Jørgen Sundgot gets up close and personal with the Nokia E61 business phone, sporting a BlackBerry-like design with a thumbboard, landscape-oriented high-resolution display, 3G, Wi-Fi and more.
Review summary of the Nokia E61:
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 The E61 does what Nokia does best: connects people. Its all-encompassing connectivity setup is exploited in full by a broad line-up of quality messaging, office and browsing applications which run in tandem with a superb screen and more than decent thumbboard. Granted, it's not among the most powerful business phones nor does it fare well in the department of synchronization - but the latter is at long last addressable by several third party solutions. Sprinkle with handy utilities, attention to detail, good battery life and a compact form factor, and you end up with a very solid business phone contender indeed. Release: August 2006. Price: $450.
Pros: Excellent screen; all-encompassing connectivity; broad functionality; compact size; good battery life
Cons: Thumbboard slightly cramped; inconvenient miniSD card slot arrangement; lacking synchronization
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Full Nokia E61 Review:
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A few levels below, a band of fellows with pointy tails are currently busy rounding up quality furs like there's no tomorrow - and to blame for it all is Nokia, purveyour of fine business phones, and its adoption of the design made popular by RIM's BlackBerry line. With the E61 - a slim performer which at 117 by 70 by 18 mm and 144 g manages to solidly best its 9300i sibling, Nokia is back with a vengeance in the business phone department; here's why.
That's a nice BlackBerry you've got there
Taking centre stage in the matte grey aluminum finish of the sturdy E61 is a superb, 2.8-inch landscape display with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and a user interface which - unlike many previous Nokia devices - makes good use of the real estate available to it. User adjustable brightness is present, as is an ambient light sensor which works as advertised, while - just to ensure hell really does freeze over - Nokia has also included an e-mail alert LED which sits just above the screen; it's about time. Sub-pixel font smoothing technology included in the Windows Mobile platform is not present, but the screen nevertheless scores full marks on readability.
Residing just below the screen is the unit's thumbboard, which boasts clearly labelled, comfortably sized and well-shaped keys lit by a pleasant white backlight. Despite being somewhat cramped, tactile feedback is excellent, while audible feedback is perfectly muted for use in meetings. Amusingly, the implementation of Windows shortcuts such as Ctrl + C makes simple text editing tasks far easier than on comparable Windows Mobile based devices; a boon for heavy text users. Furthermore, frequently used symbols are readily available, and the implementation of a full numerical keypad works very well indeed.
Other external traits worthy of mention include a loud and clear handsfree speaker; a navigational array with large and easily distinguished buttons; a dedicated e-mail button; and, lastly, the complete lack of a camera - by no means a requirement per se, but slightly disappointing nonetheless given the E61's support for video calls over 3G.
Except it's not
Speaking of 3G, this is just one of the connectivity options available in the superbly well-equipped E61. HSCSD, GPRS and EDGE bring up the rear for data across quad-band GSM support on the go, while Wi-Fi 802.11b/g takes care of high-speed local connectivity. Add Bluetooth for use as a modem, synchronization, connecting headsets and printing; USB for synchronization and data transfers; and, finally, Infrared for a bit of legacy support, and the only similarly capable device currently in sale becomes the O2 XDA Exec. The E61, however, outperforms the Exec with regard to both wireless range and reception as well as voice quality in general, and also includes high-accuracy speaker independent voice dialing.
Ready and willing to exploit the E61's connectivity is a broad line-up of applications which range from PIM management through e-mail; Nokia's pan-tastic new web browser which easily traverses full-size web pages; and an office suite which makes light work of viewing and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. There's even a very decent music player and a SIP based VoIP client, and we're pleased to report that the E61 performed impeccably throughout our testing of these and more. For those wondering where to store their data, the hot-swap miniSD card slot - although inconveniently placed - and bundled 64 MB will come in handy for extending the 64 MB of onboard memory.
Unfortunately, the E61 - as so many Nokia devices before it - stumbles in the synchronization department due to poor support for local PC synchronization as well as a complete lack of out-of-box groupware support. Fortunately, several third party solutions are compatible with the device from day one, alleviating this issue somewhat - and while waiting to get this in place, users can even add a little to the two-day battery life of the E61 (with average use).
Price and availability
The Nokia E61 will start selling for $450 () in August 2006.
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