Its the Blackberry Killah!
Written: Sep 21 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A good fast little phone, nice interface, not as big as the 9500/9300
Cons: Keyboard could be better, should have added a line for numbers
The Bottom Line: This device was designed for sending emails, and it is quite good at that [except for stripping the formatting]. All without the fuss of expensive .NET BlackBerry(tm) servers
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| towel401's Full Review: BenQ-Siemens E61 Cell Phone |
The good
*Nice light compact design
*Built in SIP phone
*Decent keyboard
*Responsiveness
*USB Mass storage support!
*Support for 3G/54mbit wifi
*Nice sized screen
*Big [1500mA] battery
*No touchscreen! - I never liked touch screens, or the little stylus things, I hope it stays that way or they make it so every single feature can be accessed with the ordinary keys too.
The bad
*No camera - I dont know if this is really all that bad, Still not sure if its possible to use a HS-1
*Some keys missing (I still dont know how to send a tab) A dedicated row of numbers would be better
*S60v3 means all apps have to be recompiled, there was some d amn good freeware out there for the other Symbian OS, the folks who made it probably saw how popular their stuff now and are now capitalising on it and going commercial. Bawstards. Lucky there are siltloads of Java apps that will run on it, and very well thanks to the big screen.
*Some parts of the interface/apps are still kind of lacking compared to S80
The evil
This section has to be reserved for the fact that the built in voice recorder which has its own dedicated button on the side [wasted IMHO] will only record for one, single patethic measily little minute. Srsly, what were the guys at Nokia thinking??? Oh and another thing that bothers about the recorder is that it sends the stupid beeps down the line if I record something. When will these thickheads ever realise that if I want something recorded I'll record it, no patethic little political-correctness coding is going to change that. I am going to put a jack on a broken HDS-3 I found that should sort it. There is a way around this if you are willing to fork out $29.99 as many poxy little companies with a capital letter in the middle of their name are scrambling to get us all to buy their little DRM laced recording apps.
The Design
The top bit of the phone is actually metal, which is kind of surprising because I didnt know Nokia did metal phones that cost less than &eur;700. The construction is very solid but the tacky little plastic keys on the side and the little joystick look out of place. The joystick isn't bad but it looks like it should be covered with a little felt tip or something, like they have on some laptops. They are also using a new smaller socket for the charger which means you have to carry the little adaptor thing around, I dont think it even works with the older Nokia chargers which is kind of a shame, this is one of the many advantages nokia has over other manufacturers - Using the same charger for every phone, means there are nokia chargers everywhere. The keys are slightly cramped, and a bit too close to the edge of the phone, but if they made it any smaller people would be calling it brick and such. The keys are slightly wobbly but not nearly as bad as the dummy demo I once played with in a shop. It does take a bit of getting used to, at first I thought the keyboard was kind of shlt
compared to the 9500 but I'm actually getting used to it now, you just got to find the most comfortable way of holding it. The keypad lights up when it feels like it basically, but it does this pretty well. It is not very bright, but bright enough. I suppose this is to make the battery last longer, which lasts quite a while.
The OS
The S60v3 now comes with this 'active standby' thing, much like
PocketPC's standby screen, which shows stuff like calendar, inbox and what song is playing.
The menu has either Icon or list view, like previous Symbian versions the items can be moved around. Unfortunately it is not as good as the S80 menu where you can put notes and stuff on the desktop. Apps can be moved around too and put in the active standby menu for easy access. One thing I dont like about symbian is that the App menu is kept seperated from the file menu, so everything is installed and tucked away and you have to use the App. mrg. -- yes its really called that! to remove them. I am a fanboy of Apple's .app wrappers, none of this installing BS and InstallShield(tm). There is a large selection of themes out there for the E61, which means its easy to find an alternative for the awful tacky looking blue circle default one. If you have seen an E61 or a review for one you probably know how bad it is. You can set the background for each theme but you have to kind of try and find one that suits the theme. There is also a theme studio available from forum nokia but you have to register, and they are kind of slow at sending out their confirmation emails.
Multitasking is possible, pressing the menu key twice brings you back to standby, then when you hold down the menu key it shows you a little list of what's running
Built-in apps
Email client
Being an email device/BlackBerry(tm) knock-off and all you'd think
they'd put some effort into their email/messaging app, but they didn't really. Lets just say its not as good as the S80 email client, except for one tiny little thing - It downloaded the 8mb email I just sent it without a problem. You might ask, who the hell sends that kind of email around anyway? but it turns out this the most convenient way of sending songs to it. Faster than bluetooth, and without the hassle of a cable or uploading them to a http server. On the other hand, the email editor wont even let you do any formatting. Not only that but it also strips
off any formatting in received emails, but this might actually be
helpful in fighting spam, and makes the emails look nice & tidy. It does have this feature to automatically check emails, but only every half hour and you need to specify an access point [or group of accesspoints, I have never got this to work]. I have tried adding the 'Easy WLAN' in a group but I dont think it will use any open hotspot to get its emails. If it did that then Nokia would be held responsible for the 'load' its putting on open wifi networks, so if you want to steal bandwidth you still have to do it manually, but it is much faster at checking emails than the 9500, no need to stand around toodling with the thing outside someones house until it finally decides to download the few emails. When it receives an email the little LED at the top will blink. There is no 2-pane view like in S80 but I suppose there is no room for it either.
Web browser
While not as featured as the S80 one, I must say it is a lot faster, It also has a built-in RSS reader, which saves ya the bother of looking up a site when there is nothing new to see on there.
It also doesnt squash the pages and make the thing smaller unless you manually zoom out. There is also nothing to save images/pages which kind of sucks, there is always opera but that costs money. The EasyWLAN as it used to be known now works universally, no need to set up a profile each time you want to use an app that connects to the internet.
Muzak player
Unfortunately they have moved to the itunes inspired 'library' setup now, which means that each time you add an mp3 you have to let it scan for all the songs again. The one advantage of this is that it does list all the files in the phone. It also isn't bad looking, but there is a big empty space in it, I dont know what that's all about. A visualisation thing they never implemented? There is also a built in EQ now, that kind of helps get rid of the tinny sound of the substandard Nokia headphones if you set it up right. Also it lets you make playlists now. The 64mb memory card is a joke - it will only hold like 8 songs, I would recommend 512mb to 2GB MiniSD cards, and a card-reader to load the songs on to them.
Voice recorder
I guess its ok just to record a number someone calls out to you over the phone, but it better be a short number or you're gonna miss the end of it!
File manager
Not as good as the S80 one again, only list view is available, no
mention of file sizes unless you specifically go into the details of that file. But all the basic features are present. The gallery does let you see file sizes, and some ID3 data for songs, along with little previews of images.
Notes
Great little app, for chatting over bluetooth, the only thing I dont like is when you get one back it opens it with the word processor, which *does* let you do formatting btw. So I guess if you really need to format text then you can just attach a document or whatever.
SIP Phone
After hours of tireless chasing around the net, signing up with about 10 different providers I got it to work. It is supposed to work with Gizmo, and a few other providers like the one I'm using (voiptalk.org). You have to set up an access point for each profile, so you cant like make an internet call with a public hotspot unless you go change the settings first. Once you get it to work, take the settings, print out a few copies, kiss them, lock them away in various safety deposit boxes around the world cause you never wanna loose them! You can set internet calls as default, so when ya press the green button it makes a VoiP call. The SIP client isn't all that reliable for when you're on the move, have a bad wifi signal and even after setting it up it might crash. At home in a controlled environment it seems to work fine - and the quality is excellent! I must say however that the SIP client will finish the battery in about a day on standby so it is only for outgoing calls really, or if you have it by your desk in the charger.
Calendar
This is a nice looking calendar, with the brushed metal theme anyway, otherwise it looks fugly. All the features are there, again no 2-pane view because the screen isn't big enough. Now when you 'ok' a blank entry it just goes back to the previous screen, which is handy.
3rd party apps
Not that many exist that aren't commercial, this is because of the move to S60v3, but there are a few apps. There is a PuTTY client out there which works fine, except I dont know how to send tabs and the text is a bit small or it wont all fit on the screen.
There is also a python interpeter thanks to the kind folks at Nokia. Which is a dam good calculator if you know how to use it, but I dont, really. But it's not that hard.
Then there is the masses of Java apps that should all work on the phone. The E61 has support for new API's, so it will support more stuff. I have only tried the weather satellite app for yurop to make sure it works.
Connectivity
The E61 is a 3G phone, but I'm not too pushed about this because it is basically a way to get me to use up my &eur;10 credit even faster, and unless you have a good data package it isnt really worth it. There is support for video calling, but it will be one way, so that really isn't much good. The whole 3G thing is an offspring from the DotCom bust anyway, and was overhyped. Now it's just an overpriced gimmick, but if ya need the 384k internet access on your phone it's there for you. The 6650 also has it but that's beside the point. I have actually used the 3G data, connecting over SSH makes it a good bit faster than GPRS, and it doesnt spend so long connecting to check for emails so for pure phone use things over the network are a bit snappier. But unless you are one of those people who needs to VPN with their laptop 'On The Go(tm)' don`t pay any extra money for it.
Wifi is much faster and has much improved since the 9500 (Nokia's first wifi phone), mainly because it doesnt take so long to connect and its ability to use whatever hotspot is available for each app. It is nowhere near as fast as the 54mbit it claims (maybe a few megabits) but its only 54g so it wont drag the whole network down to 11mbits with it.
Bluejacking is a lot easier on the E61 because you dont need to have it open, I have been getting speeds of 64kbytes when sending songs to it with my iBook, I have been able to send and receive stuff to it from my Linux comp, I couldnt do this with the 9500 because of its shoddy bluetooth implementation.
For some reason they are still using the god awful pop-port which sucks, they throw in a datacable with the phone, which is great because since they have started using mass storage I actually have use for it. I cannot say how grateful I am that this phone supports mass storage, while most companies are moving away to their own proprietary idiotprotocols such as MTP PaysForSure(tm) Nokia uses mass storage, they have a brain after all. This is kind of surprising coming from the same muppets who make a voice recorder that can only record for a minute at a time. The mass storage only works for the MiniSD card but you can always move them to the phone later via the File manager.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 400
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Epinions.com ID:
towel401
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Location: Ireland
Reviews written: 53
Trusted by: 2 members
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