get anymore, and interestingly enough, he didn’t have them displayed on the shelf, he took one out from the under the display table.
He also asked me how I knew about it: “min Marzoog wella il net?”
That was pretty much all of it. The owner and I turned out to have the same family name. Paid and left.
32. Stafa | July 8th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Man screw phone center, they’re selling it for 180kd (Dealer’s price is 159kd) and it’s I2’s warranty, I’d rather wait for Nokia to have it in stock just to be on the safe side. I don’t like the whole i2 warranty shit…
33. kwt23 | July 8th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I can’t see why everyone is excited about this when the blackberry bold is coming in 2months max.?
34. Yousef | July 8th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I hate blackberry.
35. kwt23 | July 8th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
blackberry has a better exterior, more navigations with the trackball, better OS and better GPS.
36. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
yeah my experience with blackberry hasnt been a really good one. i dont think their OS is any good neither is their interface.
37. myk | July 8th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
No Tango, that didn’t work either. I think the problem is with my number, I used to have a blackberry before this and they should of canceled the blackberry service and reconfigured the gprs. Something went wrong during that process. Now, I don’t even get mms!
38. holla | July 8th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
This looks better in real life than i thought. It actually looks nice for nokia and I guess it’s miles above the usual rubbish nokia interface. Prob the best nokia out now.
39. myk | July 8th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Stafa, i2 is just as good as Future communications if not better. They’re both distributors, none of them are dealers. The only difference is that i2 is Emirati based and FCC is listed in the Kuwait stock exchange.
1 .. 2 .. Nokia from i2 :p
Bottom line, they both sell the same product. The price premium however is inexcusable.
40. KTDP | July 8th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
very cool phone indeed…..
41. kwt23 | July 8th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Mark, blackberry have developed a new OS in the balckberry bold never used before on any blackberry.
42. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I know, but i was referring to my previous experience with blackberrry
43. myk | July 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Yeah, the new bold is supposed to be another “iPhone Killer”.
44. Yousef | July 8th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
myk the price premium that I paid wasn’t from i2. Just to make things clear.
45. Nobu | July 8th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Can you use Skype with it?
46. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
yes
47. Nobu | July 8th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Cool! Have you tried it?
48. Mark | July 8th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I tried it with the older e61i, will try it tonight with this
49. Nobu | July 8th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Great! Please post the results. Thanks.
50. Yousef | July 8th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Mark which version of Skype did you use? The e61 version is not out yet. How do you do it?
51. buJasim | July 8th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Safat Alghanim they sell it for 128KD Tel: 803535
52. Pure | July 8th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
buJasim are u sure ?? and what color have they got ?
53. buJasim | July 8th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
yes Im sure Black ; they have a promotion call them before they sell them all. Good luck
54. Pure | July 8th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Great, thanks : )
55. blasha | July 8th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
help me sync ma contacts :’(
56. Un533N | July 9th, 2008 at 2:16 am
looks awesome..
was waiting for a smart phone with qwerty keyboard
Slim also ! perfect..
not sure enough is it worth it to return to nokia products i quit nokia phones last 4 years.. i had enough from their slow operation n hangs alot.
after reading lots of review .. most of them highly recommend the E71. does the phone restarts or any hanging problems ?
57. Talal | July 9th, 2008 at 4:11 am
I got my Nokia E71 this afternoon while at Marina Mall. FCC and Phono had none. So my last resort was i2, which is just next door. The seller there said they had 1 only in the Marina Mall showroom and 2 in their store. I decided to buy one right away. Although it had a higher price tag than those I’ve been reading about here, KD 170, but I still had to get it, I just couldn’t wait. It’s one of those gadgets you can’t wait to own.
I must say this since iPhone 3G is 2 days away. I’ve been waiting for a decent iPhone update but apparently Apple is still playing hard to get with their super dumb upgrades. Even the 3G version doesn’t interest me much with its nothing new” speed or version 2.0 that is more of a change of number. I like the conversion of .mac to MobileMe, but it’s nothing new Apple! Exchange has been around for ages.
I must say that I’m a huge Mac OS X fan and user. But I sometimes think that iPhone is being developed by a secret sector at Microsoft, upgrading the device by ignoring important fixes, and selling it under Apple’s responsibility.
Thanks Mark and others for letting us know about this new device as soon it got released here.
58. AngelOfDeth | July 9th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Got one myself yesterday, 159KD. one word: AMAZING!!!!!
59. Stafa | July 9th, 2008 at 9:17 am
the GPS works perfectly, connects with less than 15 seconds while i was INDOOR! the phone is amazing so far! the processor is really fast and everything seems to be cool! I got it from i2 Fanar last night for 170KD, yes I could have waited to get it for 159kd or whatever but 11kd won’t kill me…!
60. Moe | July 9th, 2008 at 10:23 am
MAAAAARK make a review for the Samsung F480 damn fuckin gr8 i’ll buy for sure….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjeLkRh3864
61. 7amad | July 9th, 2008 at 11:15 am
AT LAST I GOT IT……………..128KD alghanim electronics as bujassm said they had teh only on in al rai and i got it.
62. Mark | July 9th, 2008 at 11:41 am
You got the E71 for KD128 or the E61?
63. Stafa | July 9th, 2008 at 11:49 am
uhhh did I get ripped off here =/ cuz some1s making a HUGE markup by selling them for 170Kd =/
64. Pure | July 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Stafa, so can i rely on it as my main GPS source ?
65. 7amad | July 9th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Yes Mark 128kd from Al-Ghanim electronics could you believe that………Its really awesome i love the phone. Btw how could i download msn messenger
66. Stafa | July 9th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
No GPS enabled phone should be relied on as a primary source.
67. kadavul | July 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
ARE
YOU
SURE
????
E71?!?!?!
68. 7amad | July 9th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Im totally sure bujassim also got his from AL-Ghanim i got the last one. They have an offer…..
69. mocman | July 10th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
jus picked up mine from alghanim for 128kd.
70. kwt23 | July 10th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Mark, is this coming close to the most commented post?
71. Mark | July 10th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
nope, even shark of kuwait has more comments
http://www.248am.com/mark/interesting/the-shark-of-kuwait-rocks/
72. Laziale | July 10th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I can’t believe a Nokia phone reached to 70 comments !!
I went to check out the futures on Gsmarena.com . Whats the deal with the race of who gets it first and can’t wait for it !
Am going to check it out again , i may join the 67 Nokia E71 fanatic buyers here !
73. Kadavul | July 10th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Just called Alghanim, they are now out of stock and will come after 15 days. Price is
KD 122/-
There you go!
74. Pure | July 10th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
lol Laziale, trust me u will ; )
75. buJasim | July 10th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
KADAVUL ; ARE YOU SURE 122kd NOT 128kd?
76. Kadavul | July 10th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Yes Jasim. I have called the number that you gave above.
77. mocman | July 10th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
122???? WTF???? I just bought mine this afternoon for 128. Those bastards.
78. 7amad | July 10th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
macmon at least u didnt pay 159 or 170 or even 180 like other people did here…..btw am writting this with my E71 i cant believe how awesome it is…..cant wait for the semester to start to start to try it out……thnx mark 4 the review if it wasnt for u i wouldnt have bought this.
79. Pure | July 10th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Dose anyone know when will the white steel be released?
80. YYYZ | July 11th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Hey..Supp everyone..
I’m really wondering should i go for the E71 or the E90 ?? Any comments would be great.. Cost isn’t an issue.. but could be taken into consideration, i’m moving on from an iPhone.. and i haven’t used Nokia since the 6600 came out :p Any comments or suggestions would be highlllllyyyyy appreciated.. thanks in advance..
81. TanGo | July 11th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
YYYZ, its actually more a matter of aesthetics,, you’ll know when you carry both instruments in your hand,,,
http://europe.nokia.com/comparephonesconsumereurope
82. kwt23 | July 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Hey mark…i’m looking for the E71 (since the blackberry isnt coming any time soon) …. i went to all the shops but couldn’t find it (except at fcc for 155KD) … do u know if i can find it anywhere else for a lower price?
83. Venkatesh | July 12th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Wait till Alghanim brings more! I have seen one in their Fahaheel showroom (showroom piece, not for sale). Their price is KD. 128/-. But earlier one guy from Safat showroom called me and said to wait for 15 days and price is KD. 122/-. Either case Alghanim is cheaper. But their warranty is from i2.
84. 7amad | July 13th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Hey guys my phone is starting to jam a bit and the phone service goes and comes back again i dont knw about you guys….but its starting to annoy me….
85. Pure | July 13th, 2008 at 4:11 am
7amad .. are u a zain customer? because the same thing exactly happened to me my network service bar kept on going and coming back again ! and i’m using e61i .
86. 7amad | July 13th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Thats right Pure i am a zain customer but when i was using my K850 this didnt happen. This is the first time i see this happen to me.
87. kwt23 | July 13th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Venkatesh, the dude at the Hawalli branch told me that it should come in 2 days….i put my name and number with him to inform me when it arrives.
88. YYYZ | July 13th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Hey guys thanks for your replies.. For the jumping service, check if you have set the Carrier to auto instead of Zain or wataniya.. It’ll make sure that it will have something to jump to incase one went out of coverage. I tried that with my iphone and it worked, had the same problem when i set the Carrier to Zain..
89. Mr.pedro | July 14th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Just got mine today Love the finish and detail very classy and high end got it for 150KD FCC warranty LoL i gave them the ( i have 150) want it or no he said i am sorry left while leaving Sir sir i got back and got it for 150KD :P~
Love the phone how it lays in your hand but still needs a week or so to get use to
90. Pure | July 16th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Lool Mr.pedro, good for u ; ) ..
I got mine today from Alghanim for K.D128 and FCC’s warranty !
and OMG dare i say it was love from the first sight ; p
91. Pure | July 16th, 2008 at 2:34 am
love at first sight **
92. Delicately Realitsic | July 16th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Is the white steel out as well??
93. Pure | July 16th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Delicately Realitsic , not yet : ) but trust me the black steel looks much better, i was planning to buy the white one but when i saw some pic. of it in reviews i changed my mind ; )
here have a look and compare:
the white steel
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E71.php
the black steel (mind u that it looks better in reality!)
http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2008/06/e71-tiny-thin-tempting.html
94. Delicately Realitsic | July 17th, 2008 at 1:44 am
Pure:
I saw the dark one today at safat alghanim….the size is much smaller than i expected it….the phone is adorable !! But i still prefer the white.
Im not planning to buy the phone anytime soon, i stopped buying phones as soon as theyre out a long time ago…i wait a while….by then the white steel will be available.
Oh and for anyone who is interested there was one last E71 when i checked at Safat AlGhanim tonight…..so anyone who is after one should go first thing 2mrw :)
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