Nokia Unveils "World's Thinnest" QWERTY Smartphone

Barence writes "Nokia has revamped its E-series of business-oriented smartphones with two new models, including the 'world's thinnest' QWERTY device. The GPS-enabled E71 is the slimmer successor to the Nokia E61, with a thickness of only 1cm. It's HSDPA-enabled, offers switchable home screens, and gives a claimed 'two full days of heavy, heavy use.' The E66, on the other hand, is a slide-phone with a conventional numerical keypad and a built-in accelerometer. At the same event, Nokia also gave a tantalizing hint about its plans for an iPhone rival, with its senior vice president saying, 'we will have touchscreen devices coming this year.'"

for a quick fix fine

[jacquesm]

But I don't see anybody coding up the next installment of gcc on these keyboards :)

And the speed with which some of my (female) friends can SMS using the shorthand method is simply amazing.

Personally I use my phone to call with, the camera function is nice to have (and a better camera would be a good reason to upgrade the phone) but after playing with the internet features a bit I really don't find much use for them.

The 'qwerty' bit is nice (same as with the blackberry) but it would not be enough to get me to switch (and the keys will be *even smaller*).

Looks good

[Idimmu Xul]

I'm forever after a phone that I can use ssh with easily for when I'm on call, so a full qwerty keyboard is mandatory. This one is actually looking good with an easily accessible @ / and . characters. Does anyone else have any other recommendations?

--
Free Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii [free-toys.co.uk]

Re:Touch Screen != Success

[drinkypoo]

It's also worth mentioning that Motorola has had touchscreen phones literally for years (including Linux-based phones!) and they definitely don't have anything that's any threat to the iPhone.

Re:About that home screen switching...

[athakur999]

Symbian-based phones definitely have this capability, at least my 5 year old Nokia 6600 does. While in an application, I can hold down the "menu" button and it will show me task switcher that will let me go back to the menu and start another program without closing the first one and swap between them. I'm sure the limited memory of the phone will stop you at some point but I've had 4 or 5 applications running at once at times.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

[F34nor]

I have been using the e61 for some time and it is fantastic. Wifi in a phone more than a year before the iPhone. The only thing it lacks is a tab key and it misses it badly. I just went phough phone buying hell for my father and got him a Centro (mostly becasue he is a technophobe who has had a palm, handspring, or treo for over ten years. ) I have been using the iPhone and a V3xx for the summer and all of them basically suck cock compaired to the e-series. Touch screen is cool but add no functionality for me and somewhat diminished typing experience. Oh had why the fuck doesn't the keyboard go to landscape in half the iPhone apps? Anyway none of you chumps will ever see this phone anyway becasue the US mobile phone companies are a ass licking oligarchy based on reduced function in returned for increased prices.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone [thebestpag...iverse.net]

Re:Great...

[Ilgaz]

I was desperately wondering why people in USA doesn't take Nokia serious but after months of watching and comparing US market versus Europe, I decided people has _right_ to see iPhone as second coming of Jesus.

How come they never shipped any good thing to USA market? You know what? It will take years and billions of dollars for Nokia to get taken serious in USA. Even technical people get amazed when I show specs of my Nokia E65 (older E66) not knowing Nokia can produce things like that.

I was wondering how come people get impressed by push IMAP in iPhone while my 9300 from 2003 can do it without even asking and I noticed lots of people doesn't even know there is a smart phone (laptop?) like 9300 exists.

Looks good but...

[thammoud]

Symbian is a really awful operating system. I had the E61 and it used to crash and freeze all the time. I thought it was the phone and then I bought the N95 and the freezing and crashing continued. I will never buy a Nokia again until they fix the OS.

*Yawn*

[Anonymous Coward]

No multitasking applications
No keys
Limited Enterprise connectivity
Non replaceable battery
Restrictive SDK (read the T's and C's before you comment on that one)
Mediocre phone performance

I'm really getting great amusement from all the fanbois touting the iPhone as the be all and end all of smartphones. It isn't, and if it were not for the 'me too' trendy value that society has ascribe to Apple products it wouldn't be selling well at all.

Re:Looks good but...

[hirschma]

The E61 sucks *with* the last released firmware, it just sucks less. They never did ship a fully stable device, and I see no evidence that they fixed the E61 issues in any successor devices. Again, no more Nokia for me.

jh

Insensitive Clod

[ndansmith]

But I type with the Dvorak keymap, and I doubt those tiny keyboards are good for touch-typing. So I think I will have to go the route of "soft" keyboards (a la iPhone) if I ever go down the smartphone road.

Re:Which is it nokia?

[LilWolf]

You do realize that Nokia shipped 115.5 million phones just in the first quarter of 2008? 14.6 million of those were in what could be called the "smartphone" category. So something that sells 8-10 million in a time frame of a whole year doesn't really sound so astonishing to them.

Re:Great...

[ras]

I have often read the Nokia engineer's whinge about how they make phones with tons of features, then the US carriers ask they all be removed. I presume the simply don't bother trying to sell phones in the US that require them to put a whole pile of effort into removing features.

Apple is about to be bitten by the same thing, only in reverse. The DRM, the "thou shall not run applications in the background", the "thou shall only sell software through Apple" - all those things aren't consumer friendly. I presume its just Apple crippling their phones at fit in with the carriers wishes, just like Nokia has to do.

Only there is one difference. Nokia doesn't sell crippled phones to the rest of the world, only to the US. Consequently, they dominate the world market. From what I can tell, Apple is going to try and sell their US crippled phone to the world. If so, they are in for a bit of a shock.

I personally would buy an iPhone V2, if I could use it with a blue tooth keyboard and run applications on it just like I can with the Nokia. Nothing out of the ordinary - just things like download my pod-casts in the background over WiFi with my favourite 3rd party podcast app, run a GPS tracker in the background when bushwalking, a keyboard monitor - all pretty simple stuff really which works now on my Nokia. But I can't. Sort of kills it, really.