Sony Ericsson R300

Sony Ericsson has recently announced the new radio mobiles of R300 and R306. The R300 features VGA camera, GSM/GPRS 850/1800/1900 phone, GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 phone, available in Antique Copper and Steel Black; whereas R306 boasts 1.3MP camera on-board, available in Coffee Black and Champagne White.

Sony Ericsson tunes-in to emerging markets and radio fans

The new Sony Ericsson R300 Radio and R306 Radio place the first combined AM/FM radio experience at the heart of the mobile phone.

Delhi, India – 24th January 2008 – Sony Ericsson today announced the launch of two new mobile phones, the R300 Radio and R306 Radio, both designed to deliver a credible radio-listening experience to a global audience, and ideally suited to emerging markets such as India.

“The R300 Radio and R306 Radio allow you to tune-in to your favourite music shows or sports reports, across both AM and FM broadcasts,” said Howard Lewis, Vice President and Head of Entry Level Products at Sony Ericsson. “They certainly look and sound the part, offering a radio-inspired design and feature set on a choice of either a candy bar or clamshell phone.”

Toshiba Portege R500

Impossibly thin and light notebook with optical drive and terrific outdoor-readable screen

(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

These days most notebooks have giant displays, the kind that even desktops didn't have just a few years ago. Those notebooks, of course, are big and rather heavy, and that can be a drag. That's why computer manufacturers make "ultra-light" notebooks. They generally weigh no more than around three pounds.

Well, Toshiba figured they could do better than that, and they have with the new Portege R500. The lightest R500 weighs no more than 1.72 pounds, which is absolutely amazing for a powerful notebook with a 12.1-inch screen, a full-size keyboard, and capable of running Vista. Many handhelds weigh more than that! Now before aficionados of lightweight computing get too excited over this remarkable machine, I should mention that only a special version of the R500 weighs in at 1.72 pounds, and that would be one with a solid-state disk, a somewhat wimpy 3-cell battery, and no optical drive. Our standard R500 with a disk drive and a much more powerful 6-cell battery weighed just under 2.4 pounds -- still stunningly little.

Optical drive despite ultra-slender profile

Yes, I did mention "optical drive." How can that be in a computer that weighs that little and is only 0.77 inches thick? Well, in certain spots it's more like an inch thick, but that is only because of a bulge from a PC Card slot and a standard RJ45 jack. The optical drive itself is almost unbelievably thin, despite being a DVD SuperMulti +/- device that supports nine formats and writes DVDs at 8X speed.

Good balance between power and battery life

If you get the idea that the R500 is a special computer that was designed to be as thin and light as possible but without giving up features and performance, that would be right. Toshiba made very few compromises and the R500 runs Vista without any problems and at a brisk pace (you can also get it with XP Professional). It is not a total speed demon, of course; that would not be possible with a miserly 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7600, an ultra-low-power processor designed to provide maximum battery life. Also, the R500 uses Intel's integrated 945GMS chipset with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. That works fine, but is nowhere near as speedy as a separate and dedicated graphics sub-system.

A look at the "Windows Experience Index" -- the set of scores that measures performance under Vista in several areas -- shows that processor, memory and disk performance are all fine, but the R500 only rates a 2.0 in desktop performance for Windows Aero (the fancy semi-transparent Vista user interface), and only a 2.8 in 3D business and gaming graphics performance. Since the lowest of the five subscores determines the "base score," the R500 rates only a 2.0, not enough for more demanding applications. That's no big deal for most users, but you should be aware of it if you consider the R500. Our review machine came with 1GB of memory and that's on the low side for Vista. We'd order ours with the maximum memory configuration -- 2GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM. It generally has a big impact on the Vista score, and on overall performance (though adding half a gig didn't change the Vista score on our review machine).

As far as battery power goes, the R500 is amazingly very well equipped for such a small and light machine. A 6-cell, 10.8V/5800mAh Lithium-Ion 62.6 watt-hours powerpack lasts up to 10 hours!

Well connected

Ultra-thins and ultra-lights often make compromises in connectivity but that's not the case with the Portege R500. Despite its thinness and light weight, it not only has that built-in SuperMulti DVD-RW drive, but also three USB ports, IEEE 1394 "Firewire," a RJ45 plug for its gigabit LAN, both a PC Card Type II and a SD Card slot, a fingerprint reader, external video and a docking connector. On the wireless side, there's integrated Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) and 802.11a/g/n WiFi via Intel's 4965AGN module.

Extraordinary display

One of the unusual features of the R500 is its display. It is ordinary in size (12.1-inch diagonally) and resolution (1280 x 800 pixel wide format), but unique in its technology. Toshiba calls it "transreflective". This warrants some more discussion.

Explanation of display technologies

Those familiar with display technologies will recall that most notebooks have transmissive LCDs. Those are very bright indoors due to the fact that their backlights strongly and evenly illuminate the screen. Outdoors, however, transmissive displays, unless they are specially treated, wash out and become unreadable.

Some LCD displays are reflective, which means they reflect the ambient light and thus are readable outdoors. Some early iPAQ Pocket PCs had purely reflective LCDs and there were some notebooks that used reflective displays also. The problem with purely reflective displays is that while outdoor viewability is good, indoors they are unpleasant to use because they need sidelights to illuminate them.

For several years, LCD manufacturers tried a compromise between transmissive and reflective technologies. Those displays were called "transflective." They reflected some light, but also let some through. That way a backlight could be used to illuminate the display indoors, while a degree of reflectivity made for acceptable viewing outdoors. The problem was, as with any compromise, that transflective displays weren't as good as transmissive ones indoors, and not as good as reflective ones outdoors.

Above I mentioned "specially treated" transmissive displays. This is what most manufacturers of notebooks that will be used outdoors are using today. What those treatments seek to accomplish is to provide high enough contrast to make the displays readable outdoors. The contrast ratio that matters for viewability is that between the backlight and the reflected daylight. Here's the way it works: bright daylight is about 10,000 nits (nits are a measure of brightness). A computer display backlight may be 200 to 500 nits. So if the display were to reflect 4% of the daylight, or 400 nits, and the backlight of the notebook is 200 nits, the effective contrast ratio would be 1 + (emitted light / reflected light), or 1 + (200 / 400) = 1.5. That would make the display unreadable outdoors. A stronger backlight of 500 nits would boost the effective contrast ratio to 2.25, still almost unreadable in sunlight, and definitely a drain on the battery. This is where special treatments in the form of anti-reflective coating or coatings come into play. This can cut light reflection down to as low as 0.5%. That same 200 nits backlight would now produce a contrast ratio of 5, which is acceptable for outdoor readability. Boost the backlight up to 500 nits, and the contrast ratio goes up to 11, making for a very outdoor-readable display. This is the approach Dell used with its ATG D630 notebook. One of the problems with anti-reflective coatings is that they create sort of a multi-colored tint when looking at the screen from certain angles, and they can also distort the colors.

Toshiba's transreflective display

Toshiba, an expert in LCD display technology, chose a new and different approach for the R500 with what they call a "transreflective" display. The R500's transreflective screen uses a 215 nits LED backlight and looks as bright and vibrant indoors as a standard transmissive display. Outdoors a reflective layer -- a "retroflector" -- reflects light and the screen works more like a reflective LCD. The R500 actually has a "outdoors" button above the upper right side of the keyboard. When you push it, it turns off the backlight completely as it is not needed outdoors and greatly extends the already excellent battery life.

Now how exactly Toshiba's transreflective screen differs from older transflective displays we don't know. We discussed the display technology in two very informative conference calls, but Toshiba did not want to give away all of its secrets. Product Manager Craig Marking called the R500 a "technological showcase product" for Toshiba, and that certainly goes for the terrific display as well as the slenderness and light weight of the machine.

In addition to the proprietary LCD design, the R500 uses LED backlighting. LED backlights have been used in handhelds for a few years, but not in notebooks. Their use not only lowers power drain, but also allows the screen to flex without anything breaking since there are no tubes. In addition, LEDs are more durable.

Overall verdict on the R500 display: Indoors, the R500 transreflective screen is very much better than any standard transflective LCD I can remember, and outdoors it rivals some of the best anti-reflection coated transmissive screens without having the annoying color tint of those coatings. How exactly Toshiba did it remains confidential, which is okay with us. The screen does not have an anti-reflective which might have made it even better, but as is, it's terrific. If there's one complaint, it's that the vertical viewing angle is not very wide.

Toshiba's "EasyGuard" technology

The first time you pick up the R500 you will almost inevitably worry about its durability. The computer is just so light and thin, it seems as if you have to treat it with kids' gloves. Wrong. While the Portege R500 is definitely not a rugged or semi-rugged computer, it was designed from the ground up to provide protection against all sorts of everyday hazards. Toshiba's Marking called it "executive durability." Like most of its notebooks, the R500 is designed with a slate of technologies and principles Toshiba calls "EasyGuard."

What does "EasyGuard" mean? It includes shock-absorbing design that protects key components such as the hard disk, the LCD and the chassis. a 3D accelerometer detects falls and moves the hard disk head away to safety. The keyboard is spill resistant, the case made of magnesium alloy. "The R500's flexibility," Marking says, "is by design."

Bottom line

The Toshiba Portege R500 is another remarkable showcase product from one of the world's great notebook makers. Despite having a full-size keyboard, an advanced optical drive, tons of connectivity and a very powerful battery, it's thinner and much lighter than you'd expect a notebook to be. Weighing just over two pounds and being less than 0.8 inches thick, you hardly know it's there if you carry it around. The transreflective 12.1" display is totally revolutionary and provides superb viewability both indoors and outdoors. It's, however, so thin and flexible that you can't help fearing it will break, which it will not.

Like all ultra-lights, and especially those with advanced features, the Portege R500 is not inexpensive. Prices start at US$1,999, and a top-of-the-line model with Vista, 2GB of RAM an a 64GB Solid State Drive goes for US$2,999. If price is not an issue, the Portege R500 is not only a showcase product, but also one that is just perfect for anyone who values maximum mobility without giving up features. The display alone, in fact, would be worth the extra cost. -- C. H. Blickenstorfer

source : http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_notebooks_toshiba_r500.html

Lenovo Ide Pad U110

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 comes in the wake of America's new obsession with tiny laptops. I could tell you that it's powered by a 1.6Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (4MB, 800 MHz), packing 120GB of PATA storage and up to 3GB of RAM (2 tested), but all you want to know is that it's over half a pound lighter than the MacBook Air and will impress the fellow yupps at Starbucks. Still, if you're interested in seeing if beauty is more than ultra-glossy skin deep, hit the jump to see what I loved and hated about the Lenovo IdeaPad U110.

The Decor
The top is a sharp red with tendril textures—actually quite classy in person. Flip it upside-down and you'll see that even the air vents feature a touch of style.

The Weight
Lenovo's U110 weighs just 2.42 pounds (and 2.92 with the larger battery). That's only .4 pounds more than the Eee and, trust me, it's freakin' light. So you know though, 2.92 pounds feels way, way heavier than 2.42. The "ohhh" factor is lost with the bigger battery.

The Screen
In the past, I've found that the Eee screen was too small for enjoyable use. The HP Mini Note was borderline. Now I've found the perfect size. 11.1" WXGA (1366x768) is just right for comfortable multitasking. And it's LED. Ooooh!

The Keyboard
I'm digging the keyboard. The Backspace button has been chopped a bit beyond my penchant for typos, but the keyboard is generally spacious enough for sure. And the subtly concave "piano painting" buttons feel excellent to the touch.

The Hookups
Tons of good stuff here: 3 USB ports, FireWire, multi-card reader, Mini-PCIe, Express Card, mic, headphones, Ethernet, and VGA out.

Little Extras
Lenovo packed in the little details. You get two batteries (4-cell and 7-cell) depending on your desired weight load. You get an external USB DVD drive since it lacks one of its own. Oh, and you get a cloth for the unbelievable smudgetastic glossy finish.

source : gizmodo.com

Toshiba Qosmio G 50

While Americans still seem to prescribe to the old “bigger is better” mantra when it comes to cars, houses, and gas-station soft drinks, there’s no question that in the realm of laptops, smaller is sexier. Miniature notebooks like the MacBook Air, Asus Eee, and Lenovo X300 have proven that point over and over in the past year by successfully spinning small size into sales. But despite the trend, not all notebook manufacturers have been ignoring the other side of the spectrum.

Toshiba’s new Qosmio G50 laptop runs against conventional notebook logic by not only going big, but going bigger than ever before. It follows Acer’s Gemstone 8920 through the recently broken 17-inch size barrier with an enormous 18.4-inch screen. With all that viewing area and a native resolution that exactly matches that of 1080p HD content, Toshiba is pushing the G50 as the ultimate portable movie machine.

But as it turns out, a large screen isn’t all the G50 has going for it in the cinema department. It also has some unique movie-centric hardware squirreled away within. Besides the usual CPU and GPU, the G50 sports a variant of the Cell processor used in the Sony PlayStation 3.

The so-called Toshiba Quad-Core HD Processor opens up many new doors for the Qosmio by taking tasks that ordinarily bog down the CPU and handling them on its own. The G50 can, for instance, comb through home movies or blockbusters with facial recognition to index scenes by character, or even allow users to control movies with hand gestures (it uses the built-in webcam to analyze your movements and pick the gestures right out of the air.) For DVD lovers, it will upconvert standard-def DVDs to 1080p on the fly, and for movie editors, it will speed up the processor-intensive task of transcoding HD movies significantly.

Toshiba complements this array of graphic niceties with the type of aural capabilities rarely found on laptops. Drawing upon technology from Harmon Kardon, the G50 gets both stereo speakers and a subwoofer packed into its shell, for a listening experience that should literally be booming. And if you would rather use the G50 as the media center for a real home theater system, it has full 5.1 channel output to power up your living room speakers, as well.

Since the processing power to play with movies runs hand and hand with the processing power to play games, Toshiba also includes an Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics card to round out the G50’s capabilities and give tired video editors something to do in their downtime (namely, blowing stuff up.) With 512MB of dedicated on-board RAM and DirectX 10 capability, the GeForce should provide plenty of brute computational power to fire up the latest games on the big screen.

Although Toshiba has released many of the most exciting specs for the G50 well ahead of its July launch date, the laptop’s most likely Achilles Heel – weight – has been curiously missing from press releases and tech specs. Based on the only other 18.4-inch machine the market, the aforementioned Aspire 8920, we would guess that the G50 would likely come in around 9 or 10 pounds. While that’s more than most people would ever want to carry, that does make it perfectly luggable in a household or office situation where a permanent desktop just won’t fly.

source : reviews.digitaltrends.com/first-look/225/toshiba-qosmio-g50-multimedia-notebook

LG KT 610

The KT610 is a Symbian Smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard, 3.5G and a support of 2.4 inch with 400 x 240 pixels main screen. Indeed, it is a smartphone S60, the KT610 supports all the usual features S60 and functions.

LG KT610, it has no WiFi and lack KT610 GPS, the excellent large screen of 800 pixels on the E90 and also comes with a very simple, 2-Megapixel-camera. On the other hand, these 109 x 54 x 17mm camera is less than half the weight of the brick as E90 and it is a little larger than standard telephone business.

The keyboard is good, and relatively large screen is very useful for e-mails and much better than a standard screen for Web browsing. Thus, the LG KT610 seems attractive, even if it is not considered as feature-packed, given that some mobile phones. The number of devices Symbian S60 with the QWERTY is pitifully small, it is clear that the KT610 is a useful option.

That is why it seems to be increasingly cold shoulders LG? After all, someone in LG to all those who have trouble with the planning of the thing, it must be safe for the Advancement of LG? We believe that the problem is as follows: fashion. LG have quite crazy touch screen for mobile phones and kT610 is firmly Non-Touch-Screen-Camp. This is not a very attractive so that they hardly fit the image, which tries LG tend to encourage.

The rumor is that the LG KT610 is only to take distribution channels, but then it was meant that in the last month. We believe that LG are not genuine efforts to promote the KT610, at least on the basis of their current success of the balance.

source : http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_kt610-review-276.php

Blacberry Bold

Screen
Yes, the Bold's 480x320 screen is dazzling enough to warrant its own section dedicated simply to praising it. Incredibly rich and contrast-y with stunning pixel density, it's so nice you want to touch it. I actually tried to once or twice to hit okay on a dialog box, forgetting that it wasn't the touchy kind of screen. It almost makes reading the plain text of an email depressing, knowing you could be looking at a gorgeous video instead.

Keyboard
A BlackBerry lives and dies by its keyboard. When RIM diehards countered reckless banter about the death of the BlackBerry per the iPhone's Exchange support by pointing to the keyboard. After you get used to the slight angle shift in the Bold's keys, they're fantastic, like a delicately balanced wine, with a perfect blend of springy, punchy and spongy. The glossy navigation keys are overly large for reasons I cannot quite divine. The backlighting is beautiful.

Body
It's hands-down the best looking phone RIM has put out, not to mention one of the most attractive pieces of kit on the whole market, even if the clean chrome on black is borrowed from another phone (and we're not saying it is). It looks like an incredibly modern business device, what you imagine people with more important jobs than you would carry to conduct business that's more important than yours, while talking to their accountant about how much fatter their bank account is than yours. It exudes power. Welcome to 2008, RIM design department.

It's larger and wider than the Curve, but it still feels fine in my hands, which aren't giant-sized by any means. The faux-leather backing, however, is absolutely puzzling, like RIM tried to add a touch of class in the same way Donald Trump's hairdo gives him a touch of handsome. In other words, it's fake as crap and feels tacky. Insignificant, really, but it's actually the thing I hate most about this phone. Nonetheless, it feels rock solid.

Connections
It has everything you want: 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi. Despite earlier reports that it suffered from bad 3G problems, I found that it was more consistent and reliable with its 3G connection. It wasn't uncommon to grab four bars of signal where, say, the iPhone only saw one. (I realize bars are not standardized or totally accurate, but the disparity between the two was often significant, two or more bars.) In drive-testing, handoff went smoothly. GPS was slower than I would've liked, more often than not taking up to a minute to get a lock, and the maps app could be snappier (and prettier) than it is, but it'll do. At least on AT&T it will immediately have a decent navigator app.

Battery
It's a champ. Despite lots of 3G browsing, email and other everyday app use, a half charge right out of the box got me through an eight-hour day with no problem. Expect more detailed battery test update later, but all indications are that this thing will last you throughout the day with no problems at all. Way to go, RIM.

Browser
Okay, so there was some controversy about how quickly its browser renders compared to the iPhone. In my tests over Wi-Fi—and believe me, I triple checked to make sure it was on Wi-Fi—it was either tied with, or just behind the iPhone, like the dude who lost to Michael Phelps by a finger tip. The speed difference really is trivial.

It's the best BlackBerry browser ever (this phone is a lot of "best BlackBerry ______ ever"), and one of the most usable mobile browsers around. In other words, it's actually usable. Not a miracle. The trackball isn't the most elegant way to navigate pages—largely because of the zoom metaphor—but it gets the job done, and the vast majority of the time, the Bold shows you pages the way they're supposed to be. It definitely sets a standard for what mobile browsers should do at a minimum, and it's fine for light surfing.

Email
What's a BlackBerry without email? Perhaps wisely, RIM chose to mostly not fix what ain't broken, adding small but significant tweaks like the ability to see pictures in message, full HTML and attachment viewing. Otherwise, it's basically the same experience you're used to. The higher res screen makes the text pop more and adds clarity, but it's not any prettier, which somewhat stands out against the rest of the overhauled UI.

Media
The Roxio-powered desktop Media Manager still sucks total balls—can you please get a decent integrated manager, RIM? And the music/video setup is essentially unchanged—same menu system and organization—but it has a cleaner, less tacky skin on top that makes it look like it's greatly improved, even though it isn't.

But! Watching videos on this thing is a-maz-ing. The sample Speed Racer trailer was so gorgeous and yummy, I almost wanted to watch that 80-car-pile-up of a movie. Almost. The external speaker is surprisingly good, too, with richer sound than most other handsets. Still, this is one of the areas of the phone that needs work—the video quality nearly woos me into giving it a pass—but I can't emphasize enough how much it needs a decent media manager.

OS & UI
RIM has re-skinned the entire operating interface, shifting from pixel-y, realish bitmaps to slick, almost Tron-like high-res icons that have a neon pseudo-science fiction modernist feel to them. One issue: It's no longer immediately apparent what each icon does, so expect to hover initially. (With Precision Zen, the theme with splashes of color, it's easier to discern what icons represent.) I like them, but it's really an issue of personal taste—still, future skins will benefit from being able to go high-res.

All of the top-level menus have been cleaned up as well, with crisp white text on a black background. It feels nice, and goes with the look of the handset itself, conveying the sense of it being modern and powerful. Unfortunately, when you go into applications themselves—mail, contacts, etc.—or deep into settings, you feel like you've entered a time warp three years into the past. It's like eating a tuna sandwich after a piece of sashimi—the tuna sandwich alone, uncontextualized, is fine, but next to a pure, clean slice of maguro it looks like crap.

Startup on this device has been exceptionally slow—I initially thought my unit was busted or something (maybe it is), though I suppose BBs are always damn sluggish on cold starts. For the for first minute or so after booting, the OS kind of chugs as well, but after clearing the pipes, I guess, it runs totally smoothly, as it should with its speedy 624MHz processor.

Still, overall, it's the same BlackBerry OS as before, just prettier and running on snappy hardware. If you're used to a BlackBerry, you won't have any problems getting around. If you're not, well, it's one of the easier mobile OSes to learn and deal with, everything is more or less up front, and on top, at least, it's pretty.

Conclusion
This is RIM's best phone ever. Does that mean it's the phone for you? If you're a BlackBerry fanatic, yes—it really is the phone you've been waiting for, if you're not hoping RIM radically changed the recipe. Because they didn't. It's cleaner and brighter, but it's not an overhaul by any means. It's a more powerful and beautiful distillation of the same experience.

For other people who were eyeing it as the time to switch to BlackBerry, the issue is less straightforward. As I said in the intro, it's coming into a complicated world, where it has more consumer crossover appeal than a flagship RIM device—currently, the 8800—ever has before. (No doubt, even more people are looking at it in light of 3G problems on other handsets, either suit-and-ties who were considering the jump, or people looking for their first high-end smartphone, though more of the former.) At its heart, this thing is a corporate workhouse. It will play movies, music, browse the internet and all of the things consumers usually want—and do it well—but it is coming from a different mindset than the iPhone, something to keep in mind if you're torn between these two phones.

AT&T has not set a price (or a date for that matter) but we're hearing that it will not touch the $199 mark when it launches in September. Depending on how aggressively RIM and AT&T want to push it, it looks like it could go as low as $249, but $299 seems more likely, another factor that makes it more suited to corporate than consumer. (Update: We're hearing that it's definitely $299, and it will hit September 12.) Still, whichever side you're on, this is a fantastic phone that perhaps pushes the BlackBerry experience to its peak. The flipside of that is that with its next generation of phones, RIM might have to radically reinvent it to stay ahead of the game.

source : http://gizmodo.com/5043058/blackberry-bold-review

Noki E71

Like most people, watching Steve Jobs unveil the original Apple iPhone was something that stuck in my memory, in particular for the way he utterly (and somewhat unfairly) dismissed the current generation of qwerty-thumb-keyboarded smartphones, declaring them to have "too much plastic". His point was that you'd get on better having the whole front surface as display and let individual applications use the real estate as they saw fit. An innovative notion and one which works very well for the iPhone. But the continuing popularity of the Blackberry/Treo form factor shows that, especially when someone's banging out text messages and emails all day, in trains, buses, walking down the road, you really can't beat the tactile nature and satisfaction of a real keyboard - however small.

Steve Jobs' original comparison slide showed the Nokia E62, the model of the day in the USA, which suffered from low RAM, a slowish processor and a fiddly joystick. The E61i then appeared, to all intents and purposes a bit of a cosmetic upgrade, with thinner form and a 2 megapixel camera, but the core performance problem remained. The E51 and E90 appeared, with new styling, with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 under the hood and snappier performance all round, plus up to date media codecs. And now we have the E71, combining (hopefully) the best of the E61 form factor with the size (almost) and speed of the E51 and the software package from the E90 plus some new tricks of its own - the perfect smartphone?

After all, you can bang out SMS/emails on this device, but there's a lot more under the hood and the E71 looks to be a fairly good all rounder. The S60 implementation used is still a little under-powered at times, most notably when opening images and playing back videos, but it's fine for everyday productivity and general mobile computing.

In some ways the E71 is the iPhone's nemesis - using almost the identical dimensions in a totally different way, for a totally different set of users. The iPhone excels at media consumption (Music/photos/video/web), while the E71's strengths are in media creation (typing documents, Office work, camera, camcorder, and so on - the usual Nokia/S60 strengths). Both devices can do most of what the other does, just not as well. The attempted crossover is evidenced by the iPhone 2 platform adding enterprise features while the E71 now plays DRMed WMA music, etc. Then there are the starkly different form factors. And the different target markets (personal vs company use). Add in the elegantly-simple- but-not-as-deep UI of the iPhone compared to the useable but-you-need-to-be-fairly-tech-savvy-to-find-everything approach for S60 on the E71, and I can only emphasise once again that they're polar opposites.

From E61 to E71

As you can see, the form factor's been on a diet over the last two years - the E71 has been a long time coming but the new size (112mm high by 57mm wide by a mere 11mm thick) is a huge improvement overall.

The downsides are a) that you need to perform even more finger gymnastics in order to type on the (45mm from q to p) tiny thumb keyboard - the E71 really isn't going to be good for those with big hands, and b) that the screen has had to be down-specced to 2.4" - you'll remember that the original E61/E61i design had a massive 2.8" screen. Those two aspects apart though, it's up, up, all the way.

The upgrades, then: the camera's now 3.2 megapixels with optional auto-focus and LED flash (the E61i was 2mp with no focus or flash), the processor seems to be a good 50% faster (based on timing web page and image rendering, although the inclusion of demand paging also helps here) and the free RAM has been tripled. In addition, the use of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 has made things smoother and nippier at all turns - with the inclusion of up to date audio and video codecs, including H.264 and WMA, notably.

For most people, the smaller and lighter device, together with the spec upgrades, will be compelling - but the downsizing of screen and key size are still well worth noting if these are important to you.

Around the aforementioned screen (transflective, very bright and readable, even doing adequately in sunlight) and miniature keyboard are comparative acres of mirror-finish metal (spot the unit I'm shooting photos with, below), looking stylish but rather prone to fingerprints. The phone microphone is of high quality but is embedded in this front surface, which means that any video you shoot later will have slightly skewed sound - not a huge problem, but, again, worth noting.

The keys themselves are terrific, despite the miniscule size, with good feel and travel. Using my standard typing speed test, the E71 came out at around 28 words per minute, roughly the same as its predecessor, the E61, with the larger keyboard - considering the reduced form factor, this is pretty decent, although the smaller key spacing does mean that for some letter combinations you'll get your fingers in a muddle. In use, the keyboard reminded me strongly of that of a Palm Treo - and given that this is the gold standard in thumb keyboards, this should be taken as a compliment(!) In addition, there's a new word completion system, see below for more on this.

I'm fine with most of the keyboard layout, but have to take issue with 'Ctrl', whose use I get the impression Nokia are trying to deprecate. It's now a 'Fn' keypress (above 'Chr'), so to do 'Ctrl-X', for example, you actually have to press three keys at once, really tricky on something so small. Disappointing.

As with the E51, the 'S60 menu' key is now a 'Home' icon - a change I like a lot, plus there are shortcut keys for Calendar, Contacts and Email - and, even better, you can define extra apps to switch to/launch for long presses on each shortcut key. So, for example, a long press on Contacts might bring up Jaiku.

The D-pad is outstanding, the best such control I've used in several years. With the screen being QVGA, there are many, many compatible games (maybe N-Gage will make an appearance here?) and having a good D-pad to work them is half the battle. In case you were hoping for a higher resolution screen, I'm with Nokia on this one - VGA in a 2.4" display is just silly and wastefully expensive. QVGA on the E71 looks crisp and good. It's only really when web browsing that you'll come a cropper - as usual with S60 Web in such a low resolution display.

Around the sides of the E71 are: Top: power button and mono speaker (good volume and quality). Left: microSD slot, microUSB port (the E61i was Pop-port, so the E71 has leapfrogged the miniUSB standard completely!). Bottom: charging port. Right: Volume up/down, voice recording button, standard 2.5mm 4-way stereo headset jack.

Most of the E71's rear is metal, with a patterned mirror finish, with the camera module adding a couple of mm to the 11mm basic thickness in a little bump, featuring a tiny camera, a LED flash and an aiming mirror - though, to be honest, the entire back forms a good enough mirror for framing yourself when talking 'to camera'.

Buttons either side of the case pop off the rear cover, revealing the huge BP-4L battery, the same one as used in the E61i and E90, which will please cost-conscious (or green) companies - and 1500mAh will power the E71 for an eternity. Even with heavy Wi-Fi use and music/camera activity, the E71 will easily last a working day - and often two. Take the battery out and you appreciate just how stunningly light the E71's body is and how hard Nokia has worked to miniaturise everything. Good design, guys.

S60 Basics, S60 extensions

There's little need to describe the basics of S60 here - originally designed for one-handed use with portrait screen, it has scaled fairly well to part-time two-handed use with keyboard and landscape screen, as evidenced by the popularity of the E61 family. But it's important to note that there have been a lot of tweaks by the Eseries team to the standby screen, the OS and basic applications - and mostly for the better - I'd like to see these tweaks rolled out across other S60 devices.

The first surprise is on the standby screen, with a new ying/yang icon, marked 'Switch mode'. Modes are a new concept, based around the idea that you do different things with your smartphone at different times in your day/week. Two example modes are supplied, modelling possible standby configurations (in terms of theme, application shortcuts, standby plug-ins and wallpaper), but you can create your own and generally fiddle with your modes until the cows come home. It's a neat idea but it remains to be seen how many non-geeks get round to serious tinkering.

The number of possible standby plug-ins has increased too, to a massive 15, from Music player to Email to Calendar to Search, although only a handful can be shown at once, so you have to be quite selective - still, more choice is better than none. A new voicemail icon can be highlighted, to show a popup menu with common voicemail options at the start and then as appropriate thereafter, depending on what's waiting for you.

Of extra special interest on the standby screen is smart dialling, in that you can start tapping out the characters of a name and they'll be quick matched against your Contacts. The implementation is a little messy in that what's displayed in the main text field are the numeric characters, but the contact matching does work:

Opening the main menu shows that Nokia has done a serious job of organising the 50 or so apps and mini-apps into folders. Personally, I found it annoying and wanted to move the icons around to suit my way of working, but then that's the joy of S60, in that you can get your phone working exactly the way you want it. Dipping into the folders reveals a lot to take note of:

• A shortcut for VoIP (by default set to download Gizmo, but you can add your own).
  
• A tweaked version of Contacts. The old contact groups have been moved from a tab to the Options menu and pressing 'right' on a contact now brings up a pop-up menu showing the five most common ways in which you might want to get in touch with that person, e.g. voice, SMS, video call, etc. A useful UI shortcut, even a little inelegant, given the duplication of Options menu functions.
  

  

• Calendar has had even more of a tweak. The month view is now split screen, E90-style, while the day screen now has an Outlook-style hourly layout - very pretty but tedious to navigate sometimes. Finally, when editing an entry, there's a new highly condensed dialog, meaning you can set more information without having to scroll down several screens worth of options, as in the old S60 Calendar.
  

  

• Quickoffice is now up to v4.1, giving good Office round-tripping but without some of the extras (such as Office 2007 support) that you'd get by paying extra for the latest Quickoffice 5.0 - it's a shame that this has to be a pay-for upgrade, I really can't see why they didn't just put Quickoffice 5.0 in the ROM and send some dollars over to Quickoffice for the license - the current situation just annoys most purchasers.
  

  

• There's a licensed version of Kernerman's Dictionary engine, along with links to download various language pairs for free. Given that both English and translation dictionaries are amongst the most popular third party applications, it's great to have this built in here for free.
  

  

  
  
• There's a new 'Intranet' icon - the idea being that your company's IT department installs VPN settings on its devices, so that you can access its Intranet in encrypted fashion using Web. It should work fine but I wasn't able to test this.
  

  

• 'Encryption' is a new setting/icon for the paranoid and nothing to do with VPN. Instead, it offers on-the-fly encryption and decryption of everything in your E71's internal flash disk and/or memory card. The encryption uses your lock code as its key and, having asked for encryption, the processor gets to work on the initial changes to files, which takes a minute or two. I didn't notice a slow down in operation after encryption. In a corporate environment, with an E71 potentially stuffed with confidential documents, this encryption ability will be greatly welcomed. Sales manager lose his phone? No worries, it's fully encrypted from the eyes of even an experienced hacker. And a remote wipe is only a phone call away if needed, as extra security.
  

  

  
  
• There's the Nokia Music Store client - a first for an Eseries device - whatever next? Provided you're OK with the DRM on each (WMA) track and don't intend to switch devices too often, this is a good way to buy music instantly, over the air. (Regular readers will know that I'm not big on DRM - I simply copied across a few Gigabytes of unDRMed music files from my (ripped) CD collection with the E71's microSD card in 'Mass Storage' mode)
  

  

• Gallery is the same tired old application as in S60 devices three years ago. Why, oh why, hasn't Nokia's Eseries team asked the Nseries team for the code to the slick Gallery featured in every N device since the N93, over two years ago? Gallery works here, but it's not pretty and it's not pleasant.
  

  

• Messaging is another application long overdue for an update - word on the street is that this was planned for the E71 but never made it into production, a shame. At least there's a shiny new email set up wizard that queries a Nokia online database for settings - the user just enters their email address and all the rest is set up automatically - really neat and seems to work most of the time.
  
• Another multimedia surprise - Podcasting's preinstalled! One less app for the user to have to go off and download.
  

  

  
  
• Yet another Nseries crossover - Share Online 3.0 is also preinstalled. So E71 owners will be able to take part in the great Ovi/FLickr photo-and-video-sharing-fest from the outset. With both camera and camcorder being decent on the E71, there's no reason not to take an active part and show off some really good media.
  

  

• Global Race and (a fully licensed copy of) Top Hits Solitaires are included (via Download!) - after all, even Eseries users need to play - personally, I'd like to see an N-Gage client for the E71 - the hardware is up to the job. (Incidentally, the old E61 game exclusives, such as Golf Pro Contest, aren't compatible - yet)
  

  

• At last - a new device with Nokia Maps 2.0 built into the ROM - every device I'd previously seen had the old v1.2 application by default. I know Nokia Maps voice navigation's subscription model has its critics, but I'm a fan - and route guidance in my hands has been at least as good as any other full 'prepaid' commercial navigation solution. The GPS antenna seems to be in the E71's top and reception was very good, similar to that on the N82. I also installed the free Google Maps and this also worked well, as expected. The landscape screen somehow seems more natural for mapping and navigation software, despite the reduced screen real estate.
  

  

  

• The E71 does have Flash Lite 3, as with the E90's latest firmware update. Using Web, I was able to view Flash videos in YouTube and Ovi Share pages. Playback wasn't silky smooth, but it was 'good enough'.
  

  

  
  

One other innovation for the E71 (and its stablemate, the slider E66) is that when the main display is keylocked and timed out, rather than a traditional screensaver appearing, the display blanks completely. "But I need to know the time!" I hear you say. Simply press and hold the D-pad and the time appears in large letters, as shown here. A much better solution than the old non-backlit, small-fonted solution.

Impressively, full word completion (not just T9-style predictive text) has been integrated into the interface, available as a toggle in any text editing field. For fans of this system it's wonderful, though I find that it doesn't really save time - I end up wasting as much time looking up at what the system is suggesting (pressing D-pad in or space accepts the suggestion) as I would hunting for the right letters to make up the word manually. Still, useful to have and implemented well.

It's also worth noting that the way text is copied and pasted has been brought more into line with other S60 devices: as you hold down 'Shift' and highlight text, 'Copy' appears on the left function key. The old Ctrl-C method still works in most places, but won't be used as often because of the 'Ctrl' key placement.

Multimedia pretensions

Multimedia on 'Enterprise'-aimed S60 devices has always lagged a little behind the cutting edge and the E71 is no exception. But, to cut it some slack, it's a lot better than on the clunky old E61i. Media handling is slightly crippled by the use of USB 1.1, as on most other current S60 devices, although slow file transfers won't be a huge issue for many typical Eseries users, who arguably tend not to swap their music and video collections around as often as, say, someone with an N95.

Video playback now includes H.264 support, so most MP4 videos will play without problem. I did notice some jerkiness occasionally (there are no fancy 3D graphcis chips to help out here, as on the N95, for example) and suspect that there's still some fine tuning to do under the hood for future firmwares. Video on the E71 is still watchable though. Likewise music playback is now acceptable without seriously encroaching on the audio quality found in the likes of the N78, the N95 or standalone digital music players. The inclusion of a proper Equaliser was useful and I liked keeping 'Bass booster' on in order to hear bass frequencies better. In summary, media playback is fine for occasional use but you probably wouldn't choose the device for these abilities.

The E71 fares well when it comes to multimedia creation, though I have to admit to being a little disappointed by the camera - I'd been hoping for the same unit that featured in the E90. Instead, we get a small lensed 3.2mp camera (to bang the gong yet again - it's not all about how many megapixels a camera has) with comparatively cheap optics and sensor. You can see in the examples here (click to open full-size) that in bright conditions contrast is handled relatively poorly. Indoors, the images are digitally noisy, even with the LED flash, as you'd expect from such a small lens. No worse than in the cameras in many other smartphones, but worse than the E90's camera and a lot worse than that in the likes of the N95.

On the plus side, focussing is down to an incredible 4cm - great for nature shots! Focussing itself is handled in semi-automatic fashion and I'm somewhat impressed by how much flexibility this gives the user. Previously a smartphone user had to choose between a focussing camera for which you had to wait a second or so for focussing and for which you really needed a static subject, and a non-focussing camera that was great for instant shots (i.e. it didn't need to wait and focus) but for which anything close was blurry. With the E71, you can press the D-Pad to take an instant shot or press the 't' key (beneath the D-Pad) to focus if needed, after which you then press the D-Pad to snap, etc. I thought I'd hate this solution but in fact it's proven very flexible - you really do get the best of both worlds. If only the camera optics had been better, the E71 could have been a real contender in terms of day to day photography.

For video recording, capture is at the new 'phone' standard of QVGA at 15 frames per second (i.e. YouTube-friendly), although the optics are pretty good for this sort of work and the captured soundtrack is of much higher quality than similar video-recording phones and smartphones. Again though, video recording seems a little week compared to the E90 (let alone the Nseries super-multimedia-phones).

In the enterprise and open to new applications

Of course, half the power of something like the E71 is that it's fully backed up with enterprise integration software: push email solutions from half a dozen providers (including Nokia's free and rather good Mail for Exchange, which isn't actually in the firmware but is expected to be loaded, pre-configured, by your company IT department), the aforementioned Quickoffice and VPN client, plus vertical software for particular businesses written in C++, Java, Python or Ruby.

The Messaging application itself is largely unchanged from earlier devices which is something of a dissapointment given that this is a key area of the E71, especially in the light of tweaks to the Contacts and Calendar applications. While the breadth of support for different push external email solutions (Nokia Intellisync, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, Visto Mobile, and Seven Always on Mail) and its plug-in architecture is a definite plus, this will not be a factor in day to day usage. Instead the fiddly set-up, limited folder handling, and relatively poor support for sorting, search, attachment handling and multiple email accounts may disappoint users switching from other systems.

Although I'm not part of a big company, I did load up over 20 third party applications in order to check compatibility and had no issues whatsoever - it seems that with the E61 blazing the way and then other S60 handsets like the N95 and N82 having 'landscape' modes, nearly all applications are now quite happy running 'this way' round.

Showing Location Tagger working fine in the E71 camera, plus a random third party application, BeatEd

120MB of flash memory makes up the internal (C:) disk and this will take some filling - it's certainly ample for all uses I can think of, with a microSD card doubtless being supplied as well for many markets and operators. If you buy the E71 SIM-free then you'll have to provide your own card, I suspect, though these are now very, very cheap.

In addition to the now ubiquitous Wi-Fi, 3.5G data and Bluetooth, there's a legacy infrared port, good to see as it's still of use for contact beaming in companies where older Palm OS and Pocket PC handhelds are found. There's also easy tethering of the E71 to company laptops, with a 'Connect PC to web' option shown when you plug in the microUSB cable - selecting this installs a new Nokia Internet application on the PC, which then handles the tethering process. It's all a little slow though - I found connecting through the standard PC Suite module to be faster.

Summarising the E71

There's a lot to really like in this latest Eseries miniaturised masterpiece. The build quality is fabulous, the styling striking (within the qwerty world, anyway), the communications options vast, text input potentially fast and flexible, the software support and built-in enterprise features almost second to none. And all in something that's as thin as your average feature phone. Which is almost certainly enough to ensure strong sales to the usual Eseries audience.

The E71 fills a very important gap in the line up of 2nd generation Eseries device. While the E90 is an extremely capable device, its form factor and price point make it rather niche. The E51 is a great entry level enterprise device, but lacks the power that a full size keyboard provides. The completed portfolio of 2nd generation Eseries devices (E51, E66, E71, E90) has a real sense of maturity about it. This comes from the hardware (variety across the range, build quality and feature set), but also the software - the enterprise applications, and crucially, the enterprise device management options have been significantly improved. The Nokia E71 and its sisters look set to give Nokia's Enterprise rivals (Blackberry and Windows Mobile - and, yes, in time the iPhone) some sleepless nights.

A tougher call is for those buying the E71 for personal use, as the smallest qwerty-equipped S60 device. While the keyboard is very useable for anyone with nimble fingers, I found the multimedia side of the E71 disappointing, from the relatively low (compared to other recent S60 mainstays like 2006's N95) camera quality to the undistinguished audio and video playback. The E71 is better than the E61i, hugely so, but in truth I'd hoped for a little bit more, given that this is now mid 2008. And yes, I know the E71 is built to come in at an attractive price, but... Don't let these slight negatives put you off investigating this great smartphone all rounder though.

The Nokia E71 is in the building.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 16 June 2008

source : www.allaboutsymbian.com