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Shiny gadget of the week

Posted on February 19, 2009 at 22:44:32 by chris

Thanks to the wonders of operator-subsidised phones, I recently got a new Nokia E71.

It's not quite my ideal phone - my ideal phone would run Linux and let me tweak and add to the software (the Freerunner is close, but not cheap), but there aren't many of those available. There's the T-Mobile G1 (the first Google Android phone), but that's a non-starter based on T-mobile's poor coverage of where I live and work. It does look like Linux phones are finally coming, and I expect there to be a reasonable one I can choose next time I change phones.

So, back to the E71. It may not be my ideal phone, but it's pretty darn good. I've had Nokia smartphones before (the 6630, N70, and E65 - gosh, I do go through them, don't I?), but none come close. I'm an engineer, so I'm not a writer, and I'll put some nice things about it into a list:

• It has a tiny QWERTY keyboard which is surprisingly usable; I'm already finding it quicker to use than predictive text on a numeric keypad. It even has a Ctrl key (well, it's the secondary function on another key).
• It's much faster an more responsive than other phones I've had. Combined with the landscape rather than portrait orientation of the screen, the web browser is much more usable than on the E65. (I didn't do much web browsing on previous phones, as they didn't have Wifi).
• I regularly have the web browser, S60 PuTTY (with 80 columns!), an IM client (currently Fring), and a last.fm client (Mobbler) all running, and there's no evidence of it running out of puff.
• There's a Python port for the Nokia phones.
• The camera, while not up to "proper" digital camera standard, isn't bad and has both an autofocus and flash. I don't think the flash (bright though it seems to be) is actually all that good, but better than my previous phone.
• It comes with some cute applications, such as an OCR program aimed at business card scanning, though when I tried it the accuracy wasn't good enough for any serious use.

Some things I don't think are so good:

• In standby the screen goes totally black, presumably to save power. No matter how much I squint at it, I can't see if I've got messages. There is a pulsating light which I think pulsates more quickly when a message has arrived, I think, but I don't notice it so much. And when I do press the key which turns the screen on briefly, it pops up the box describing how to turn off the key lock exactly over the message notification on the screen.
• The speaker is quite tinny when playing music. Although it doesn't bother me, it does disturb Yasmin who's much more sound oriented than me. However, it is a mobile phone.
• The e-mail client doesn't seem to work well with the IMAP server at my mail hosting company, particularly with IMAP folders. A shame on a device obviously intended as Blackberry competitor! (So I'd be interested in any pointers to third-party IMAP clients with good support for folders).

I think that'll do for now!