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Well, I've had my Nokia E61 for a couple of weeks now. I've been putting off writing anything about it because I really would like to do a detailed review like my 3 part Treo series, but alas I just don't have the energy right now.

Also, whenever anyone in the office sees me with a new phone, I usually get a fair amount of ridicule. You see, I've grown a habit for replacing my phone every 8 or so months, and well,that's just faster than everyone else. Oh, and I usually proclaim that the current phone that I have is the best thing since sliced bread, and of course I end up replacing it which erodes my credibility.

But anyway, you don't care right? You just want to know if this phone is worth salt. Well here goes.

I like this phone. I've never used a Nokia in my life, however, the experience reminded me a lot of my first GSM phone, an unlocked Ericsson T39. That was a great little phone, and it was a great way to enter the world of GSM. I'm happy to say that my experience opening, using and messing with this phone reminds me a lot of my Ericsson. There is something about a European made phone that is so obviously different from the phones made in Asia. Anyway, since I have spent the past few years using Windows Mobile devices and one Palm Treo I'll try to focus on where this device is better and worse.

Hardware

The device is solid. It feels so very good to use, hold, and type on. The keyboard is just perfect, and while the device is a bit larger than the Moto Q it doesn't feel big. It's thin enough to fit in my pocket.

Attention to the Details Part 1: The only blinking light on this device is a white light that comes on when you have email. Take a look at your phone now and tell me how many blinking lights it has. My old phone had two, the blinking green light telling you that you have signal and the blinking blue light telling you that you have Bluetooth. BOTH of these lights are useless. I could give a crap about either of these events to have an outside indicator telling me these things, but a blinking light telling me I have email? Now that is useful. I don't like having my phone vibrate or make a noise whenever I get email cause that's like every minute of the day. But on the off hours and evenings where I might want to glance at my phone to see if I have mail, the little white light is a great way to do it. One of my biggest pet peeves of the Pocket PC WM5 devices is that there is no way to keep the phone from constantly putting up things in the UI telling you that you have new mail. This problem isn't as bad on the Smartphone WM5 devices as their alert system is less obtrusive and doesn't require a finger or stylus to deal with.

I'd also like to congratulate Nokia on making a keyboard for humans. Yes, things like copy and paste can be initiated from the keyboard (compared to the HTC Pocket PC phones which lack a control key and the Smartphones that lack copy paste support). I will never purchase another smartphone that can't do such a simple thing from the keyboard (the Palm Treo supports this of course, some one over there is paying attention). Other than this, all the functions you'd expect work as expected (much like the Palm OS). In all applications numbers work where numbers are supposed to work and letters work where letters are supposed to work. The OS also gives you appropriate status as to what is about to be typed (for extended characters etc). My experience with the Windows Mobile devices is that you often have no idea. In other words, the software integration with the keyboard is superb and not an afterthought or Band-Aid implementation for what is normally a stylus driven or keypad driven device.

Software

The software took the most getting used to. It's very different from Windows Mobile or Palm, but it's also the most out of the way of all of them. The beauty of the phone is in the simplicity of the OS. It looks great, text is readable, and is efficient at all the tasks that I try and do.

The Web Browser is excellent. By far the best web browser I've used. It can load most pages and many that use AJAX (like the 37signals products).

Mail for Exchange, which is the only reason that I considered this phone, will synchronize email, calendar and contacts to the device from a compatible Exchange Server. This feature worked much better than on the Treo 650 that I used to use (more stable) but it does lack a few things like category and task support. But they NAILED the email support. Push email just works flawlessly. I did find an annoying bug where all day events from exchange come down as events that last 23 hours 59 minutes, but in the grand scheme of things, it's good enough for now. Reading email and processing large amounts of mail is the closest thing to the blackberry that I've seen (far easier and more efficient than Palm or Windows Mobile). It's a real joy to delete and reply to mails. Unfortunately you cannot move messages to different folders or sync anything but the inbox. Also missing are the ability to accept meeting requests or resolve email addresses against the Global Address List.

One of my favorite apps for the phone is the J2ME version of Google Maps. It's just excellent for finding local places and getting driving directions. There are also a ton of great games that look stunning as wells as your requisite support for opening word docs, xl files, powerpoint slides, and pdf files. Third Party apps, while not as abundant as Palm or Windows Mobile are out there and pretty decent.

Phone

By far my favorite feature of the phone is the phone capabilities (imagine that). The E61 has the best call quality of any mobile phone I've used. It's also extremely reliable and can hold on to a week signal well. Best of all are all the wonderfully sounds.

Attention to the Details Part 2: Unlike Windows Mobile, where practically every event has the same sound from 1999, Nokia has a TON of really great sounding and unique tones for calls, emails, messages, etc. They really make a big difference when you are trying to figure out why your phone is trying to get your attention. Some one really needs to put some effort into updating our tones for the next version of Windows Mobile.

Final Thoughts

This is a great phone and email device. It works well enough with Exchange and does a fantastic job surfing the web that I actually like the thing. I don't love it, I think there is plenty of room for improvement, but it will hold me over till I can get my hands on the Palm Treo 700 for Cingular (running Windows Mobile 5.2). The Treo 700 truly looks fantastic as Palm has ported many of it's best of breed applications and functionality to the Windows Mobile OS from the Palm OS (like the SMS Chat app which is the BEST SMS experience on any device period).

The Nokia E62 was just released for Cingular for $200 retail or $150 with renewal of your contract. It's a full $200 - $250 cheaper than the E61 that I bought (the no contract renewal price is $350). The differences are that the E62 lacks Wifi and 3G and has a mini-usb port and standard headphone jack. However, the 3G support on the E61 does not work in the US anyway (different frequency). For $150 the phone is a really great value IMHO. The Cingular E62 also support the major IM carriers in the US (which the E61 does not without third party software).