Nokia E71 Cell Phone Review - Messaging

With Exchange integration available out of the box and support for most popular email services and standards the E71 is a capable messaging device. We do wish that it supported a unified interface for both SMS and MMS messages, however.

Supported Email Services (7.5)
The Nokia E71 supports standard POP and IMAP email accounts. Automatic setup is also supported for popular services like Yahoo, Gmail and AOL email. There is no native support for Hotmail, but you can download Microsoft's Windows Live application for S60 to add this support.

Push Email (4.0)
Nokia's E-Series devices like the E71 support Push email via Microsoft Exchange Activesync out of the box. There is no support for BlackBerry connect, and unlike previous E-Series devices this can't be added with a software download. You can also use Nokia's push email service called Intellisync.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Nokia E71 is able to support at least five different email accounts, although it should be noted that only one of these can be an Exchange account.

HTML and Attachments (8.5)
The Nokia E71 comes with Quickoffice, which allows you to handle Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents received as attachments. PDF files are handled by Adobe's PDF viewer and there's also a zip program on board. HTML support is not as good, unfortunately. Unlike the iPhone 3G or Windows Mobile devices the E71 cannot display full HTML emails directly in the email program. Instead HTML content is saved as an attached file that you can then view in the web browser. The email itself is plain text only. As such we are only awarding half points for HTML support.

Email Customizations (2.0)
The only customization options the Nokia E71 offers is support for signatures. Unlike the Nokia E61i you cannot change the height of emails in the list view between one and two lines, an unfortunate omission. You also can't change email font size or type.

Time to a New Email Message (9.52)
It took us only 2.1 seconds to create a new email message on the Nokia E71. This is very speedy, you can see below that it is much faster than the average phone, although it was beat out by a couple of our comparison phones. The E71's email key offers a handy shortcut for creating a new message that we took advantage of.

A single press on the button will take you to your primary email account, but simply press and hold the button to go straight to a new email dialogue. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to a New Email (sec)

Email Usability (6.0)
The Nokia E71's email program is little changed from the typical S60 fare. When you enter the messaging application you see a mailbox for each email account, while system boxes like sent, drafts, etc. are shared between accounts. Open the mailbox to see that accounts inbox, you can then switch to other mailboxes using left/right on the D-Pad. Up/down will scroll between messages. The left soft key opens a menu that gives you various options while the right soft key takes you back to the main messaging interface. The interface is reasonably easy to use, but not quite as efficient as BlackBerry devices like the Curve 8320.

Instant Messaging (0.0)
The Nokia E71 comes with a jabber instant messaging client, but no out of the box support for popular services like AIM, Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger.

MMS Support (7.0)
Unlike the Nokia N78, where we saw Nokia's first implementation of a unified messaging interface for both text and multimedia messages, the E71 uses the same old separate interfaces. This is a waste and we hope the unified interface is moved over to the E71 in a software update soon. Integration with the camera and album software is straightforward and easy to use.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
The Nokia E71 can neither interpret smiley faces as graphical icons, nor does it provide an easy interface for inserting smileys. Looks like Nokia doesn't think that business people like to smile. Of course they don't support smileys on any of their devices so maybe they don't like to see anyone smile?

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (6.0)
Text and multimedia messages are integrated into the messaging application. A single unified inbox is used for both message types, too bad the same isn't true for the new message interface. The same shared boxes that are used for email accounts for sent and drafts are also used for text and multimedi messages. Messages in any box are organized in a list that you move up and down using the D-Pad. We do wish that Nokia had implemented threaded messaging already as found on the Palm Centro or iPhone 3G.

Time to a New SMS Message (6.25)
We were able to create a new text message on the Nokia E71 in a very speedy 1.6 seconds. Although there's no quick shortcut directly to a new text message, there is a shortcut to the messaging application, where the first option is to create a new message, and the first option that appears in the resulting list is a new text message. This means you're only three button presses away from a new text message from the home screen.

If this isn't fast enough for you there is also the option to add a shortcut to the home screen that will take you directly to a new text message interface. You can see below that the Nokia E71's performance on this test compares very well with other devices, only the Palm Centro beat it out. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to a New SMS (sec)