Nokia E71 smartphone - Apple's iPhone is not the only game in town

Thanks to the success of its publicity machine, aided and abetted by the world’s media, it would be easy to gain the impression that Apple was the biggest player in the world of mobile phones. But in comparison with the Nokia elephant Apple is a mere flea.

Look at the figures. As Apple was celebrating selling a million 3G iPhones over its launch weekend Nokia was announcing sales of 122 million handsets over the three months to June. That puts into perspective the target of 10 million iPhone sales by the end of the year.

The comparison is unfair in that Nokia sells dozens of different handsets whereas Apple has only one design, albeit one that’s very good for consumers of media. For anybody who wants to watch videos, surf the web or listen to music on the go the iPhone is hard to beat.

It’s not so good for responding to emails, texting or working on documents. That’s where the Nokia E71 really comes into its own, partly thanks to its full keyboard, but also because of the audience it’s designed for. The “E” in the name stands for “enterprise”.

Although it’s a business-oriented handset, the Nokia E71 isn’t all work and no play. One neat touch is a choice of “modes” which allows you to switch from business to pleasure with the appropriate functions pushed to the fore.

And the E71 has every function you could possibly desire from a smartphone including GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera and a very full set of productivity software even including a document scanner. As ever with a Nokia all this is easily navigated through an intuitive menu system.

All this fits into a design which is slightly smaller than an iPhone. Nokia claims it’s the thinnest ever phone with a qwerty keyboard. Despite its pocket-loving size the quantity of metal used in its construction means it feels very solid.

This article was originally published in The Scotsman in August 2008

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