Nokia E70

Much as with the E60, the E70 initially strikes you as a rather plain, standard phone. There’s a screen at the top, sensible buttons at the bottom, a camera lens on the back, and not much else. What’s fantastic about this phone, and why it’s in the Nokia E (Enterprise) series is what’s under the hood (literally) and the mode of text entry. While you might be a T9 whiz, not everyone is, and the Blackberry-toting businessman has his two thumbs perfectly placed to type really quickly on a small but functional keyboard. And while the E61 form factor replicates the Blackberry, the E70 is more subtle. Sure, it has the classic candy bar shape, but then…

…hinge up that keypad, like the gull wing doors on a DeLorean, and you’ve got yourself a full keyboard. In addition, the high resolution portrait screen switches itself to landscape mode, reconfiguring the applications to take account of the different space and controls. It’s very, very swish, and lifts the E70 out of the crowd of ‘standard’ smartphones to something pretty special.

It’s also not gimmicky. This gullwing/split design has appeared before, in a Series 40 Nokia phone, and it obviously went down well in the focus groups. With slightly domed keys (more than on the 9500, but not by much) it’s pretty accurate but you can’t really push the speed – your thumbs can only move so fast. What is noticeable, and not easily cured, is that the phone is geared towards the right-handed people of the world. There’s only one way to hold the phone in “open” mode, and the phone cursor and soft keys snuggle up to the right hand side of the screen. There’s no easy solution, but it can make the phone awkward for left handers. What’s nice is the automatic reconfiguring of the screen. When you open the keyboard, the applications re-jig their layout, menu and buttons to make full use of the UI.

General —— Network UMTS / GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
Announced —— 2005, October
Status —— Available
Size —— Dimensions 117 x 53 x 22 mm, 102 cc
Weight —— 127 g
Display —— Type TFT, 16M colors
Size —— 352 x 416 pixels, 35 x 41 mm
- QWERTY keyboard
- Five-way scroll key
Ringtones —— Type Polyphonic (48 channels), Monophonic, MP3, True Tones
Vibration —— Yes
Memory —— Phonebook Yes
Call records —— Yes
Card slot —— miniSD, 64 MB card included, hotswap, buy memory
-75 MB shared memory
Data —— GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD —— Yes
EDGE —— Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G —— Yes, 384 kbps
WLAN —— Wi-Fi 802.11 i/e/g, VoIP over WLAN
Bluetooth —— Yes, v1.2
Infrared port —— Yes
USB —— Yes, Pop-Port
Features —— OS Symbian OS 9.1, S60 3rd edition
Messaging —— SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser —— WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Games —— Pro Tour Golf + Java downloadable, order now
Colors —— Silver, Black
Camera —— 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels, video(CIF)
- Push to talk
- Java MIDP 2.0
- MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player
- Office applications
- Blackberry connectivity
- T9
- Voice command/memo
- PIM including calendar, to-do list and printing
- Integrated handsfree
Battery —— Standard battery, Li-Ion 1150 mAh (BL-6C)
Stand-by —— Up to 220 h
Talk time —— Up to 7 h 20 min