Nokia E71 Cell Phone Review - Organizer

The E71 has significant upgrades to the S60 PIM applications, making them easier to use and more powerful. There's also support for synchronizing the device with your computer and over the air synchronization with an Exchange Server.

Synchronization (6.67)
The Nokia E71 can synchronize your contacts, calendar appointments, notes, tasks and files with a Windows computer using Nokia's PC Suite software. Synchronization is supported with Outlook or Lotus Notes. Synchronization is supported via USB and Bluetooth with simple and straightforward setup. If you're using a Mac you'll need to download an iSync plugin from Nokia's site to enable synchronization with the Mac PIM apps. Another alternative is Mark Space's Missing Sync for S60.

Alerts (4.5)
Alerts on the Nokia E71 can be set for both calendar appointments and tasks. Like the E66, and unlike other S60 devices, you don't have complete control over when an alert sounds. Instead you are given a list of preselected times before the appointment that you can choose from. The appropriate sound and vibration settings for the active profile will sound when an alert goes off, you can't set individual sound an vibration settings for each appointment or task. When an alert goes off you can choose to dismiss or snooze the alert. Snoozing it will delay it for another five minutes, with no options to extend the snooze. The alert system on the E71 is slightly less flexible than that found on previous S60 devices due to the limited options for when the alerts sounds. The snooze options are also less flexible than Windows Mobile devices.

Over the Air PIM Sync (3.0)
The Nokia E71 can synchronize wirelessly with an Exchange server via ActiveSync out of the box. This synchronizes your contacts and calendar appointments. You can also synchronize with Nokia's Intellisync service, if your company supports it.

Adding Contacts (8.98)
We were able to add a new contact to the Nokia E71 in a very speedy 11.14 seconds. You can see below that this is an excellent time, much faster than the average phone, although a couple of our comparison phones also did very well, like the Blackjack II. We were helped to this fast time by the contacts shortcut key, which takes you directly to a new contact interface with a press and hold, thus saving us a couple of button presses. This in combination with a very comfortable QWERTY keyboard for data entry made creating new contacts on the E71 quick and easy. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Contacts (sec)

Looking/Sorting/Search (7.0)
Like the Nokia E66 the E71 has an updated contacts interface compared to other S60 devices. On the E66 this included support for predictive search with the keypad, but since the E71 has a QWERTY to type out names for search this isn't as important. What is nice is that you can search by first or last name, regardless of the sorting options. We do wish that searching by company name was supported. What is nice is that when a contact is selected you have a small arrow to the right of it. Press right on the D-pad and you get a popup menu of action items for that contact. You can also search for any contact from the home screen, simply start typing their name and a list of matches will appear.

By default contacts are sorted and displayed by first name-last name, but this can be changed to last name-first name if you want. Groups are also supported, with the group names showing up in the contact list alongside individuals, another change from other S60 devices. We found the upgrades to the E66's contacts application to be good, and hope to see them on other S60 devices in the future.

Fields (13.6)
Like other S60 devices the Nokia E71 has a fairly small set of standard fields when you go to add a contact, but you can add any of dozens more fields by hitting the left soft key menu and choosing Add Detail. With a total of 54 fields available, and the ability to create your own custom fields, you won't have any problems adding the information you need to a contact.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
Like other S60 devices the Nokia E71 has very good voice command software built in that was able to recognize all five of our diverse contact names. The E71, like the E66, has two ways to access the voice command software. From the home screen you can press and hold the right soft key button or from any point in the interface you can press and hold the small button located on the left side between the volume keys. The E71 supports speed dials, you will need to go into the Menu-> Communications-> 1-touch application to assign them to one of the number keys embedded in the keyboard. Unlike Palm devices like the Centro you can't assign a speed dial to any letter on the QWERTY. Recorded voice tags are not supported, but given the excellent performance of the voice command software this isn't a concern.

Adding Calendar Items (10.20)
It took us an average of 9.8 seconds to add a calendar appointment to the Nokia E71. This is a very good time, as you can see below it's significantly faster than average. It doesn't quite live up to some of our comparison phones, however, as the Curve 8320, Centro and Blackjack II put up some of the best scores we've seen. On the E71 we were helped out by the fact that you can just press and hold the calendar key to be taken to a new appointment interface. We were a bit slowed by the fact that we had to manually change the start date and time. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Appointments (sec)

Calendar Views (4.83)
As with contacts the Nokia E71's calendar interface is different from most S60 devices. This is a good thing as the calendar interface has been improved for the better. The monthly view now has two panes. On the left you see the current month with the current day underlined and days that have appointments scheduled indicated in red. When you select a day that has appointments you will see those appointments appear on the right. This is a nice improvement over other S60 devices that simply overlay the current day's appointments in a pop-up box. You can also easily add appointment now by selecting the day you want and starting to type the title of the appointment.

The week view has also been updated with nicer graphics. The basics are the same, you have a grid with days along the top and hours on the left. The cool new features are that the selected day's column expands so you can better read information in it. When you select an appointment in the week view you see a small pop-up with more details of that appointment. You can also easily add appointments here by simply selecting the block of time you want and beginning to type the title, just like in the monthly view.

The daily view is basically the weekly view but for the current day, so you have hours on the left and appointments are blocked out at the time they are scheduled. One innovation here is that if you press in on the D-Pad when no appointment is seleted it will give you a pop-up menu of new items you can add there. The final view is the Agenda view, which shows you the current day's appointments and tasks in a simple chronological list. Both of these also allow you to add a new appointment by simply starting to type the title. The new features and improved layout of the calendar views on the E71 are a major upgrade over other S60 devices we've reviewed. Calendar geeks will definitely appreciate them. The biggest remaining negatives are still no support for categories or search, which are dragging down the E71's score significantly.

Fields (8.0)
When you create a new calendar appointment in the E71 you get a good selection of fields. You can enter title, start/end, all-day event, location, reminder, recurrence and a note. The recurrence options are not as extensive as we would like, you are limited to a few preset patterns: daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or annualy. We would have liked the ability to create our own complex recurrence patterns as you can on Windows Mobile Professional devices. Also missing is support for categories.

Adding ToDo/Task (12.66)
Adding a new task to the Nokia E71 was very fast at only 7.9 seconds. This is significantly faster than average and the fastest time amongst our comparison phones. Tasks on the E71 are built into the calendar application, so we made good use of the key shortcut to the calendar, then just moved over to the next day and used the menu to add a new tasks. Typing out the title was speeded up by the QWERTY keyboard. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Tasks (sec)

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
As we mentioned above tasks on the Nokia E71 are built into the calendar program. There's a separate tasks view available in the calendar that will list all of your remaining tasks. You can prioritize tasks, but unfortunately you can't change the sort order, which is by due date, categorize or search through tasks.

Fields (6.0)
When you create a new task on the Nokia E71 you have only a few fields to fill in. There's title, due date, alarm, status and details. There's no support for categories or recurrence.

Adding Notes (5.02)
It took us an average of 9.96 seconds to add a new note to the Nokia E71. You can see below that this is a good time, faster than average and only beat out by the Palm Centro amongst our comparison phones. We were helped to this good time by the fact that there's a shortcut to Nokia's Active Notes application on the home screen, and typing out the note on the QWERTY was relatively fast. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Notes (sec)

Note Interface (4.0)
The Nokia E71, like the E66 and other E-Series devices, has an Active Notes application in addition to the standard S60 notes program. Active Notes has a simple interface, there's a list of notes in the order they were created with a shortcut at the very top to create a new note, although this is somewhat redundant as you can create a new note simply by starting to type. The left soft key opens a menu where you can access all the options, the right soft key is assigned to Exit.

There is support for folders, so you can somewhat organize your notes, but there's no support for categorizing or searching through your notes. It's definitely a step up over the very basic standard S60 notes application, which can still be found on the phone if you want, but it's not as good as the searchable notes program on BlackBerry devices like the Curve 8320.

Note Formatting (5.0)
The big improvement of Active Notes over the standard S60 notes program is the support for embedding multimedia in notes. You can add an image, sound/video clip, bookmark, file or even a business card to a note. You can also assign notes to a contact, so it will appear whenever you call them. There is still no support for text formatting like bold, italics and underline, however.

Voice Memo (3.0)
Unlike the text notes application, which is a big improvement on the E71, the voice notes application is typical S60 fare. You can record a voice note up to sixty seconds in length, and that's about it. Managing your notes is done via the gallery application, there's a shortcut to it from the menu of the voice recorder.