Yesterday once more on the Nokia E71

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

I’m not sure if one of Nokia’s engineers is a closet Carpenters’ fan, but it’s been yesterday once more on my Nokia E71 an awful lot recently. I’m suddenly interrupted half-way through the day with a reminder for a meeting that I attended yesterday, because the phone has arbitrarily decided to turn the clock back 24 hours. 

It’s the most bizarre bug I’ve encountered on a phone – and it appears I’m not the only one suffering from E-series Groundhog Day. This post on the Nokia Support Forum speculates that the problem occurs when you turn the phone off overnight, with the date occasionally failing to roll over correctly. 

I’ve tried setting the phone to synchronise the date with the network, but that doesn’t appear to work. Has anyone else come across this bizarre bug? Or found a way to cure it? Let me know on comments below. I’ll read them yesterday. 

Just in: Nokia E71

Monday, June 16th, 2008

I was quite impressed by the handfeel* of the Toshiba Portégé G710 when I reviewed it last week, but it is as nothing to the E71. This drop-dead sexy beast is satisfyingly weighty, with the metal chassis perfectly fitting its boardroom looks.

So far, I also prefer the Nokia’s slightly larger keys. There’s no space between them, so theoretically you could accidentally nudge the wrong one, but this hasn’t yet been an issue.

Another big advantage is speed, with the Symbian OS here proving much, much more responsive than the Toshiba G710 running Windows Mobile 6.

One of Nokia’s biggest selling points, though, is ease-of-setup. Just enter your email address and password, the marketing chief claimed, and then worry no more – everything would just work. And with support for “thousands” of ISPs, it’s more likely than not that it will.

I tried it with my Gmail account, but initially hit a problem with the setup routine – it was using Vodafone Live! to connect rather than the usual Vodafone internet access point. Once I’d corrected this, though, it worked like a dream. Well, a slightly dull dream involving access to email via a phone.

I’ll keep on using the phone over the next few days, so look out for the full review soon.

*Handfeel. n. 1 Like mouthfeel, but in the hand.