Just Want To Celebrate My Nokia E71 Smartphone

Nokia's new E71 is the company's 3rd try at the popular "BlackBerry" form factor of business smartphones. The original Nokia E61/E62 handsets had the right basic shape, but were thicker and overall bulkier than those from the competition at the time. The E61i improved on that, but still wasn't quite capable of going toe to toe with the best on offer from the likes of HTC and RIM. But with the E71, Nokia has shown that it can be a leader in this space. The E71 has a great spec sheet, a slim and solid body, and the powerful S60/Symbian system lurking inside. We give it a thorough thrashing to see how it holds up.

Physical Aspects

The E71 is a very solidly built smartphone. Its body is largely made up of strong metal panels, and its solid 129g (4.5oz) weight inspires a lot of confidence, even if it is a fair bit heavier than some competing models. In spite of its weight, though, the E71 is very compact. It measures only 115mm x 57mm x 11mm (4.5" x 2.2" x .4") in size. That's a hair longer, but a few millimeters narrower and 1mm thinner than Samsung's svelte BlackJack II.

The front of the E71 consists of two main features, the 2.4" QVGA resolution display and the QWERTY keyboard and associated navigation buttons. The display is a bit small for my liking, but if the display had been any larger then the entire device would have grown in size and E71 would lose some of its pocketability. The display is reasonably bright and colorful, and the automatic backlight adjustment setting manages the screen's battery drain pretty nicely.

The full QWERTY keyboard on the E71 is pretty good, though I prefer the spaced out keys on the BlackJack II for the confidence they inspire. Admittedly, the E71's keyboard is much better looking due to the fact that the keys fit snugly together and, instead of spacing, rely on a domed shape to guide fingertips. The keyboard is somewhat cramped, but I have managed to adjust to it pretty well in spite of having large hands. Most women would probably find the keyboard spot on. The control and shortcut cluster above the keyboard is also a bit cramped, but they do provide the user with a lot of flexibility. The chrome d-pad controller is good enough for general use, and the softkeys and call keys are wide, even if they are quite narrow. The dedicated home, calendar, contacts, and mail buttons are very handy, and can be reprogrammed for both short presses and long presses, which gives the user a lot of customization options.

There are few other controls on the E71. On the left edge you'll find the covered microSD slot and micro-USB port (data only, not power), and on the right edge you'll see the two volume buttons that straddle the voice dial button (activated with a long press). There is no dedicated shutter button on the E71, in spite of the fact that it sports an autofocus 3.2 megapixel camera. I like the spring loaded back cover release buttons that are located on the bottom of each side of the phone. They require a bit of strength to depress, but they make for a very solid rear cover fit.

A 2.5mm headset jack sits above the volume controls, and the camera lens and flash can be found around back. The only other features of note on the E71 are the mini Nokia power port on the bottom of the phone and the red power button and speaker grille on the top. The power button looks nice, but is a bit hard to use, especially when compared with the similarly red button on the E66.

Overall we are very impressed by the design of the Nokia E71. That missing camera button and the glossy metal finish of the phone, which makes an oily looking mess of the most innocent of fingerprints, are the only real downsides to the E71's otherwise fine physical design. The E71 comes with a nice carrying case (and matching lanyard) that will help keep the finish clean, though.

My First Ever 3G Phone Nokia 6120C

The very word ‘smartphone’ sounds to most customers like something bulky, expensive and supplied with a large screen – in the majority of cases this idea is pretty close to the real life nowadays. It’s hard to break stereotypes, and usually that takes time. All the big companies have already estimated their potential profits originating from that segment, and each has developed a strategy of their own regarding expansion on the mentioned ground. But creating an inexpensive and highly functional device isn’t just enough to succeed, one major thing that is essential here and by no means can be neglected is that your product should possess unique features so that it stands out against the background of competitive products. It’s also vitally important to be as careful with the details as possible, because a tiny little feature that turns out badly can ruin the whole affair. Some of the manufacturers place their bets on the decorative appearance of the product, its design, dimensions and form factor, others put their efforts into supplying the customer with all kinds of useful features complementing the canonical GSM functionality – camera, mp3 player and so on. The ‘image’ and ‘stuff’ phones are the two major distinctive groups of mobile products on today’s mid-end market. Another kind of functionality comprising multimedia, office and enhanced web surfing features belongs to the smartphone market sector, a relatively small, but very rapidly expanding part of the mobile market which is not to be neglected by any company who want to secure a commercially successful future for the next few years.

The Nokia developers have been long brooding over a concept of inexpensive yet efficient mass smartphone, but all of their previous attempts were of little avail. Even at the initial moment of smartphone market formation Nokia offered a number of relatively cheap smartphones targeted at a youth audience (like the 3650 model) but the attempts could hardly be seen as successful – the word ‘inexpensive’ still stood for quite a challengeable price as long as much cheaper solutions from the casual phone market were thriving, and the dimensions of a smartphone looked a bit frightening (or at least discomforting) in those days. The next try was the ill-fated N-Gage gaming smartphone – the design and functionality could hardly be deemed acceptable for the large audiences, and the new gaming features weren’t enough to make the device commercially successful. This was also due to the fact that the technologies of those days weren’t advanced enough to let the manufacturer design a really inexpensive and reasonably sized device with a functionality comparable to popular solutions from the casual phone market.

The situation has greatly improved by now, today’s smarphones are no longer expensive and poorly functional toys for the rich yet none of them is known to be really affordable to the masses. The treaty between Nokia and Freescale companies was a major boost to Nokia’s developments in the field of smartphone technology, a reference single-chip platform for inexpensive smartphone solutions was successfully implemented in practice, allowing for creation of high-performance products. The perspectives that open upon the implementation of the above-mentioned platform can hardly be underestimated, since that Nokia had sufficient resources to introduce smartphone products cheap enough for a mass market buyer and at the same time as efficient as the casual phones of the same class.

The first product to pioneer the frontier was Nokia 6290, this was the initial product of the now abundant series of Freescale-based solutions. The model utilizes the folder form-factor and is rather reasonably sized (of course in comparison to products that entered the market at the same time). The price of €320 wasn’t too high for a smartphone as well, yet the product could hardly find a niche in the mass market. Nevertheless Nokia 6290 sold well enough to give its developers enough grounds to plan an expansion of the existing concept. It wasn’t long until a sequel was introduced; Nokia 6120 Classic is the smallest, lightest and cheapest smartphone available today, sporting a good functionality and such a combination is truly unique.

The device is positioned not as a pureblood smartphone but as (not-as)-casual phone with expanded functionality. In addition to the lot of its merits, it’s the cheapest SDPA-compatible phone operationable in 3G networks. The product is included in package deals by most European mobile operators (given away for free upon striking the deal, as they put it), no offerings with comparable functionality that are compatible in 3G networks are known to exist.

Sony Ericsson S302 My Second Mobile

Sony Ericsson S302 –the first handset of the Snapshot ‘S’ series. It is build on Sony Ericsson’s camera phone heritage, the S302 Snapshot are all-round performers that maximise their camera credentials. The S302 introduces a premium looking, yet affordable phone with a snapshot camera at-hand when needed.

Design

With a 11 mm thickness body and high gloss finish, and weighs of 79 grams so it won’t weigh the user down whilst carry. There is a 2 Inch color screen display situated above the keypad which displays up to 262k colours by that TFT screen. The keypad is well spaced out and had individual keys for ease of use when inputting text and contact numbers. The S302 is available in two color that include a cool thunder Grey colored casing and an eye catching crystal blue colored casing.

Camera

Though the Sony Ericsson S302 is mainly a camera phone, I don’t know why Sony Ericsson only loaded this with a 2 mega pixel camera. Maybe is the price matter. Frankly, the camera is so disappointing, it has very limited features for photos. For example no night shot, focus, rotation, etc though the camera feature comes with Photofix and photo light. You can also take short videos but don’t expect great video quality.

Multimedia

The Sony Ericsson S302 has an integrated music/media player that supports popular music formats that features a built FM stereo radio with RDS along with a Bluetooth® stereo with A2DP that intended for a great mobile music experience. The sound effect is This is another setback of SE S302. The speaker is too bad. Actually the sounds are crisp and clear,but its has only 5 volume levels and definitely not loud enough thus make the sound effects weak as well though there is a Mega Bass system feature included.

Storage

The Sony Ericsson S302 only provides 20MB internal memory. Obviously that is not enough for a camera dedicated phone. However, you can expand it with a Memory Stick Micro card. Or you can use USB 2.0 or the Bluetooth 2.0 functions to transfer your photos to your PC or to an online storage using the PictBridge support.

Verdict

Although the Sony Ericsson S302 is a very good looking and attractive phone, but I still have to admit that it is the poorest phone in the price range. It’s camera sucks. Indeed the camera is fast Snapshot but the qualities is disappointed. Even some other 2MP’s camera phone can do better then SE S302. And the sounds qualities also let me down. Many people where complaining that they couldn’t hear the phone even when the kept it in their pocket. The S302 might be the BIGGEST FAILURE from Sony Ericsson.

My Oldest Sony Ericsson Z520i

Sony Ericsson Z520i is a phone with a very attractive style and compact clamshell. It is a phone with the multiple facilities of camera, video and MP3 player. It is a phone of mid cost and the facilities with it, justifies the cost very well. It has a dimension of 83*46*24 mm and weighs about 94g.

The VGA resolution of the phone provides a good quality display through the TFT display technique. The external display of the phone is not so best and fades in the bright sun shine. The phone has a very slim design with a good rotating mechanism to open it.

The phone has a good quality MP3 player that can play both the MP3 and AAC formats. In addition, it can be used for MPEG video. The memory is not sufficient is the user can store about three tracks, with the 16 MB of shared memory. It leaves the user in desperate mood as far as the memory is concerned as there is no support for the memory card available in the phone.

The phone is available two colors: the chalky white and the sandy grey, though the cover is changeable. The user can customize the phone with themes, ringtones, games, and animated wallpaper. It supports both MP3 and AAC ringtones and different ringtones can be assigned for massage, call and alarm. User can store 40 polyphonic and MP3 ringtones. The phonebook is pictured, a unique quality of the phone.

The basic features of the phone include the organizer, calculator, clock and games. The phone supports Java enabled games that can be downloaded according to the user’s choice.

The diverse external connectivity of the phone supports Bluetooth, USB, Fast port and infra-red. It provides faster data transfer from phone to PC and vice- versa. The can be customized to give more personal look with the variety of ringtones, image and lighting effects. The other prominent features of the phone are qua band support, web browser, picture phone book and high speed data transfer. The Xtml web browser of the phone enables faster searching of data on the web.

The key pad of the phone is quite good and the keys are well balanced. The square shaped menu button is surrounded by round navigation keys. The user often complaints about the smoothness of keys, It is a phone with average life of battery that supports two days in a stand by mode and about 3.5 hours of the talking time.

Pros:

* Excellent VGA camera with zoom and picture editor
* TFT screen for internal display
* Media player that supports MP3, AAC, and MPEG4 video

Cons:

* Insufficient memory
* Poor external screen display
* Poor quality video pictures and recording