I have been looking for a PDA phone. I have few must-have and Good-to-have features as my guideline to hunt down my next phone.Must-have
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VOIP support
Unlocked 3G/GSM
QWERTY messaging keyboard
WiFi & Bluetooth
Sync with Outlook Address Book, Calendar, and Notes
More than 2 days of battery life
Supports SD card
Built-in camera with video recording
Good-to-have
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IM Messengers
Dictionary
Business card scanning
MP3/Video player
Web browser
Touch screen
Like many other people, they may have separate address book in their PDA and cell phone respectively. This is the main reason I want a PDA phone to combine them into 1. I could have bought this phone earlier to solve the problem. I was just waiting for Apple iPhone to see if it does any better, but I eventually gave up iPhone.
Why did I choose E61i?
1) It is a unlocked phone
2) I can use truphone, a VOIP service for Symbian OS phones, to make international call over WiFi/3G network. The quality is even better than my home Vonage service.
3) The battery can last 2 or more days with normal usage.
4) QWERTY messaging keyboard makes my life easier on SMS.
5) It syncs with my address book, calendar with Outlook perfectly.
6) For the Web browser, I feel the N61i browser is better than the one in Pocket PC but worst than iPhone. You are able to zoom in and out a web page.
7) This is not important to English speaking users. I bought the Hong Kong version of E61i. It supports Chinese on typing and displaying. There is a built-in Chinese/English Dictionary too.
The nice things I figured after I bought it
1) The speaker is loud and clear.
2) It supports Podcast
3) There is a IM+ software you can purchase. It supports many popular Instant Messengers.
4) It has a message reader to read your text message with voice.
5) It can print documents with some HP printers that support LAN/Bluetooth
The things I dislike about this phone
1) Hard to find the right place to configure certain features.
2) Not much software supports Symbian OS.
3) It does not support WMV and WMA files
4) No built-in auto keypad lock. Fortunately, there is a freeware.
5) No Bluetooth power save feature on handsfree mode.
6) No touch screen.
7) A little bit too wide on the size.
So, I got one of these. It works; but the menu system takes some learning. I actually had to read the manual. Simple things that made my life easy with the Blackberry like being able to click on the email message and get a screen to call back the sender directly are completely missing. It does not have a learning dictionary to speed up txt messages with fast auto complete and the keys are also weird; just don't feel right.
The dialing system is annoying if you travel a lot; whereas my old Blackberry just got on with it and inserted the "+" before the country code when I was dialing from Taiwan or UK or wherever, the Nokia dialer barfs at this. So now, I need to go through my entire address book and update the numbers to include the "+".
On the plus side, it does have flawless BT support my Jawbone headset locks in very nicely every time. It also has wickedly good battery life (nearly 2 ~ 3 days) and excellent VOIP call capabilities. (I use TruPhone; works great.)The camera can be used a a video camera as well, saving me the trouble of packing another item. (I always take short videos of where I've been to show the kids; the e61i is great for this too.)The sync with Outlook is also flawless and the SW package includes a media manager that does additional compression.
As an Engineer, I'm also impressed with the construction; the back is solid stainless steel, and it has already survived pretty intense destruction testing from my younger son giving it near mil-std grades in my book.
As a phone, the sound quality is excellent. This is fundamental, but something that is often missing on other phones.
The default menu can be configured to show what you want I have it showing an email summary, a calendar summary, and a bunch of gadgets. And since I use TruPhone for VOIP, I also have it scanning for WLAN's from time to time. Its a busy little machine, and has never hung up on me yet.
Based on the narky user interface, I can't give this 5 stars. But, its definitely better than 3 stars and is good at what it does right. It definitely does do what I bought it for, and hopefully, with time and new software releases, things will get better.I bought it as an all-in-one solution:
phone/office/email/navigation/pmp and own it for almost two months now.
I don't regret one cent I spent for it.
The DESIGN is one of most simple yet elegant on the market and you have to hold it yourself in your hand to see how it feels as I can't express the feeling ;).
Perhaps one thing I appreciate the most is the BATTERY LIFE. Wifi on for almost the whole week-end and still had enough juice for the next monday.
Allthough the size of the screen is not as big as a PDA screen, it is still big enough for enjoying some movies (divx also) while travelling. I installed TOMTOM on it and it's great for navigation! It's true that it doesn't have gps built-in (I had to use my bluetooth gps receiver for navigation) but it's a fair compromise compared to all the other features it provides.
It connects to almost EVERYTHING. The only problem I had was related to the fact that it doesn't support "IP passthrough" (for sharing internet connection through the data cable provided and the Nokia Network Bridge software). It also doesn't support "PAN bluetooth" for connecting to bluetooth networks, but this will not make me rate it with less than 5 stars.
I will not go through all the features and apps which can be installed on it, as other reviewers already did this. And I cannot agree with the previous 1 star rate, the "symptoms" described lead to lack of knowledge rather than a "bad PDA".
It doesn't have touchscreen, that's true, but I didn't feel the need for such a feature, considering also the size of the screen. And remember, a touchscreen comes with its own disadvantages: the screen loses brightness in sunny environments due to the extra layers it adds. Choice is yours.. ;)
Although it has an average browser, I installed the free Opera Mini which comes as a freeware and is reacher in features.
The Symbian OS platform has been on the market for a loooong looooong time, and there is a diverse choice of apps and games including the ones from the third parties. There are two things to keep in mind when searching the right app for your needs: it has to support the Series 60 (S60) version 3 (or Symbian 9.1a) and it has to fit the 320x240 resolution (as the reversed 240x320 is usually most popular amongst the nokias).
I owned other smartphones and PDAs, including Palm, Nokia and Blackberry, but I feel that E61i is the ONE for me. I recommend it without any hesitations. Enjoy the elegant and powerful E61i ;)This review is written from the perspective of someone moving from a Blackberry or Treo. If this is your first smartphone, you'll probably like it. If you are switching from another device, you'll probably be disappointed. If you are trying to use this for business, you'll likely be frustrated.
My biggest frustration is with Mail for Exchange (and Mail in general). If you don't need to sync over the air with a corporate Microsoft Exchange Server, this bit isn't for you.
First, some good things.
MfE syncs quickly, sometimes even before my laptop.
MfE was easy to install and set up.
Battery life is great, on par with the Blackberry.
Very easy to switch between email accounts using the D-pad.
Now the bad/ugly:
Let's go through the steps it takes me to send a new email:
-Why is `text message' the top option and "E-mail" the bottom option when I'm *already* in MfE and making a new message?
-Why do you ask me which account to use when I choose E-mail, especially how quickly I can switch between them? 99.9% of the time I want to write an email in the account that I'm in.
-Why do you make me jump to *another* dialog box for Corporate Lookup? Why not just give me an option to look up the name I typed in the to or cc line and come back with a list? The lookup itself is also incredibly slow. It probably takes me 30 seconds to get the name in the field. On the blackberry I've already typed and sent the message (and probably sent another 3 emails).
I can't click on a phone number or link in the email. WTF? The Treo's been able to do this since they were Handspring. Someone sends me a number in an email and I'm supposed to copy/paste? This is not fun for dialing into conference calls.
No auto-replace, e.g. youre -> you're. Try typing "I'd", I dare you. Annoying as hell. Why is the apostrophe buried under the slash key?
No ability to turn off notification buzz when in silent mode. This is really annoying.
Why don't you give me the option of downloading the whole message? Sure would be nice to be able to read the whole message on my flight, not just the first 2K.
You can't sync notes? Come on.
Don't get me started on the initial sync wiping all contacts and calendar entries. Here's a radical notion -make a group called "Exchange" in both my contacts and my calendar. Delete that one all you want, but leave my personal entries *alone*. I know that this is probably a Microsoft ActiveSync issue, but deleting data to avoid dupes is a cop out. You give me separate email accounts, give me separate calendar and contact accounts.
Existing, repeating calendar entries aren't getting picked up.
Corporate Lookup doesn't give me a phone number, and isn't available in Contacts. How am I supposed to get phone numbers from the directory?
Far too often, MfE just stops checking mail. No error. Whether this is a network issue or a MfE issue I don't know, but I just don't trust it.
Phone issues
Why is the zero off to the right? That's just weird. Put it where the @ is (and share it with the apostrophe key).
It's way too hard to see the numbers at night (or any blue key, for that matter).
I have fairly big hands, and the phone is wide. Reeeally wiiiiide. But it is very thin, and sturdy. (But it's wide...)
The buttons are pretty flat. They're easy to hit, but I found it tiring compared to the Treo or Blackberry.
Then there's the whole network switching issue. Take a lesson from the iPhone -if my WiFi networks aren't available, use GPRS. Or if I'm not getting mail on WiFi, go to GPRS. Don't make me chose every time. In general, Symbian needs to make the network switching more elegant. The iPhone's *killing* you here. I should NOT have to worry about it. SmartConnect helps, but this should be built into the OS. I have to pay more money to reliably connect to different networks on a mobile device? Often it would just sit there, not checking mail because it shut off the WiFi even though GPRS was obviously available. Not cool.
The whole issue of where settings live (not just networking, but everything) is a whole other issue. Way too many places, not very elegant.
The e61i has potential. MfE has potential. But it's not ready for prime time. Sorry if this comes across as snarky, but this has been an incredibly frustrating experience given the potential of the phone (impressive battery life, great camera, wifi, well integrated VOIP). I'm also worried that Nokia is prioritizing on their N series phones and won't be focused on improving the E series software.
Summary: if you're coming from the Blackberry, you'll be disappointed by the Exchange-based email.Absolutely love everything about this with one exception. The numbers on the keyboard are buried in blue background, and are not illuminated.
This means in anything but bright light, using the phone function requires memory and some guessing.
The screen is fantastic.
Online performance fantastic.
Everything except those numbers.
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