It’s no secret: Nokia is after Blackberry’s thunder in the enterprise with their latest E series, and especially via the E61 model. Hi-Mobile sent us in an E61 unit for the purposes of this review. Dig in for information, a video and lots of screenshots from the latest ‘S60 3rd Edition’ Symbian v9.1 OS.
What you get
In the box we found the phone, a 1500 mAh battery, a 64 MB miniSD (hot swap supported), a CD, a user manual and a quick start guide, a US charger, a USB cable, and a single-ear mono handsfree. There is no SD adaptor for the miniSD card (the device itself can function as a flash reader), and no belt-clip case. At 144 grams and 117×69.7×14 mm, the E61 resembles a small PDA in terms of size. It is as long as most PDAs are, but it’s a bit less wide and much thinner. Think of the E61 as a big phone, or a small PDA. The device is considerably smaller than a Blackberry.
The device features a QWERTY keyboard, IrDA, Wi-Fi 802.11i/e/g, over 64 MBs free for the user, quad-band GSM/EDGE & 2100 WCDMA antennas, vibration, and Bluetooth 1.2. As this is a business device there is no camera. On the left of the device there are two buttons to change the volume of the device up and down, while a button below it opens the sound recorder which starts recording immediately after pressing it (this might cause a bit of a security problem in some companies/organizations). Below the device you will find the charging port, the pop-port which acts as a host to the USB cable & the headset, and at the very right of the device there is the IrDA port. Above the screen you will find a small white light which lits up when you receive email (push email supported) and a power button which controls the lock of the device/keyboard, the power on/off of the device, and the profiles.
The screen deserves a special mention. It is a 2.8″ 320×240 landscape QVGA non-touchscreen LCD that sets itself apart from the rest by being a true 16 million color screen. Next to our QTek 9100 65k 2.8″ QVGA screen, it’s like a day and night. Grandients and pictures just look much better on the E61.
The good
The S60 3rd Edition Symbian v9.1 OS is super fast on this device. Readers online claim that the E-series is using a faster CPU (at around 250 Mhz) than the N-series (~220 Mhz), but we can’t confirm this as Nokia doesn’t disclose the CPU used or the amount of RAM. The OS loads in about 35-40 seconds, but after it’s loaded it is fast and responsive. In my experience, it’s as responsive as PalmOS (compared to the Treo), a bit more responsive than Windows Mobile 5 (compared to my 195 Mhz QTek 9100 WM5-AKU2), and a whole world faster than both my Motorola Linux phones (which use a 312 Mhz CPU) and my Motorola M1000 Symbian 7.1 UIQ 2.1 (175 Mhz ARM).
The second best feature of the phone after the screen and speed, is its Qwerty keyboard. It is wide enough to be used with either one or two hands. Personally, I am small-built so I find it easier to use both my hands to type (my thumb is not long enough to get to the two outmost buttons), but most men will have no problem at all using the thumboard with a single hand. I write extremely fast on this E61 keyboard, much more than I ever could with the Treo I have tried in the past (the Treo is not as wide, so its buttons are smaller). When you are on the main screen, the designated keys work only as numerical keys, so you can dial out fast.
The presense of WiFi is a very welcome one. Together with Bluetooth and IrDA it brings new means of wireless short-range communications to the device. I had no problem at all scanning for new networks or creating a permanent access point in my home. Bluetooth and IrDA worked flawlessly but sometimes WiFi would disconnect all by itself while browsing. After using this little hack I was able to fully use the phone with a Mac/iSync too.
My personal favorite feature of the phone is the new S60 browser, based on Safari’s/KHTML’s engines. It doesn’t do re-organization of content (only plain text on a given table cell it tries to fit on screen) and it features a… Mouse cursor (which can be controlled via the on-board 5-way joystick). This browser is fast. And when I say fast, it’s faster than Opera 8.60 on the same phone and faster & more powerful than the S40 browser (which is ported to S60 and is still serving as the WAP browser of the device). The S60 browser’s engine doesn’t support WAP, flash, or java (even if both technologies are present on the phone), but it supports RSS, has a multimedia plugin that loads Real Player and supports auto-bookmarking. You can read a review of the browser here.
Speaking about the Real Player, I found its QVGA video playback adequate (and fullscreen playback looked great). It supports 3gp, mp4 and Ra. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t stream though, as it is supposed to do. WiFi immediately disconnects after connecting to Real content (even at Real.com’s test site). Real also supports AAC, mp3, mid, amr, realaudio and WAV. The phone proved to be a good mp3 player too, either by using Real Player or its other, native mp3 player.
This is an enterprise device, so communication features are all over the board: Blackberry email, Instant Messaging (wireless village, OMA), IMAP4/POP3 email (Intellisync Wireless Email, ActiveSync Exchange, Visto email technology, BlackBerry Connect, GoodLink, Seven Always-On Mail and Gmail are supported), presence, VPN, Push-to-Talk (we couldn’t test it though as Cingular hasn’t “opened” this feature to non-Cingular phones), SyncML, and of course SIP VoIP. The phone can function via an IrDA/Bluetooth or a USB modem to a client OS. And when connecting the USB cable the phone will ask you if you want it to function as miniSD’s flash reader (Windows won’t “see” the phone’s main storage because the internal flash is not FAT) or as a IP passthrough.
The E61 comes with lots of useful business software: printer management, presentation support (via USB), spreadsheet and word processing via QuickOffice’s goodness, a zip application, WorldMate (view the weather/time on 3 cities at the same time), voicemail, notes, calculator, a units converter, speed dial, GPS support (via an external bluetooth GPS module or via GSM triangulation), a Macromedia Flash player (no browser plugin though) and voice command. A basic Blackberry and Exchange support has been added too. Nokia also added a 3D game, Golf Pro 2. I am sure that many business people would appreciate some golf in their spare time…
The OS itself supports themes, profiles, and my favorite: third party native applications. So far, only about 20-25 applications have been ported over to 3rd Edition, but more applications are coming fast, every day. I successfully installed Putty (great for SSH’ing using the keyboard), the Screenshot utility, PDF reader, Smartmovie (supports DivX playback), ProfiMail (the best usage of a QVGA screen ever — not a single pixel goes wasted), Internet Radios, Opera 8.60, and the beta of Agile Messenger (which currently doesn’t support the landscape QVGA resolution very well). On the Java MIDP-2.0 front I tried Opera Mini and Google Maps and both worked great. A game I tried though, vPoker v1.1, wouldn’t uncompress (the phone complained that the .jar file was not valid).
One new feature of S60 3rd Edition is the active standby. You can switch applications by pressing-and-holding the “main menu” button and when going back to the front stand-by screen you can view your application feeding information to that screen. Of course, the application itself must support this feature. Think of “active standby” a bit like a simpler version of Windows Mobile’s Today plugins.
Finally, the device has exceptionally good battery life, it yielded over 7 hours GSM talk (with UMTS turned off here in USA).
The bad
This device, being one of the first using the updated operating system and front-end, has a few problems. For some people the problems I will describe below might not be very important, but for some it might be.
First of all, while the absense of a main camera is a correct decision, the absense of a video-call camera I am not so sure about. Especially when you can start recording a confidential meeting without anyone figure out that you ever did (it’s a simple push of a button). Please note that the device is able to receive video calls! The user can send out a static picture, but can receive normal video. Also note that video calls require a 3G environment and the WCDMA 2100 Mhz frequency is not supported in USA. This phone will work as 3G mostly in Europe.
Secondly, I can’t understand the position of the IrDA. It is next to the pop-port at the bottom of the device instead of the top. It’s close to impossible to use the IrDA as a modem or send a file, because IrDA is facing your… stomach instead of the other IrDA that it’s supposed to connect to.
My other gripe is VoIP. It doesn’t work. To be more precise, it does work for some people (especially for those who run local proxies), but it doesn’t work for others (and yes, we all run the same April 19th firmware version). It seems that the NAT environment you are under has an effect on this too, while there is no STUN configuration support. I tried both Ekiga and Gizmo Project, but none registered. Nokia knows about these problems and they are fixing them in the next Feature Pack. Unfortunately, the currently-sold phones (with the current firmware) are not upgradable right now though, so you existing phone users of the E and N series won’t benefit from the release of Feature Pack 1. Many of us will never get VoIP working.
Regarding IM, the current firmware of E61 has a bug and so it doesn’t connect to YamiGo (which is the only good source of the Wireless Village protocol that gives you access to AOL, WV, Y!, MSN and ICQ at once). A little bird from Finland told me that this bug is fixed for a future firmware on the E61, but again, us current owners, will never get IM working via YamiGo (and YamiGo.com doesn’t care to go around the E61 bug either).
Finally, while the S60 3rd Edition offers a very nice experience, it could be better: Pixels are wasted in favor of good looks (lots of empty space and big fonts at times). Terribly long menus sometimes (e.g. on Contacts), and on Settings you will find menus, inside menus, inside menus. You lose count where you are each time… Some of these configuration panels require cleaning up. For example, for VoIP you have to go to Menu/ Tools/ Settings/ Connectivity/ SipSettings/ ProfileName/ ProxyServer/. And when you finally create a new profile, then you have to go 3 folders back to “Internet Tel Settings” to make some more adjustments. And when you are done with that, you have to then go to Menu/ Connectivity/ Internet/ Tel/ Registration/ Status/ in order to start it up. That UI is just not clean. And the WiFi & access points and access point groups is as confusing as well.
Another gripe with Symbian (on both UIQ and S60) is the fact that when you send a file via Bluetooth it puts it under “messaging” (like supposedly you received a new message) instead of putting it on the filesystem directly. This is really bad, because in my case I wanted to have my own portal index.html page and unfortunately, when clicking the Bluetooth message (that I sent the html file via it), it either opens Opera which FAILS to load this local file, or when uninstalling Opera, it loads the S40 browser port instead of the S60 browser. A mess. There is no way to SAVE the file to the file system from inside Messaging, and there is no way to bookmark the file as your homepage (which is important for me who wants a local portal mobile page). It gets worse: when the file is loaded with the S40 browser, there is a “save page” option. But it doesn’t save the file to the visible part of the filesystem, so that didn’t help me either to what I wanted to do. In my opinion, details like this show that the Symbian OS hasn’t un-glued itself 100% of the “simple phone OS” place to a fully-featured OS that the user can take control of his/her files.
Finally, I would have preferred Nokia becoming more compliant with common standards. Now that they have embraced miniSDs instead of the mutant RS-MMCs (as I call their dual-voltage ones), they should put the pop-port to rest and include a normal 2.5″ audio jack and a mini-USB jack for both charging and data connecting. There is no better convenience for a business man to have a single USB cable to charge his mp3 player, his phone, his PDA, and Bluetooth handsfree/headphones via his laptop while away on a business trip!
Conclusion
Overall, this is actually a great device. Remember, this is the first of its kind coming out from Nokia. In my opinion, this device is much more stylish than either the Treo or the Blackberry, and its voice features works very well. In my opinion, this device can even replace PDAs on the enterprise, as more and more third party applications are ported every day to this updated S60 platform. I like this phone very much, despite of some of its bugs due to the young age of the firmware.
Pros
* Amazing screen
* WiFi 802.11g support
* Very usable keyboard
* Speedy 3D game support
* Great web browser options
* Fast CPU, Symbian flies on it
* Solid, modern operating system
* Lots of useful business software
* Good Gmail support via the email client
* Good multimedia experience (despite no A2DP/AVRCP)
Cons:
* No video-call camera
* Badly positioned IrDA
* No 3G support in USA
* VoIP is a hit & miss experience
* IM doesn’t work with YamiGo service
* Too many levels of menus in some instances
* No “Save” option for files received via Bluetooth
* Scattered settings/utilities on some related functions
* Pop-port connector not as standard as 2.5″ audio jack & mini-USB
Overall: 7.5/10
My impression is that the E-series put way too much in a small device, while BlackBerry keeps it simple.
OMG! The old bloat talk!
You may be right, I am actually in the market for such a device and am considering either a BLackberry 8700g with T-Mobile or this E61. I have made up my mind and will go with Nokia for the following reasons:-
– You cannot install many third party applicaitons on a Blackberry (video player, GPS etc.)
– No memory card extension on the Blackberry (so even if you did have a mp4 player you couldn’t fit a movie on it).
– Reviews say that the sound quality is below par on the Blackberries, reviews for the E61 praise the voice clarity.
– the Nokia is smaller
– The e61 has WIFI
– The E61 has SIP (although apprently not top noch).
– Nokia supports Linux (770 tablet) !
– I can sync the Nokia with my mac
All in all, I want my phone to be extendible beyond what comes in the box so no matter how good the Blackberry can be for emails, the Nokia wins overall.
Hope Nokia will do something for the early adopters with regards to updates. It can hardly believe that this ding still doesn’t do OTA firmware updates!
Hello,
two weeks ago I bought Nokia E60, quite the same phone but without keyboard. I bought it mainly because I was astonished by the possibility to make VoIP calls over WLAN, and wanted to have good multimedia phone and a PDA replacement. I was so dissapointed by the device that I wanted to return it back, which hasn’t been possible yet (more on this below).
First I had really hard time till I could connect the device to internet. THe problem is that my neighbours WLAN access point is only allowed to connect devices, whose MAC adress is explicitely unlocked. Usually the access point (Netgear) automaticly detects the MAC adress of the devices, so it is quite simple to unlock it. It did not work with E60, so I had to search for its MAC adress (some undocumented combination of keys).
Then the surfing experience isn’t that great. The browser is good, but the connection isn’t. It breaks down very often, so komplex sites do not load completely. I had a feeling like browsing with 28k modem and not with 6Mbit DSL. Then another dissapointment was that although RealPlayer is included, it does not support streaming media, so no internet radio (or only with third party software). And the biggest minus is that VoIP does only work under very certain circumstances, so it’s quite useless for me.
For me the battery time was absolutely not satisfying. With very modest usage I had to recharge it every second day. I’m traveling quite a lot and I don’t want to take the recharger every time with me. If there were a possibility to switch of WLAN completely, if there is no need for it, it surely would save a lot of power.
I have an Ibook without Bluetooth and I though I knew that I cannot synchronize E60 over USB, I hoped MacOSX would recognize it as flash memory, so I would be able to push some files on the MMC. No way. So I have to buy extra Bluetooth stick for my IBook to send 1 GByte of MP3 to the E60. Anyone knows how many hours I have to wait?
So I wanted to return the phone back, because it did not fullfill my expectations. I used it for one week and carried it in my jeans pocket (without keys, coins or other metal stuff). After one week I had scratches on the metal surface, so I could not return it. There are no official ways to get a new tray, only on Ebay I could order one and hope it will be here on time before the return period is over.
So this was my last Nokia for sure.
Anton
> With very modest usage I had to recharge it every second day.
The E61 has a bigger battery than your E60. Also, if you don’t live in Europe (I know you do though), you must disable UMTS so you save on battery.
> I hoped MacOSX would recognize it as flash memory, so >I would be able to push some files on the MMC
THIS WORKS. I just tried my 12″ Powerbook G4 with my E61. It worked! It mounted the miniSD card and I could drop files in it.
> Connection breaks down very often, so complex sites
>do not load completely. I had a feeling like browsing
>with 28k modem and not with 6Mbit DSL.
I had a few WiFi drops too. It seems that the WiFi stack crashes all too often, and then they have a daemon that relaunches it every minute or so. However, the “slowness” of the rendering is not due to the WiFi, but due to limiting CPU power (and it’s the same for most phones too). For example, CNN.com is 450 KBs of data, and it takes 12 MBs to render on the S60 browser. As you can understand, running at around 250 Mhz, it will take a while to calculate its complex code, and that won’t be WiFi’s fault, even if “visually” seems like it is.
>Usually the access point (Netgear) automaticly detects the MAC adress of the devices
I use a NetGear WiFi router and my E61 worked out of the box just fine.
I agree with you about VoIP and RealPlayer.
I suggest you sell your E60, and either buy the E70 when it’s out soon, or get the E60 again or the E61 in 2-3 months when they are shipped by default with a newer firmware.
Edited 2006-06-08 21:52
>Eugenia
>I had a few WiFi drops too. It seems that the WiFi stack crashes all too often, and then they have a daemon that relaunches it every minute or so.
Hi,
It looks like turning on Automatic Email Retrieval over my WiFi network is causing applications to lock-up
It generally manages to connect to the imap mailbox at least once in the background. After that email, internet or sometimes the email key, all hang.
This ONLY happens over wifi & I can only clear it by re-booting the phone. Could this be related to the wifi stack crashing continually?
R.
I managed to get the voip working using the services from another website. (pbxes.com)
Basically, you can open an account on pbxes (free) that will forward your VOIP call to your favorite VOIP provider.
You need to set up your Nokia e60/e61 with pbxes which works well.
Another issue with the WIFI is the usage of static address. If you set up a static address on the phone, the borwser or the voip soft will not work correctly.
Let’s wait for firmware fixes…
Apparently the G.729 codec is broken on the E61. The G.711 works, when used with a local proxy.
1: Do the applications need to be signed by Nokia to run? (I’d like a platform I can code for)
2: Can a plucker/avantgo like app run to download data for later reading while on the non-billable WiFi connection?
Thanks in advance.
1. No, the apps don’t have to be signed to be installed (it mighy nag with an alert window, but it then goes through). Only 2-3 apps of the ones I tried had a bit of a trouble installing (SSH/Putty was one of them), but after temporarily disabling the certificate stuff, they go through too.
2. Sure! AvantGo used to have a port on an older S60 version, not sure if they are going to port their app to the latest version though. They aren’t doing very good lately, so I guess a new app would be welcome by the S60 consumers.
Thanks for that Eugenia, both the review and question answering are appreciated. Because it’s not just apps that need love from time to time.
The review gives me the impression that the firmware is not upgradable. However, all Nokia phones that I have owned so far were upgradable, it is hard for me to believe that the E61 would be firmware upgradable.
I have also searched the internet on this subject, but I cannot find any official indications anywhere. Eugenia, what is your source from which you stated that the E61 has no upgradable firmware?
All Nokia S60 phones can be upgraded, but IF and only IF you have the right tools (2-3 of them) and the right firmware (and it’s a complex procedure too). But remember, Nokia does NOT offer these tools to the users. These are simply tools that have being LEAKED by companies/carriers that worked with Nokia in the past. I repeat: Nokia does not offer a firmware upgrade path to consumers. Their philosophy is that if something is wrong, you return the phone to the carrier or shop. And if you can’t do that, you buy a new phone.
The fact that 2-3 wacko geeks will take on the job to upgrade manually their phones, doesn’t mean that the rest 100,000 costumers have the knowledge or tools to carry out that complex procedure.
Aah, I see, that strokes with my understanding. I have been upgrading my phones at the shop were I bought the phone, so I was under the understanding that it was a service available to all Nokia owners.
I have just read that official Nokia stores also would upgrade the firmware if and only if the phone falls under the guarantee.
Anyway, the E61 seems like a nice device voor me, I think I’m getting one
I’ve done a little research since I posted yesterday and would just like to corroborate Vieyten’s post; the E61 like all other Nokia phones will be upgradeable at Nokia service shops.
The S60 v3 Fetaure pack 1 that Nokia will supposedly be releasing soon (not clear if this will apply to the e61 but I can’t see why not), will support OTA upgrades.
OTA upgrades are like updates for Mac OSX and Windows XP. I imagine that you would need to downlaod it via WLAN rather than GPRS unless you have a billing death wish.
This is to my lnowledge the first mobile device to offer OS upgrades OTA; Windows Mobile and Palm do not offer this.
I upgraded the firmware of my nokia 6630 months ago.
Before of upgrade bluetooth was very unstable (unusable!!!), now works perfectly.
I upgraded it in a Nokia Center (shop, repair center). Completely free for first two years (when phone is under warranty). Then it costs 30 euro.
The only downside is that shop needed my phone for one day for a 10 minutes upgrade…
It seems that Nokia has “nokia shops” all over Europe and some of them firmware can do upgrades. There are none in USA though. USA is the country of the carriers, they are running the game…
Hi Eugenia,
Thanks for the E61 review. A few things to clarify: First, Nokia will open new stores in the US starting this summer. First one scheduled in Chicago later on this month and one in New York soon to follow. Second, Nokia makes phones by regions. From what I understand, even thou the E61 is FCC approved, it was not designed to be sold in the Americas. The E62 (which doesn’t have Wi-fi – but has US support for 3G and possibly a 3.5 mm head phone jack) should be available via Cingular later on during the year.
In any case, we need to put pressure on Nokia to support the entire E and N series line of phones here in the US.
We’ve got a Nokia petting zoo in a local mall, but you can’t find these phones for sale on their site. WTF, K?
>The E62 (which doesn’t have Wi-fi – but has US support for 3G and possibly a 3.5 mm head phone jack) should be available via Cingular later on during the year.
Simply sell cells sans soul-sucking service, sir.
smitty_one_each: I happen to be a very happy T-Mobile customer and I’m waiting for their deployment of 3G at the end of the year. I couldn’t be happier to see Nokia “sticking it to the man” by launching their own stores – we still don’t know if they’ll sell and support the E61 in the same way as the E93. However, I do realize how expensive some of these devices can be if purchased unlocked. Having a subsidized alternative for a very similar device – E61 vs. E62 – is a very good thing in my opinion, regardless of the carrier. At the end of the day only volume matters and god knows that Nokia is in desperate need of some help in the US market currently dominated by Palm and their Treos.
Thanks for the review. I wanted to get either a E61 or E60; I’m leaning towards the E60 for its form factor but I must admit the E61 is quite appealing. But after this review, I guess I’ll wait until the phones has the new firmware installed. How can you check, though. I live in Canada & as far as I know, the phones are not officially imported, so no support from Nokia for servicing…
You just wait long enough until all units in the market has been replaced with newer units. Usually 2-3 months.