Nokia E71x Review

BUILD & DESIGN
The hardware for E71x is almost  exactly like the original E71, except that it's clad in an all-black color scheme. This does tend to make it an eye-catcher, and on more than one occasion has seen the device taken from my hands by a woman for closer inspection and eventual acceptance.

Screen: The front features the QVGA (320x240 pixel) screen. In my opinion, there hasn't been a screen this well done since Palm's m515. It performs *very* well in direct sunlight. It's almost scary how good it looks.

QWERTY Keyboard: Despite the E71x being only 10mm thick, typing on the QWERTY keyboard is a pleasure. The keyspacing is excellent, and you really don't have to do much in the way of aiming -- which is also true of the similar Palm Treo Pro and Centro models.

And like its Treo/Centro and BlackBerry competitors, the E71x has a number of different functions that can be assigned to keys. Some of my favorite are utilized within the AT&T MediaNet web browser (a rebranded Nokia S60 web browser) to easily navigate a page and collect information.

I did notice more "light leakage" with the keyboard and the areas around the bottom of the screen than with the previous version. This might have simply been a manufacturing tolerance issue, but it's definitely something that could throw some users off, considering the rest of the professionalism of the hardware.