Feature-rich phones

GIZMO GALLERY

Thin and incredibly compact, the metal-encased Nokia E71 features HSDPA, Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel camera, a full QWERTY keyboard and a 320×240 screen makes this phone appealing. Everything is proportionate and sort of just works well together.

For instance, the middle Select key actually serves as the notification light, too. So when you have a missed event, the border around the middle key will glow white until you cleared the event, or until the expiration time you set for the notification light expires. It’s a nice touch and a creative way to get rid of the annoying older-fashioned status light.

Nokia’s latest creation is as powerful as the older E90, much smaller than an E61i, same or better build quality. It’s smaller and thinner than an iPhone too and because of it’s tapered edges fit much better in hands.

When pegged against the to the Blackberry Curve and Blackberry 8000 series the E71 keyboard emerges winner. Especially with everything that’s packed in E71, it just makes all phones like the BlackBerry Bold look huge and ugly.

Samsung that had mounted the Blackberry challenge with relish in the past with the slim and stylish i600 but fell short with its keyboard and the five-way navigation key that was nothing special either. And it’s taking up the challenge again with the i780 — the latest evolution in Samsung’s canon of keyboard-below-screen handsets.

A full QWERTY keyboard and the 320 x 320 screen that is touch-sensitive, i780’s keyboard is intuitive enough though of course dragging your finger around to move left and right only works if the application you are working in supports it — there’s no HTC Touchflo here.

Another benefit to having the touchscreen, though, is that the i780 can make use of Windows Mobile 6 Professional, which looks nicer than the non-touchscreen variant, and includes the version of the Office Mobile suite that allows you to create documents as well as simply editing them.

Like most recent Nokias, the GPS is assisted by the network, but fret not because there still is a physical GPS chip in here and you get 3 months Nokia Maps free as starters. Although it’s not push email in the BlackBerry sense it will automatically check your POP or IMAP email account (all major ISPs and email services like Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live are supported) every 5 minutes and download mail without you having to think about it.

Setting up mail has to be one of the easiest setups we’ve ever done. All you have to do is enter your email and password to access your email on the go with Nokia doing the rest at the back end.

Other notable features on the E71 include the ability to “switch modes”. This is a feature that lets you have a complete second set of settings - an alternate personality if you will; say one for work and one for weekends. You can have games on the second profile but come Monday and your games profile would be replaced by the usual business mail and message profile.

A simple click on the black and while icon initiates a mode change that takes about fifteen seconds. On the other hand, Samsung i780 with its touchscreen and high speed data adds an extra dimension over the BlackBerry 8800 series, and coupled with Microsoft’s Direct Push email and Office documents compatibility, it also makes for a more flexible work tool in many respects.

Retailing at Rs 20,439, Nokia has managed to cram a lot inside E71 without compromising on the size. Samsung i780 gives buyers another option at Rs 20,379, currently retailing exclusively with the MobileStore.