YoDude | # 21 | 2009-05-11, 10:59 | Report

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.

eiffel | # 22 | 2009-05-11, 12:52 | Report

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

Regards,
Roger

SD69 | # 23 | 2009-05-11, 13:00 | Report

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.

allnameswereout | # 24 | 2009-05-11, 13:43 | Report

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.

mobiledivide | # 25 | 2009-05-11, 14:15 | Report

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.

Bobbe | # 26 | 2009-05-11, 16:34 | Report

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 .

nilchak | # 27 | 2009-05-11, 17:43 | Report

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. .

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Last edited by nilchak; 2009-05-11 at 17:46.

debernardis | # 28 | 2009-05-11, 18:50 | Report

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

tso | # 29 | 2009-05-11, 19:02 | Report

Micro-usb based, no?

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

eiffel | # 30 | 2009-05-11, 20:51 | Report

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