Hey you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race…

Written: 30/08/2006

A couple of months ago I posted a three part review of the Nokia E61 (here, here and here) and it caused more emails to my inbox than any other subject, apart from the time when I called George Bush stupid in a news article on 247. I decided there and then not to mention George on 247 again but am more than happy to talk about the E61.

Since I did the review my mind keeps coming back to the Nokia and I haven’t been able to forget just how good it really was. I had a store credit owed to me as a refund for a dodgy PDA2K and decided that it was time to try the E61 one more time. My latest Treo’s on/off button starting to fail had a bit to do with the decision as well… Three Treo’s in six months and they all broke, hmmm.

The reason I have stuck with the Treo for so long is because it can do so much- eBooks, finances, project planning, movies, Wikis, email, internet etc. etc. The last two are very important to me and I started wondering if I should indeed be looking for a device that does as much as the Treo or one that does the things I spend 90% of my PDA time on a lot better. Email is at the top of my list, as is Instant Messaging for when my wife is abroad and obviously voice has to be a prime concern as well- I make and receive on average over 30 calls a day.

So, I duly received my second E61 and started to play with it but this time I took a bit more care in setting it up. After five days I can report the following-

GPRS connects every single time without fail and so does 3G.

Battery life is huge! Spent a lot of time on the phone and emailing via GPRS for the first three days and even then I did not need to charge it but I did for old times sake.

Voice quality and reception are better than the Treo (lets remember that the Treo is very good at these two functions) and light years ahead of any Windows Mobile Smart Phone I have used to date.

The keyboard is one of the best on the market. I’m not convinced it is better than the Treos but with practice I am getting close to my old speeds.

Stability is awesome. Not one crashdespite me loading it up with every 3rd party application that is vaguely relevant to what I need.

It has it’s faults such as two cables- one to charge and one to sync (weird), very slow USB transfer of large files (have to use card reader instead), overly large fonts in some of the bundled applications and some odd ommisions such as no ability to pre-set appointments to have an alarm although that one should be sorted by SBSH soon:) Oh yes- you also get a wired ear piece with the phone which has only one ear plug. You have to pay £14 for an adaptor to use stereo headphone- that is just daft.

I am now pondering buying a traditional PDA to sit alongside the Nokia- sounds crazy but it would give me the obsessive organisation I require and one of the best connectivity options on the market as well. The Mio P550 is tempting me so that GPS is sorted in one package as well.

The only thing stopping me is that without doubt there will be many more 3rd party solutions released for this device in the near future and that’s the only drawback. From a hardware perspective it is all there and it looks wonderful but there are a few things that still cannot be done- finances, project planning and a daily journal being the main ones for me.

Who knows what will happen and if the Treo will win out yet again but I have to say that at this time the Nokia E61 is one hell of a smart device that just happens to look pretty as well…

Update: Since writing this article I have found a good finance application and even some basic product planning apps. I’m fairly convinced that once GPS is loaded up the E61 will be my daily device and that the Treo will be used as a back up in times of trouble. It’s good to have one device for each OS when you run a site like this but I find it difficult to cope with more than one machine for day to day use- it gets too confusing.

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