Nokia E71

This is no TomTom though. The small screen limits what can be seen, and we found it a little slow in use. It's also heavy on the data plan: on one occasion it downloaded 1MB of data to display the map.

We quickly found ourselves downloading the much more pleasant Google Maps, but even with this in place it's best to think of GPS as a handy addition to the E71's features rather than a key part of any buying decision.

Getting the basics right

After the quietness of the Portégé it was a welcome relief to make calls on the E71. The speaker is both clear and loud, while our voice came through perfectly the other end. It's also easy to adjust the volume thanks to sensibly placed up and down buttons.

Nokia doesn't stint on shortcut buttons either. There's a dedicated button for Home, calendar, contacts and messaging, plus the usual call start and call end buttons. The context-sensitive left and right buttons (usually for the active program's options and 'Back') immediately under the screen complete the set, along with a five-way rocker button for left, right, up, down and select.

For protecting the screen, Nokia sensibly provides a leather pouch. It's simple but effective, with the right-hand side left open so you don't need to remove the bundled headphones if you're listening to music or on a hands-free call (the latter worked reasonably well in practice, though the microphone is susceptible to wind noise).

The one improvement Nokia could consider would be a trackwheel instead of the rocker button, especially as the sheer number of buttons under the screen make it a little tricky to press the right one quickly.

Home and away

One interesting development with the E71 (and one we suspect others will copy) is the idea of multiple modes. So, you might set Work mode to give you a sensible wallpaper and a sensible selection of applications on the home page; it can also be set to show recent emails for your work email account.

You could then have a Home mode that shows your personal emails and uses a photo of your garden gnome as a wallpaper, and populate it with entertainment-centred applications. To switch between them is as simple as pressing the Switch icon that's on the home page by default.

Keep it simple

But perhaps the E71's biggest benefit is what it doesn't do: make life difficult. Armed just with a corporate email address, password and the POP3 server details, we had the Nokia E71 receiving and sending emails in under two minutes.

Nokia also pre-installs its full Mail for Exchange client. This is a little trickier to set up, but as long as your IT department has support for push email over Exchange (and you have all the necessary details) you should find yourself with complete access to your email, calendar, contacts and tasks information wherever you are.

It's even easier to set up personal email accounts. Nokia's software supports all the major ISPs and webmail services, and was working with our test Gmail account in seconds. All we needed to enter was our email address and password.

Office life

Select Menu then Office, and you'll find another of the E71's strengths - namely, its comprehensive software selection. Quickoffice 4 offers Word, Excel and PowerPoint-style applications, and although they don't have any advanced features they're largely compatible with their Microsoft counterparts (though they can't read Office 2007 docs). For example, beam your E71-created spreadsheet to a PC and it will work without any need for conversion.