E71 overcomes N810
 

At work I got this phone and I've to say it really limits the need to bring along the N810.

It has almost everything (and more) I was using in the IT in a third of space and weight:

- gps (fast) and maps
- qwerty keyboard (smaller, but better)
- wifi and bluetooth
- putty client
- fring client
- internet browsing with flash (casual use)
- email
- better PDA
- PDF reader
- small office (word, spreadsheet)
- sport-tracking
- mp3, real, youtube players
- microsd card

and moreover:

- 3G connection
- ah, yes: phone calls :)

Luckily it shares with the tablet the same battery, usb cable and recharger, so it's not a big deal to bring the tablet too. The latter has yet just the (not small) advantage of the big screen, which is better for movies, e-books and terminal.

soprano.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Well, think of the e71 as being the proof of concept before the major overhaul of the NX-51. :D

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

I have to agree. Its a great device which does many important things my N810 wasn't able to fulfill.

It doesn't have a touchscreen. The internal GPS is good (enough), and can be exported with ExtGPS. Don't like 2.5 mm headphones requirement though. And the VPN client is archaic, I think it only supports IPsec, PPTP; not L2PP and OpenVPN. Setting up a tunnel with SSH from command line is easy but since you don't get POSIX with UNIX framework easily running you cannot simply get that or something like OpenVPN working. Hmm, and no Carman. The processor is weaker than N8x0, I think, but for me its good and so is the battery life. There is also good navigation software available for S60.

All in all, E71 is a great device for me, much for the same reasons you mentioned. Hardware-wise I've compared it with iPod touch 2nd gen and Nokia N810 elsewhere. It is not necessarily only the Nokia E71 which is great. The device has been remarkably well received even in consumer market (for which it was originally not marketed). Nokia has used the design of this device for further development such as Nokia E63 and Nokia E66.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

I have an E71, and after a week of use of my N800 I find myself faster at typing in its full-screen keyboard than in my E71 one (I'm relatively fast at both)
I know what you mean with 'casual'. This for me is the biggest advantage of my N800. The E71 browser gives me two options for flash - Skyfire or the native broswer. Both pale in comparison to the N800.
How so? (Genuine question here, no snide remark at all)

The batteries are the same?. The N800 uses the B5-PL battery, which is the same as the old E62. I didn't know the N810 used the same battery as the E71

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

...and the 5800 has all of that plus a much higher resolution touchscreen.

But to be fair, the N810 is quite old now. The new Maemo device will hopefully make up a lot of the difference with Symbian (for example it will have 3G which will make it much more suitable for internet access anywhere).

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

The E71 is really nice and it's features can be easily exploited especially because of the PC suite. For example mine gets it's calendar automatically (over bluetooth) two-way sync with outlook as soon as the phone appears in the range of the PC.

It would be great if the new device/OS could get supported by PC suite too, but I doubt it (since it's only a windows application). Anyways..

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

seeing these phones, one can only imagine what tablets could have become hadn't they stopped development after the N810. - one day, when nokia is no more and all NDAs are forgotten, i'd like to hear the true story behind the hardware gap we're seeing and the fate of elephanta.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

have I missed something??
take a pencil and a sheet of paper and write this 1000 times:

NOKIA DOES NOT HAVE STOPPED DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAEMO OPERATING SYSTEM OR A DEVICE RUNNING THE MAEMO OPERATING SYSTEM

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

at one point, i think they were close to it or maybe even did.

my assumption (granted, pure speculation) is that from a marketing perspective, there should have been a successor to the N810 in 2008. everything else simply wouldn't make sense... more than 1 1/2 years without a new device! (it was even worse, acually, as the N810 was hardly more than a re-packaged N800... so when you buy an N810 now in 2009, it's mostly hardware designed in 2006 for the release date Jan. 2007).

as we know this assumed "2008-tablet" was never released, so i think something big was going on behind the scenes. (also, the planned successor to diablo, elephanta, was dumped at that time.) this may have been an "N900" with elephanta... it might also have been somebody temporarily pulling the plug... or the whole ship changing direction at full speed to focus on a different target group with Maemo.

whatever it was, i'm pretty sure it wasn't planned that way in 2007.

that's what i mean when i say they stopped development after the N810. at least for a while.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Baloney. ;)

Your conclusions here, are, I believe, incorrect. Elephanta was axed to move Fremantle up a bit (~6 months). Fremantle would've originally been slated for a release late this year or early next, so killing Elephanta accelerated its development. Which, personally (pure speculation), I believe has to do with Symbian, Qt, and Harmattan.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Sounds plausible. Then again, bigger names (in software) than Nokia have rewritten history repeatedly to match successive versions of their "roadmap", and more blatantly than the USSR and George Orwell ever thought possible :-)

edit: my comment was originally about benny's theory, but I find it applies equally well to GA's counter-theory which slipped in between while I was typing :-)

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Sure, and it is only speculation on my part, but, honestly, with the way Maemo SW has been hiring constantly over the past year, I doubt there were any plans to pull the plug.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Well, you could both be right... In benny's timeline, the "hiccup" could have happened earlier than that, after the N810 announcement and its coming to market, during the period when the next model should have been maturing -- then the "good" side won, and the scramble we saw after spring 2008 was to catch up and compensate for the missed milestone ?

Not that it matters IMHO -- apart for the fun of speculation : as we stand now, the Fremantle series of devices had better be a runaway success, or it's not just a lull we'll be experiencing...

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

There is also the wimax thing, i wonder how much that cost nokia in man-hours...

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

No way. But I don't want to hijack the thread. ;)

Maybe someone will write the book of this story, indeed interesting. Then again we are not in US West Coast, so perhaps not.

You can explain this to the designers and engineers that made an N810 smaller including a hardware keyboard. Also to the ones that implemented the WiMAX antenna. :)

On the software side there was OS2008, Mozilla, Skype, Location, Modest, SSU, WiMAX support... Elephanta vanished as a release but the features moved to Fremantle.

The fact is, we haven't stopped a single day. You will understand better when the Fremantle and Harmattan steps see the light in full splendor.

And (to bring this back to topic) yes, I agree the E71 is a great product. It's motivating to work in a house able to ship a device like this.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

What has my interest is this same battery, same charger concept. That may be more important to my demographic when the next tablet device drops.
I may be a bit older than some of you fellas and there is a few things I know for certain in my life...

I know I'm never going to weigh 185 lbs. again, I know I will pro'ly never be an astronaut, and I know my eyes will never again be as sharp that a I could use a 2 or 3 inch phone screen to manage the data the future will require from me.

I have accepted that I will always carry two devices. I figure I was born about 10 years to soon for a true convergence device to be of practical use to me.

One thing that Nokia has been successfully with in the past two years has been getting me used to this notion of also carrying/packing/toting another smaller device instead of a laptop or access to a secure desktop...

My N800 fills that niche and a small BT phone fills in the other. If my next phone and device shared the same battery and charger, this older dude would be rockin' :)

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Well, MicroUSB is it. I haven't been following Nokia's high-end phone lineup closely enough to say whether the BP-4L is still "it" . . . looking at Google, though, it appears as though the N97 is using the BP-4L, so it seems to be the likely choice for the tablet.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

I think the BP-4L is Nokia's largest battery and the thinness makes it a great choice for many devices.

And to the E71, I LOVE my E71. It really is a great device and I love the size and speed and battery life.

That said, I am looking forward to the N97 with it's capability to combine my N95-4, E71 and N810 into a single device. Of course I am very interested in the upcoming tablet as well but for most of what I do with all my devices, the N97 may just be enough to fit the bill. But the gadget guy in me really can't wait to see all the goodies the RX-x1 will bring. :)

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Nokia stopped releasing Maemo consumer products for a while (the N810 was late 2007 and just a rehash of early 2007 hardware), but the actual Maemo platform development has never stopped.

The products took a break but the OS carried on, and now the products are coming back again soon so that we can see the new OS version in action.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

@Bobbe: true, general purpose internet browsing is better in the tablet, but most of the sites I need to browse on a tablet or phone (weather forecast, train schedules and similar) are working better and faster on the phone. Regarding PDA features, E71 is not shining but still better than the tablet, at least with maemo (built in Exchange synchronization, Calendar sync and so on). However, I was not able to sync to my Lightning calendar, therefore I still prefer to use GPE-cal on the tablet, for the moment.

@benny1967: that's OT, but by the way: have you tried the "A1 over IP" service? I was not able to make it work on my E71....

@qgil: yes, you guys did a nice work! I understand how much hard is to keep up-to-date a wide set of devices working with different OS. We're looking forward for the next tablet!

@YoDude: same battery/charger is a BIG plus to me too. I realized that when in my last travel I brought 5 different chargers. Next trip: no laptop, no razor and only one charger for tablet/phone. With the one for the reflex I cut it to two! :)

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Yes! :) Now if only the car manufacturers would get on board and provide 4 USB charger outlets in the front cabin and 4 outlets in the back to replace the 1 archaic "cigar lighter" outlet we all use. :eek:

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

And what will all the cigar smokers do? You can't get enough power over USB to light a cigar.

Regards,
Roger

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Honda Pilot is the only car I've seen that has a USB port as an option. Ironic, because Honda as a whole, is behind on providing bluetooth in their models.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Hmm. Consider me astonished :) the times I see people type of Apple iPhone/iPod touch it goes slow.

Keep in mind the compare is somewhat moot. The Nokia E71 has no touchscreen, and we're comparing hardware keyboards. It'd be fair if you would compare the Nokia N810 keyboard to the E71 keyboard. Because if you would not care for the hardware keyboard on E71 then there are zillions other devices which have more potential to suit your needs. IOW: its a core feature. If you look at the Nokia N810 the same is true. Many hardware design decisions on both devices were made with keeping the hardware keyboard in mind. They were build around the design decision of the hardware keyboard.

Matter of taste I guess? I find S60Browser and Skyfire good and usable. Except Opera Mini and Skyfire are optimized for T9; not for the E71 keyboard layout. As for Maemo 4.x @ N8xo... MicroB and the other browsers each have their quirks. MicroB has pissed me off a lot when I used Maemo. S60Browser, the browser I use mainly, has done this too, but mainly because it lacks extensions (to make websites less bloated), it is not identified as iPhone-compatible and therefore gets me a T9-optimized website, and has crashed a few times. I haven't used the latest MicroB and Tear versions so my experience with these might be skewed, but compared to the potention of Fennec, and current state of MobileSafari neither works the way I'd want (on a touchscreen device, that is).

While Modest and MicroB work there is no good, well integrated (good HIG, using shortkeys, optimized for OS, etc) PIM for Maemo 4.x @ N8x0 which also easily supports 2-way synchronisation (SyncML). Together with the e-mail client this is well integrated in the OS via shortcuts allowing the user to easily and quickly navigate through. Just like the RSS feed reader is very tightly integrated in the bookmarks menu of S60Browser. This all synchronized easily with Apple MacOSX (iCal), Windows (e.g. Outlook), and probably *NIX (e.g. Evolution; not tried) and cross-platform: Thunderbird.

Yes, you can get something like this on Maemo, but flakey. It would not be tight integrated in the OS and e-mail client like on S60 (and e.g. Evolution and other more bulky groupware clients) nor would it be officially supported. So for Maemo 4.x there is no good solution; there is no framework for this like SyncML and iCal. I really hope this will be supported in Maemo on the long term (Fremantle or Harmattan), and I'd gladly pay for bounties for a project which would develop a finger/touch friendly, HIGged PIM for Maemo. Because on long term I def. prefer Maemo or Linux above S60.

And, you can use the hardware keys on E71 easily with the low chance of making a mistake (unless you have fat fingers). This counts at least for the 8 hotkeys (left menu, right menu, phone start, phone end, home, agenda, contacts, e-mail) and the dpad. They're all near each other allowing quick navigation, and this behavior is not hit and miss like using a stylus with small checkboxes, buttons, and such. So it works on the walk, or while sitting in a vibrating train, and so on. You can actually read an e-mail while walking. With a stylus this is much more difficult. I'm excited and looking forward to Maemo 5.0 and RX-51 because this will be finger optimized and having bigger UI providing a similar experience.

N810 and E71 have same battery. N800 has a slightly older battery which was a lot in use a few years ago.

I almost forgot: the screen is pretty good. After using mainly a black/white theme, I'm now using only the dark blue themes (new themes from the E71x) and won't switch for a long while because they're good. In sunlight the screen is still readable; IMO much better than iPod touch 2nd gen (unreadable) and better than N810 (becomes too dark; small stuff becomes difficult to see). On E71 the dark colours get 'rainbowish' but the white remains the same. While aesthetically this is not how it should be this still shows a remarkably good contrast; therefore the device is usable. I think this is because the themes (and S60) is optimized for these contrast situations.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

E71 is clearly the best phone that Nokia has released in a while. The combination of build quality, responsive UI and size are pretty much best in class. My significant other has convinced probably 3 of her friends to buy one after using hers (white E71) for just a minute or two.
Put in a 3.5 mm headset and a 5 mp camera with xenon flash and you could sell that phone for the next 2 years.

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

I guess my web experience is quite different. I'm one of those consumers (as somebody mentioned before) whose use of the E71 / N800 is not the one it was intended / marketed to be. I'm a heavy user of flash / ajax websites, and the E71 just couldn't cut the deal in several moments.

It also wouldn't have been worth buying the N800 at its full retail price here in Brazil (extremely prohibitive in tax terms), but this Brazilian website (something similar to BestBuy, I guess), has been selling the N800 for R$ 400 (around a little more than a hundred bucks in U$, taxes included), so for me the cost/benefit ratio is just awesome.

Also, hooray for Nokia's and the community's efforts on bringing the tablets up to today's needs! Things like Mer, for instance, joined with the momentous effort already put in by the Maemo team, are our best hopes that our IT will survive a few more years as the usable, job-accomplishing devices we learned to love so dearly :).

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

I think one of the biggest pluses of new Nokia devices (and I have used Sony Erricson, Motorola, older Nokia's) is the same charger for all (or most) devices. Its a boon. I wonder if Nokia realises how many people thank Nokia for this feature and also maybe switch to Nokia devices for this feature alone.

Myself and my wife use Nokia phones and we have a N810 and a N800 between us and I also use a Nokia Bluetooth headphone (BH-903) and thank God that we can charge all these devices when on the road using one car charger (not all at the same time obviously) and also one common charger at home and one at office.

When travelling I leave behing my ultraportable laptop - as that would entail another huge charger and just carry the IT's and phones. So I do hope Nokia carries on with the same battery/charger combination for most devices. I have heard enough people say they prefer a Nokia for this feature alone and I hope this forces more manufacturers to switch to a standard charger for all devices by them, instead of bringing out new chargers for each device. .

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

EU is going to force all manufacturers to use the same charger :):):)

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

Micro-usb based, no?

I think China made a similar demand not to long ago...

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

The manufacturers want this, because they will save money by not having to include a charger with each new device.

Anyway, the decision has been made and it's going to be micro USB. Nokia is included in the consortium (but not Apple). It's likely to take a couple of years before this becomes reality.

Regards,
Roger

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

That would be downright un-american here in the states. :p

The last 3 phone upgrades I made with the same carrier and same manufacturer (the name starts with an /\/\ :) )I have had 3 different batteries, chargers, and data cables. My wife who is with the same carrier and uses the same manufacturers phone has a seperate account but with an upgrade schedule that is out of phase with mine.

We have a seperate bag with all the dang chargers for when we travel. :eek:

Fortunately my last phone is USB and I'm begining to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Added: Welcome aboard Bobbe. IMHO you did real well at that price and will get years of use from the N800. :)

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

You probably already know: there's a cable which may spare us another one, and works well (I guess) with both N810 and E71:

http://europe.nokia.com/products/acc.../cables/CA-126

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

My last two BMW's had USB ports. very useful for playing tunes and charging devices. :)

Re: E71 overcomes N810
 

The N810 has no 'memory full' problems which is a general issue on Symbian when too many apps are loaded.
And a much better screen (800x480 instead of 320x240)