Claiming to be the world’s slimmest cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard, the E71 is highly pocketable, especially compared to Nokia’s earlier attempts. It also looks the business in other ways, using a stylish blend of stainless steel and ‘grey’ high density plastic, resulting in a very solid feeling build.
There’s obviously, as ever, a degree of compromise between the size of the device, screen and keyboard — however, in the case of the E71, Nokia may have found the sweet spot. The QVGA screen is bright and maintains a productive 320 x 240 pixels in dimension, and the QWERTY keyboard, although tightly packed, is one of the best I’ve used. Key presses on the E71 are far less spongy than on the E61 (or Nokia’s latest Internet tablet), providing enough tactile feedback without requiring too much pressure to register. Nokia have also found room for four keyboard short cuts, dedicated ‘home’, ‘calendar’, ‘address book’ and ‘email’ keys, all of which can be re-mapped to launch your own choice of application. Additionally, holding down each of the shortcut keys for a few seconds will trigger a different action, such as entering a new appointment in ‘calendar’ or a new contact in ‘address book’, and again all of these can be customized, as is the case with almost any element of Nokia’s updated S60 User Interface. Another nice touch is that if you start typing a person’s name while on the home screen, the E71 will instantly drill down into your address book.
The E71’s choice of directional-pad over a pointy joystick or Blackberry-style trackball is also a welcome change, and proved great for navigating around the device, scrolling through documents or browsing the web, and even a dose of casual gaming. The d-pad also functions as an indicator light informing you when there’s a new SMS message, email or missed call.
No comments:
Post a Comment