Nokia E61

...mobile phone contract to the Nokia E61 3G Smartphone. I have to admit that visually this phone appears to be the cutting edge of technology with its attractive screen and miriad of features. The most noteable being the full QWERTY keyboard incorporated into the handsets design.

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The Manufacturer
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Nokia are a world famous company. Its roots are set way back ...
...born. This all started with Nokia around 1979. The first mobile phone network was established in 1981 - Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT). The first Nokia Mobile was released in 1987 which was the Mobira Cityman, a house brick sized device that really compared with todays technology was extremely primitive. The most dramtic change in Nokia's history came in 1992 when the company decided to focus almost exclusively on mobile telecommunications. Over the ... more

I have recently had the pleaseure of obtaining an upgrade on my current mobile phone contract to the Nokia E61 3G Smartphone. I have to admit that visually this phone appears to be the cutting edge of technology with its attractive screen and miriad of features. The most noteable being the full QWERTY keyboard incorporated into the handsets design.

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The Manufacturer
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Nokia are a world famous company. Its roots are set way back in 1865 when Fredrik Idestam establishes of all things a paper mill in Finland. Of course mobile phones did not exist in 1865 and over the years as technology advanced so mobiles were born. This all started with Nokia around 1979. The first mobile phone network was established in 1981 - Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT). The first Nokia Mobile was released in 1987 which was the Mobira Cityman, a house brick sized device that really compared with todays technology was extremely primitive. The most dramtic change in Nokia's history came in 1992 when the company decided to focus almost exclusively on mobile telecommunications. Over the next decade mobile technology went from strenght to strength. In 1992 Nokia released the first GSM handset, closely followed in 1994 by the first Nokia handset to play the Nokia tune, the Nokia 2100. Later that same year the first satellite call was made. Everyone has played snake on an old mobile at some point. This game was released by Nokia in 1997 with the Nokia 6110 and has since become a classic mobile phone game. In 1998 Nokia officially were the world leaders in mobile telecommunications.

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The E-Series
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The E-Series range of handsets was designed specifically for businesses. This range consists of three different 3G handsets and incorparates many features from the preceeding N-Series. The E-Series is an amazing achievement incorporating technologies from all over the computer world. The handsets in the E-Series Range are the Nokia E60, Nokia E61 and the Nokia E70. The design of each of these phones is very similar but the layout and capabilities are very different. THe first handet, the E60 looks remarkably like your average business ahndset. But dont be fooled by appearances. The handset is also equipped with wifi and email support. There is no camera on the E60 which enables the business user to carry the phone in secure areas where cameras are not allowed. The E70 does have a camera and is a completely different layout but other than that is very similar to the E60. The E61 is perhaps the most amazing handset in the E-Series range and it is this handset that I will now review in detail.

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The Nokia E61
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The Nokia E61 3G Smartphone is a masterpiece of design. As with anything, this handset will not suit everybody. But if you are on the look out for a mobile business solution with the potential for email and several other powerful features then this could be the phone for you. To be honest with you, there is one notable omission from this phone, and that is the camera! The camera has been deliberately omitted from the E-Series of phones as they are primarily designed for the business user. In a lot of business scenarios there is the potential for staff to visit the offices (for example) of competitors and take pictures of their plans or at a conference of other secret convention. These phones are designed with that in mind so that the handset can be taken into such places without fear of being caught with a camera. Obviously this does have its disadvantages. For example it would be necessary to carry a separate camera with you on a business function where you feel you may need to take photographs or videos to show colleagues. If you are one of these people who lives and dies for the camera on their phone, then clearly this handset is not for you.

Of course, that said, this doesnt mean that the E61 is ONLY for business users. I am sure that there are many ordinary consumers who this may appeal to. The main fetaure of the E61 is its ability to deliver email to you whilst on the move. The E61 includes a number of ways to improve your connectivity. Sporting an impressive built in wi-fi system, the E61 enables you to connect to any free network that may be in your vicinity so that you can surf the internet and retrieve your email at no extra cost. To aid connection betwen your mobile device and other mobile devices or a laptop or desktop computer other connections included on the handset are Bluetooth and infra-red. As with a laptop computer surfing the net or checking email is easy. Just search for wireless networksa s you would on a laptop and then connect to them.

The operating system installed on the E61 is Symbian Series 60 3rd edition. this is much better than the symbian software included on similar handsets and includes an improved browser to previous versions.

One of my particular favourite parts of the E61 is the wide screen. The screens resolution is 320 x 240 with the wider 320 pixels along the top of the screen and the smaller 240 pixels down the side. This gives a rather nice landscape style display which is ideal for looking at web pages and reading emails. I suppose the worst feature of the E61 is that when viewing websites you have to scroll left and right a lot in the browser in order to see the whole page. I find this incredibly irritating! I suppose as a miniature improvement on this disadvantage Nokia have included a handy pinpoint feature on there web browsing. This enables you to see the whole webpage on screen (obviously too small to read) but you can move a little box around which will pinpoint a specific area of the web page for viewing and then zoom in. I think this is a particularly useful feature, although it can be difficult as text is impossible to read when you are viewing the whol page so it may be more luck than judgement if you get the exact area of the page that you want to see.

A lot of these phones these days seem to utilise a joystick as a universal control. The Nokia E61 3G Smartphone is no exception. The mini joystick is located underneath the screen and is used for navigating around windows. When you are surfing the net the joystick can be used to move an on screen pointer around and to enable you to easily navigate to the correct area of a web page and click on the appropriate links. In the main menu is it used in the same way as on other handsets - to navigate among the different menu items. Whilst I am on the subject of controls the joystick is backed up by two buttons which sit next to it. One of them is marked as the Nokia Applications button and the other is marked with an envelope. I think it speaks for itself that the button marked with an envelope takes you into a screen which manages your emails, text messages and multimedia messages. The Nokia button takes you into a list of Nokia Applications installed on the phone. In addition that section of the phone features buttons which enable you to start and end a call as well as two softmenu buttons. In general phones of this type include some buttons on the left and right hand side of the phone (i.e. not on the front). The E61 is no different but these have been kept to a minimum. There are no buttons on the right hand side and on the left hand side there are only 2 buttons. The first lets you use your phone with voice commands if you hold it down and opens a sound recorder if you only press the button briefly. The second is a volume control.

The thing that sold the phone to me was the full QWERTY keyboard that is included on the handset. This consists of a standard keyboard complete with a number pad for dialling numbers and some common symbols which are included on the same keys as some of the letters. As with a computer these functions are activated by pressing the shift key. Some symbols occupy there very own key and these are the symbols that are used most frequently, the full stop and the @ symbol for example. Disappointingly there isnt a pound symbol on the keyboard but it is very easy to access a symbol screen with a full list of available symbols where this can be selected from. Typing on the keyboard is surprisingly very comfortable. Bearing in mind that this keyboard is necessarily small I thought it might be awkward to type effectively but this is something that you get used to very quickly.

As I said this phone is crammed with all sorts of additional features including spreadsheet and word processing capabilities together with presentation making software. The bizarre thing is that you can create a presentation and then submit it via bluetooth to a projector. This is not something I have tried yet, mainly as I havent got a clue where to find a bluetooth projector to screen it on!

Clearly the E61 was designed on a similar sort of design as the Blackberry and indeed looks very similar. The memory included on the phone is an impressive 64mb and this can also be expanded with the addition of miniSD cards if required. Conveniently in the manufactur of the phone Nokia have placed the card reader under the back cover but NOT underneath the battery. This means that it is easy to swop cards around without having the disadvantage of having to reboot the phone all the time.

I guess the most important aspect of a mobile phone, particularly for me is the battery power. If you are carrying around the phone for a long time it is disappointing and unproductive for the phone to frequently run out of charge. I have found that the E61 lasts for around 9 hours of talktime. In general this is plenty but of course there are occasions when you may still run out of charge having made a lot of calls. If you use the phone a great deal then it may be worth carrying a spare battery around in case of emergencies.

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Specification
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Th e E61 comes with a range of features. For convenience I have listed them below:

OS: Symbian Series 60
Size: 117x69.7x14mm
Weight: 144g
Display: 16 million colours
Resolution: 320x240 pixels
Camera: No
Video recording: No
Video Playback: Yes
Audio playback: MP3, AAC
Connectivity: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB, infrared
Internal memory: 64MB
Memory card slot: miniSD (64MB supplied)
Java: Yes
Messaging: SMS, EMS, MMS, IM
Internet browser: HTML, xHTML
Email client: Various push-email solutions plus POP3, SMTP, IMAP4
Frequency: Quad-band/3G
Talktime: up to 570 minutes
Standby: up to 400 hrs

Overall I would definitely recommend this phone ten out of ten. But it is definitely not one to go for if you are a camera lover

Thanks for reading  

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