Suggested price is £100?
Amazon has it listed SIM-free at £299.99, with the "list price" being £100 more...
Touchscreen phones are where both manufacturers and punters are spending now, and all other categories are seeing rapid declines in market share. But if the most important applications you use involve phone calls and messaging, all of the new, whizzy devices fall short. None do voice particularly well, or messaging …
Given as this, and seemingly most new Nokia's since the N8 are pentaband does this mean they will work on the Verizon network in America? Or for that matter any of the other networks around the world that work on the same infrastructure as Verizon's?
Also does this phone support USB OTG?
As an E71 user I can say - I am almost sold. Almost. Close, but no cigar. In fact, if I am given this phone for free I will definitely not turn it away. Pay for it... No... Do not think so... 319.95 on mobilefun. Definite NO.
So I would probably be buying the refresh of the Xperia mini pro when it is out in August instead (or just staying with my E71 until it dies). It will be 50+ less, will do the same stuff, will have a keyboard. It will be shorter on battery life, but hey, you cannot have everything.
"I doubt if anyone felt an emotion resembling affection for their E71"
I love my E71! As a phone I'd choose it over any iphone or android model I've encountered. Comfortable in the pocket and in the hand (physically small), fantastic keyboard, and a decent battery life (like, my battery is well over two years old and I still get a week if I'm not using it too much for heavier tasks like GPS).
When it dies I want the replacement to be just as compact and comfortable, and to have as nice a keyboard! And preferably battery life, too!
I ditched my E71 for a Desire Z about 5 weeks ago. It has now packed up so I'm using my E71 again. As a phone, and for messaging, it's like a breath of fresh air. As you say, the battery life is brilliant - lucky to get a day out of the Desire. Yes, the Desire is much flashier, and great for internet, but as an actual business tool, the Nokia is much, much more useful. Anyone want to buy a Desire Z? I'm assuming they'll fix it.
... as long as someone bothers to actually compile and package it up for the target platform.
Hasn't this "write once, run anywhere" thing been an early 90s' marketing slogan for some sort of hot and bitter californian caffeinated beverage, and everyone moved on since ?
Good to see Nokia trying to develop a natural successor to the E71: a smartphone designed as if battery life mattered.
Bad to see that Nokia still can't design smartphones as if software mattered.
Since I am not interested in an MS phone, I guess my E71 will have to live forever.
(My 6310 tried, but, through no fault of its own, it ended up at the bottom of the river Wey. To avoid a recurrence of this unfortunate outcome, I moved to Germany. So far, so good.)
A phone optimised for make phone calls. Shirley sum mishtake?
Yep making calls is a pig on both my Androids. But as I use it more for other stuff I will sadly not be returning to Nokia. Hopefully Google, ZTE, HTC, Huwei et al will be issuing the E6 to their developers to show what they need to do on the voice front.
Well, I know the answer to that one. The E50 I used to have was perfect except the bug where randomnly calls would get automatically answered and on speakerphone with the only recourse being to pull the battery.
That "small" bug was never fixed to this day.
No, its ok Nokia you blew "business phone" with me on that one, together with not being able to make non-camera versions of any of the newer ones, despite promising it.
BTW I'd love to know what sort of "business" the reviewer is in whereby you can classify issues with using a phone, as a phone, as a minor niggle. If thats the case, buy a gameboy or an ipad or a blueray player or a toaster or something, a phone is clearly not what you need.
AC since I agreed to a beta test NDA and want the opportunity to do testing again sometime.
Got one of these sent out by Nokia for testing with an earlyish firmware revision and I too noticed the massive problem of not being able to pick up calls all the time. Upgraded to latest firmware just before I had to send it back and that problem was still present.
Good points - very nice screen, good camera, felt speedy, HTML e-mail, touch - to an extent - soft keys weren't consistent but lovely for scrolling on web pages, build quality, photo gallery
Bad points - Locked / froze quite a lot even with only a couple of apps open. Non-push E-mail download seemed a lot slower than with my old E71, even with text only stuff. I added my corporate e-mail to it which has a PIN code and encryption policy, worked well. However once I removed the e-mail and unencrypted I still couldn't remove the PIN which was very annoying.
I'd say superior to the BB Torch even though screen is smaller, Torch is clunky when you slide it open and build quality feels pretty poor.
If I was offered it for free (assuming call issue fixed) I'd take one. £300. Hmm, cheaper than BB 9780 but difficult to decide since Symbian is of course dead.
E71 = 369MHz ARM11
E6 = 600MHz ARM11
So still using old SOC designs, and only 256MB of RAM - at the £100 you seem to think it costs this would be a bargain, but at well over £300 it's decidedly not.
Whilst Symbian may be smooth I fully expect the Nokia affliction of slow app and web performance is in full effect here.
This then is a mobile PHONE, don't expect it to be a smart or super phone. And if a phone is all you need then there are cheaper options...
I daily use a 5yr old E61, a predecessor of the E6, and feel sad about Nokia's lack of a red-blooded app ecosystem despite vast expenditure (some will draw an analogy about central planning vs ... whatever the Apple app store thing should be called). And sad about this orphan OS.
Yes Nokia call quality and battery life is greatly superior, and that's important. But if I'm anything to go by (and I'm sure this sounds plenty dysfunctional, but, anyway), then, the internet, and mobile internet, are tools almost to get distance from people, in terms of reading news stories and endlessly shopping around, and mucking about with programs, wherever I am, rather than put me in touch with real people. And Apple with its thriving app ecosystem, makes this process one of endless discovery of innumerable apps and non-human variety, if you like.
I wonder if there will be a vast cull of Apple app developers when they realise the long-run profits are only there for a few - and IOS end up in a few years with the stripped-down choices which Symbian users now have, ironically?
And a decent battery life too?
Does it have a decent camera [yes]
Does it make work as a phone [sort of yes]
Can I get my email [yes]
Does it look like an ugly business phone [yes]
Can I put it in my pocket [yes]
Only 300 groats too?
Just hope they fix the phone call issues.
It appears that Nokia is trying to master the basics which apple and others seem to have forgotten while they chase the masses.
Its actually a good strategy when you think about it.
Apple and others rely on the price breaks that they get when the telcos subsidize the phone in exchange of a new contract. But if your phone breaks before the contract is up, they will gladly renew your contract, so if you have 1 year left, you'll be stuck on their network for the next 3 years or pay a now hefty penalty to exit your contract early. IPhones break easily. I have a friend who goes through an iphone at least once a quarter. My wife destroyed her crackberry in a year. The Nokia phones, while not indestructible tend to outlast the 2yr commitment.
But lets get back to the issue. A phone is first and primarily a phone for voice and sms/email texting. There's a growing population of people who don't do facebook or other 'social networking' sites. Nor do we feel the need to tweet about the latest bowel movement we've just had.
A camera is sometimes handy, as well as internet access to help look up an address or phone number. So a phone that keeps to the basics and tries to master them is going to be a worthwhile product.
Note I'm not saying that Nokia phones are perfect. (No they really do have some major flaws.) But following the crowd really won't help the company survive.
Ah, well, I gather Rover only had 3 good cars in the latter half of the C20th - the P5, the SD1, and the 75, none really great. Whereas Nokia really set the bar for mobile phone physical and interface design and call technology for quite a while. So I hope you're wrong anyway! Cheers
I'm mildly surprised that Nokia continue to use their own proprietary charger plugs, rather than using mini/micro USB sockets like pretty much everyone else seems to have standardised upon these days. Mini/micro USB chargers and leads are pretty ubiquitous these days, making it easier to borrow a charger/cable when needed. (Granted, Nokia chargers were everywhere at one point when Nokia ruled the mobile phone market, but not so much any more, at least in my experience.)