Name: Kwok Ng
Location: San Jose, CA United States
Date: 2007-07-19
Customer Rating: - 
Summary: A very solid PDA phone
Comment: I have been looking for a PDA phone. I have few must-have and Good-to-have features as my guideline to hunt down my next phone.
Must-have
=========
VOIP support
Unlocked 3G/GSM
QWERTY messaging keyboard
WiFi & Bluetooth
Sync with Outlook Address Book, Calendar, and Notes
More than 2 days of battery life
Supports SD card
Built-in camera with video recording
Good-to-have
============
IM Messengers
Dictionary
Business card scanning
MP3/Video player
Web browser
Touch screen
Like many other people, they may have separate address book in their PDA and cell phone respectively. This is the main reason I want a PDA phone to combine them into 1. I could have bought this phone earlier to solve the problem. I was just waiting for Apple iPhone to see if it does any better, but I eventually gave up iPhone.
Why did I choose E61i?
1) It is a unlocked phone
2) I can use truphone, a VOIP service for Symbian OS phones, to make international call over WiFi/3G network. The quality is even better than my home Vonage service.
3) The battery can last 2 or more days with normal usage.
4) QWERTY messaging keyboard makes my life easier on SMS.
5) It syncs with my address book, calendar with Outlook perfectly.
6) For the Web browser, I feel the N61i browser is better than the one in Pocket PC but worst than iPhone. You are able to zoom in and out a web page.
7) This is not important to English speaking users. I bought the Hong Kong version of E61i. It supports Chinese on typing and displaying. There is a built-in Chinese/English Dictionary too.
The nice things I figured after I bought it
1) The speaker is loud and clear.
2) It supports Podcast
3) There is a IM+ software you can purchase. It supports many popular Instant Messengers.
4) It has a message reader to read your text message with voice.
5) It can print documents with some HP printers that support LAN/Bluetooth
The things I dislike about this phone
1) Hard to find the right place to configure certain features.
2) Not much software supports Symbian OS.
3) It does not support WMV and WMA files
4) No built-in auto keypad lock. Fortunately, there is a freeware.
5) No Bluetooth power save feature on handsfree mode.
6) No touch screen.
7) A little bit too wide on the size.
Name: Startupgeek
Location: San Jose, CA
Date: 2007-08-25
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Very good for VOIP and W-CDMA access too.
Comment: I used to use Blackberry on Cingular; needed to change to a phone with W-CDMA due to extensive travel in Japan, etc. Cingular does not support this on Blackberry, and their W-CDMA phones are (Aug/2007) just horrible. Some are WinCE too, which would only add to my pain if I had to use windows on my phone as well. And the iPhone is basically useless here too.
So, I got one of these. It works; but the menu system takes some learning. I actually had to read the manual. Simple things that made my life easy with the Blackberry - like being able to click on the email message and get a screen to call back the sender directly - are completely missing. It does not have a learning dictionary to speed up txt messages with fast auto complete and the keys are also weird; just don't feel right.
The dialing system is annoying if you travel a lot; whereas my old Blackberry just got on with it and inserted the "+" before the country code when I was dialing from Taiwan or UK or wherever, the Nokia dialer barfs at this. So now, I need to go through my entire address book and update the numbers to include the "+".
On the plus side, it does have flawless BT support - my Jawbone headset locks in very nicely every time. It also has wickedly good battery life (nearly 2 ~ 3 days) and excellent VOIP call capabilities. (I use TruPhone; works great.)The camera can be used a a video camera as well, saving me the trouble of packing another item. (I always take short videos of where I've been to show the kids; the e61i is great for this too.)The sync with Outlook is also flawless and the SW package includes a media manager that does additional compression.
As an Engineer, I'm also impressed with the construction; the back is solid stainless steel, and it has already survived pretty intense destruction testing from my younger son giving it near mil-std grades in my book.
As a phone, the sound quality is excellent. This is fundamental, but something that is often missing on other phones.
The default menu can be configured to show what you want - I have it showing an email summary, a calendar summary, and a bunch of gadgets. And since I use TruPhone for VOIP, I also have it scanning for WLAN's from time to time. Its a busy little machine, and has never hung up on me yet.
Based on the narky user interface, I can't give this 5 stars. But, its definitely better than 3 stars and is good at what it does right. It definitely does do what I bought it for, and hopefully, with time and new software releases, things will get better.
Name: Martya
Location:
Date: 2007-11-01
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Nokia e61i
Comment: Absolutely love everything about this - with one exception. The numbers on the keyboard are buried in blue background, and are not illuminated.
This means in anything but bright light, using the phone function requires memory and some guessing.
The screen is fantastic.
Online performance fantastic.
Everything except those numbers.
Name: owe-me
Location:
Date: 2008-04-27
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Great phone for the texter or data hound, as well as voice
Comment: I had never had a Treo, Palm, Blackberry or any traditional "Smart Phone" but I did get addicted to the full qwerty on my Motorola a630. That is the main reason I got this phone, but there were many other things that impressed me as well:
2 megapxl camera
upload to youtube right from phone
Symbian series 60 is reputed to be the best phone user interface and I cannot disagree with that--compared to Motorola's, this is light years ahead!
Super Thin
Other phones I considered to buy with my existing tmobile unlimited data plan:
Tmobile Dash
LG Prada Silver (the one with the full on-screen qwerty)
LG KU990 (Viewty)
Motorola Q
Samsung Blackjak 2
Nokia N76 (the only one of the bunch without a full qwerty)
I had read and talked to alot of people that had bad things to say about WindowsMobile, so that ruled out the Motorola and Samsung. LG's homegrown user interface didnt fare as well either--I tried one out and its simply atrocious (hard-to-use, frustrating)
So I took the plunge and decided to try the Nokia E61i. I was thoroughly delighted. Not only was the Amazon price for it amazing ($329 unlocked new), but the phone just oozes quality. The user interface in the software is super-easy to do all normal tasks, I can turn the beeps/ringer off with the touch of one button (the power button which is a rarity, in the upper right--you press and hold to turn on/off, but press normally to change the "profile" to silent and others). Here is my main list of Pros and Cons
PROS:
very thin and fits well in your pocket
wide screen and wide phone aids in holding it and not flipping sideways in your pocket
"Own key" lets you set up whatever you want for it--gmail works great for mine!
qwerty keypad is easy to type on (partially due to widness of device)
buttons have great feel and dont accidentally get pressed in my pocket (they also have a keypad lockout feature but I dont even need to use it)
Nokia carrier setup wizard automatically set up my device for tmobile network--you just go to their site, tell them your phone model and phone#, and they send you an SMS with a link to the tool. It set up all data for me--wow!
power charger is compact
2 megapxl camera takes great photos outdoors
video camera is decent
runs lots of great free java apps like gmail, google maps, yahoo go!
stainless steel back gives it a quality feel--also its heavy and that helps the quality feel.
excellent integration with the PC and Microsoft Outlook for syncing via bluetooth (I set it so that whenever it connects to my PC (when I first come within 30 ft) it syncs contacts, calendar, and notes)
WiFi 802.11 network capable and its superfast when you can get it
Excellent battery life!
CONS: (these are very small issues in comparison with the pros and dont bother me much, but in case you are wondering)
Some apps that are made for this device have fatal flaws in them that dont allow you to get past one of the intro screens (I am talking about you CellFire)
Constantly asks me which network I want to connect to when nothing really has changed (but maybe some other WiFi network becomes available, or the GPRS signal is lost). It should just auto switch to the strongest & fastest network available the way the iPhone does.
No way to turn off the notifications on the phone when you synch with MS Outlook calendar. You can turn off the sound, but still every appt I have it will flash the screen on and off, wasting my battery. I just dont want to be bothered on the phone, but still need them on my desktop.
Camera has no flash
Camera has annoying tendency to make you think you are taking a picture at that instant when its really 2 seconds in the future (eg. Aim and press center key, it plays the noise like a camera shutter and freezes the image---picture is taken, right? Nope. You must then hold your arm there and keep the camera as still as possible for 2 more seconds and the frozen image on screen is replaced by the REAL picture. very weird and annoying)
Cant take rapid-fire photos (both because of the above and because after each picture you have to hit Select > New > Image and then press the center key. Why cant it just work like a good (ie Canon) digital point n shoot camera?
Browsing web pages isnt as easy as with the iPhone (then again, this isnt a touch screen so I didnt expect this) You can view just about any webpage on this thing but if the people who wrote the website didnt do a separate layout for mobile, you are forced to scroll all over the screen and zoom in/out.
No GPS onboard(but this isnt a big deal...yet) they want you to buy a $200 bluetooth GPS device.
Proprietary connections for earpiece, charger, data (no standard mini-USB like the RAZR)
OVERALL A GREAT DEVICE!!!!!
Name: James D. Portaro
Location: Bruceton Mills, WV
Date: 2008-09-30
Customer Rating: -
Summary: Nokia E61i
Comment: Nice phone with good features. Handset sound quality is a bit low, but overall great quality.
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