E61i Thoughts - How About Them Eseries?
Surely, with a qwerty, some dedicated shortcut keys (Contacts, Voice Recorder, Mail and Own Key) and amazingly useful LED notifications, the E61i looks like it will tackle the business world and rock through every test. The problem is that it doesn’t, at least for me, or I was just expecting a bit too much.
Hardware-wise, the qwerty could’ve been built to be faster. And what’s the deal with the : and ; symbols requiring the shift key whereas the other symbols require the Function key? And why do only 3 keys (Z X C) not have any symbol, while all the others do? I’ve always repeated it: consistency people!
The shortcut keys could also use some improvement: long key press setting is absent, all of them (except the Own key) can’t be mapped to another function, and the mail key can’t be configured to access the inbox for example.
But these are just small issues. My biggest grief was software-wise. I guess I was expecting Eseries to lack the multimedia features of Nseries, but to offer something in return. Call me a dreamer, but most importantly, I was expecting better PIM management and better Contacts-Calendar-Messaging integration. Fact is that beside the added freedom in Standby Screen settings, the better Messaging layout (discussed earlier) and the Quick Office full license, nothing seems to be changed, which is a shame.
Yeah sure, there’s the Teams application built-in, but when was the last time you saw anyone use it? And yeah, of course, the Download! application is full of software, but there’s nothing that can’t be found somehow or installed on an Nseries. With Exchange support coming to Nseries, I am rather perplex as to what exactly Eseries have to offer that is truly business-oriented.
Even worse, the software is slooooooow and I can’t imagine any businessman/woman waiting for the sluggish UI to respond. Eseries are also always late to the S60 game, with the new ones always sporting an older version of the platform than the Nseries which are released at the same time, they also seem to be a lot more neglected when it comes to firmware updates.
So I guess I was wrong, Eseries seem more like a truncated Nseries, without all the multimedia features (A2DP, better camera, tv-out, video and image editing, stereo speakers), but with nothing else than a better sturdier dressing and a free Quick Office license.
I have the impression that I only scratched the surface here, and there MUST be something that I am missing. What do you Eseries users have to say about it? What are the software features that you find and that aren’t supported on Nseries? Or is it just the form factors that make you go E and not N?
I’m using an E61 and impatiently waiting for Nokia to release a powerful Qwerty symbian phone. It doesn’t take an expert analyst to figure the North American market. An N96 qwerty would give S60 the hype it deserves.
I recently pitted my E61i against an N95 8GB on loan from Nokia. I’ll be keeping my E61i, mostly because of the QWERTY — despite the N95’s numberpad having a better feel, 39 keys beats 12 any day of the week!
Well after yesterdays announcement it looks like iPhone will be the new business phone for me.
e61 and Nokia/s60 have to start looking at how their apps work,
no category sync with outlook in tasks, contacts, etc, poor lookup feature in contacts these are all things my old Palm Treo 650 had which Nokia cannot come close to yet.
@AC - I fixed your link and deleted the duplicate.
Interesting comparison, thanks for sharing!
Another day, another interesting post :-).
I think you pretty nailed the whole problem. Eseries boil down to ‘better built but retarded’ Nseries. And as long as Nokia is keeping the Eseries retarded, this range of product is simply going to die IMHO.
Let’s take the exemple of the E71. N78 is already on the market, sporting S60v3 FP2, E71 is not out yet but only has FP1…WTF ?!!!
You see, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t buy an E61i last year to replace my E50: I know it had the same S60 version, I already knew that version was f***ing slow and to make things even worse, I knew that the apps (Contacts, Calendar and Log in particular) wasn’t optimized to take advantage of the huge screen. All that was a deal breaker for me. No way I would buy something so slow at that time, and there was no reason to cope with such a wide device if the wideness didn’t help improve PIM applications. Plus I was really angry to see Nokia make new firmwares for phones like the N73 but nothing for the Eseries: it really pissed me off (and still pisses me off).
I think the E71 is what the E61i should have been a long time ago, and the reason I’m going to buy one is that there’s no Qwerty Nseries device.
E71 seems to be a well balanced device: not-useless camera for once, GPS, not-useless music player, ‘widescreen improved’ Calendar, ‘widescreen improved’ Contacts, and I hope the same for the Log too. It is nothing spectular (and will be outdated by the end of the year maybe ?), but the part I need the more in my phone is the ‘phone related part’. If there’s a camera I want it to be usable at least (2Mpx no-flash no-autofocus is just crap, hence my E50 is the camera-less version), same goes for the multimedia related features.
The day Nokia will release an (high end) Nseries device with a slide-out Qwerty like the HTC TyTn II (if they really do), I think their Enterprise department is going to face a real problem…
AC,
I have already seen your post, it was linked on WOMWorld if I wasn’t mistaken, and I noticed that you got into the T9 game, but not enough to become a convert
Merlin,
though I don’t like commenting on unannounced products, and even ones that I haven’t yet had in my hands, the E71 seems to solve a couple of these problems, but not a lot. There’s actually a certain level of convenience that Nseries has accustomed us to (tv-out, a2dp, 3.5mm plug …), it’s like we’ve been spoiled by Nseries that we can’t go back to “ordinary” devices.
You explained it better than me
The N95 is certainly tempting — I think it’s better than the newer N82 but you probably read that on WOM World too!
Hehe, I totally understand what you’re saying :).
The E50 is my first smartphone actually and before that I was using a Sony Ericsson K750. I noticed something interesting while using the K750. See, I never had a dedicated camera, and the K750 was the first device I owned that introduced me into point-&-shoot photography. The onboard camera was a 2Mpix flash autofocus and a really good one at that ! In fact it was so good that it ‘ignite’ the need to take shots on the move in your fellow reader :).
And I really need to insist on that one: if the feature is well implemented enough, it CAN lead to the need of that feature. To put it in a simpler way, the need for a feature can be the consequence of a good realisation of that feature.
Crappy 2Mpx camera consequence ? No need for (such) a camera on your phone.
Astonishing 2Mpx (or more) consequence ? Absolutely need that camera on your phone and probably all your next phones too…
You were spoiled because you are used to many (very) convenient Nseries features (tv-out, a2dp, 3.5mm plug…), whereas the only things I was spoiled by (as far as Nokia is concerned) are the good (yet can be better) PIM features, the very good build quality, battery time & software expansibility.
Wait, that means…you’re an NSeries Girl and I’m an ESeries Boy !!
Always a pleasure to read your posts, keep it up…
E61i lacks the feature of Nseries and, as it was mentioned before, e71 will be outdated by the time it comes out, but it has qwerty and great battery life. For business users these are essential features.
Dotsisx,
I think you nailed it with the Pretty/Retarded description of the E-series devices. I support an e61i, e62’s and e90’s (and Windows Mobile) at work, while I’ve got an N95-3 in my pocket. I’m astounded at how slow the E62 can be. How do they expect people to wait for such a slow phone?
I also agree that after being spoiled by an N-Series, it’d be tough to go back. TV out, camera with video, video editor(!), and great speakers are features I (ahem) NEED! : )
I enjoyed the post and the comments. Keep up the great work!
Dimilaz, this is the conclusion that I came into
Matthew, well thanks for the good comments
and I have been following Nseriesus for a couple of days now, I honestly don’t remember how I ran into it, but you’re doing a crazy job there, aggregating everything into one video. It’s astonishing, keep up!
Jun 11th, 2008 at 6:49 am
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