Nokia Symbian reviews and news

Nokia E71 is the most serious rival for BlackBerry, which claimed to be the best choice for corporate users in terms of push e-mail systems and QWERTY keypads. Now Nokia and BlackBerry appear to be  highly polished mobile communications devices. Both phones are a great choice for communicating.

Both phones include a full QWERTY  keypad and numeric keys in the centre. E71 has more techy look and feel while Bold’s styling is more refined. In terms of moving around the screen E71 offers NaviKey which is definitely much better than the trackball in BlackBerry. Moreover, you can access contacts, calendar, Home and e-mail with one touch in the E71. You are also enabled to use text input, including automatic spelling correction, auto-completion, and word candidate lists. What about size, Bold with it’s 15mm looks quite huge in comparison with E71 10mm thickness which looks almost flat. This fact makes E71′s keys slightly smaller. Anyway, both phones are great in terms of support for text input.

E71 has a great screen of 2.36 inches with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. It’s not as high as Bold does have, but still suitable for viewing web pages, working with e-mails and various documents. The display with 16 million colors uses an active matrix LCD which allows you to enjoy a great visibility even while being outside when the sun is shining.

You can use E71 without your hands, using a Bluetooth wireless headset which is combined with both speaker- dependent and speaker- independent voice dialing or a handsfree  speaker. The phone can also be set to answer automatically.

The most impressive thing in this phone is messaging for push e-mail and text messaging both.  IMAP, POP and SMTP email protocols with Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email are supported by E71.

You are enabled to manage Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents using the Quickoffice app. E-mail system is also great however not as good as BlackBerry’s. It’s great in terms of security with a keypad and remote lock. Moreover, it has encryption for data stored in memory or on memory card.  Various VPNs are also fully supported.

The multimedia is also strong, including a 3.2 megapixels camera with autofocus and flash. The video can be recorded  in MPEG4 or 3GP formats at a resolution of 640 x 480 at 22 fps or 320 x 240 (QVGA) at 30 fps. Video calls can be made with another camera. In comparison to Bold’s camera E71 is certainly better despite the fact of being quite average. The music player appears to be quite good due to handling all common formats, FM radio with Visual Radio support and the possibility to playback video using RealPlayer.

You can also enjoy A-GPS with Nokia Maps which are included in E71 like in many smartphones.

Web browsing is also a great experience with the ability to handle XHTML, Javascript, stylesheets and Flash. Most of the websites are displayed quite correctly. NaviKey helps you to zoom effectively also.

What about connectivity it’s also great as E71 supports Bluetooth, USB, WLAN and Infrared. VoIP calls can be made using WLAN. Despite the fact that E71 has 2.5mm Nokia headphone set provided, it lacks a universal 3.5mm jack which is included in BlackBerry Bold. You can also find a suite of personal organizer functions and FOTA.

Despite the battery life being very good, it becomes very short while using WLAN and GPS. So if you don’t use these features, make sure that they are turned off in order to save battery life. The memory is quite small but with the possibility to upgrade it to 8GB purchasing microSD card memory. Bold beats Nokia at this point, coming with 1GB memory.

We won’t answer to the question which phone is better- Nokia E71 ir BlackBerry Bold. What is suitable for one person or situation might be unsuitable for another. E71 is more compact, better built, has better camera, more applications, greater connectivity and battery life. However, BlackBerry is better in terms of memory, easy using and more powerful e-mail configuration. In general, E71 is a great phone, but BlackBerry is still better in terms of mobile e-mail.

Check out Nokia E72 which appears to be even greater than E71.

Nokia 6700 appears to be kind of upgraded 6500 Slide or a slide version of 6700 Classic. It’s also widely known that those two previous phones are very unreliable. The Series 40 OS was replaced with  Symbian version 9.3 and 6700 was made a smartphone. In general, 6700 includes three unreliable technologies and how do you think what could go wrong?

Talking about 6700 Slide in it’s own terms, it appears to be very nice looking, despite it’s heaviness and being slight wobbly. On the other side, it looks great, feels well made and solid. In terms of display, it’s quite small- only 2.2 inches. However it’s good for a slide phone with 16 million colours and a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. Anyway it’s not clear why Nokia decided to put a Symbian OS system in a phone with such a small display that allows a limited number of applications and is much smaller than in those touchscreen generation phones.

We can’t blame the phone for a small number of features as it’s priced quite cheap. What surprises here is an impressive camera at 5 megapixels, with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual flash. Moreover, you are enabled to record video  in VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels) at high quality and make video calls with another video camera. Video editor is also included.

Nseries music player is used for music. You will be able to store about 500 MP3′s with the 2GB card supplied. If it’s not enough for you, upgrade it to 16GB. The player can handle all popular music formats. 6700 Slide also includes an FM radio with RDS. However, sad thing about 2.5 mm audio jack which is much poorer than standard 3.5mm and doesn’t allow you to connect any headphones except those special.

6700 Slide provides quite fast data transfer: downloads of up to 10 Mbps and uploads of 2Mbps and very good Internet connection with HSPA. On the other side, you will hardly have a great web browsing experience due to a small screen and  alphanumeric keyboard. It’s really hard to understand what this phone is for with those all those poor features with a small number of applications available.

Only two options are available for connectivity- Bluetooth and USB. We are also disappointed with a restricted memory of only 60MB. In addition to this, the biggest part of poor memory is eaten  by the OS. What about battery, it’s life is relatively short.

Neither it can be said that 6700 Slide is a good phone nor that it’s bad. The advantages are an excellent camera, Symbian operating system and 3G. The disatvantages are small screen and memory, conventional alphanumeric keypad. It looks nice, but in terms of it’s features, it’s hard to recommend Nokia 6700 Slide for you.

Nokia E63 could be described as the little brother of E71. While talking about BlackBerry-buster and BlackBerry Bold, the previous one appeared to be better due to it’s big display, memory and opportunity of easy using, despite it’s poorer applications, connectivity and battery. They both were rated 5 stars. So what can be said about Nokia E63 in terms of all it’s features?

Saying that E63 is the little brother of E71 was quite in the figurative sense, as it’s bigger. They both are similar in weight due to the same battery type, however E63 appears to be 13mm thick instead of 10mm. The displays are also similar in both phones- 2.36 inch QVGA, 16 million colours, however E63 has some improvements in the keyboard so it’s easier to use.

If want to be provided with information about E63′s inside, take a look at E71 review as they appears to be very similar. They also are Symbian 9.2 SmartPhones running the Series 60 3.1 user interface. You will find a great variety of various apps in the OS. However in comparison with E71, you will find that E63 lacks HSDPA and GPS. Moreover, it’s camera is poorer: 2 megapixels with fixed focus, while E71 has 3.2 megapixels with autofocus.

A great improvement is a 3.5mm headphone jack with Nokia stereo headset WH-102. You are enabled to plug in any headphone and use it in your car.

Both phones have full QWERTY keyboard, large screen and a great Internet support, so you can enjoy surfing the Internet, sending texts and managing your e-mail. E63 is an excellent all-round phone despite it’s smaller capabilities.

We found that E63 is winning while compared to BlackBerry 8900, as it’s not really fair to compare it to the Bold. So you’ll find NaviKey quite better than Blackberry’s trackball. The previous one has better camera and a larger screen, however E63 has 3G instead of Blackberry’s EDGE making  E63 better due to it’s business functions.

If you are not very interested in having GPS and top-notch camera, we recommend you E63 due it’s great QWERTY keyboard and mobile Internet.

This phone seems to be great as other phones that are not very expensive and has a touchscreen. 5530 appears to be down-graded 5800 or upgraded Cookie/ Tocco Lite. In comparison to 5800 this Nokia has a smaller screen, is more compact, without 3G and Carl Zeiss optics. As a consequence it costs about £50 less than 5800. While comparing 5530 to Cookie/ Tocco Lite, it has a screen with higher resolution, a flash included with camera, WiFi and a 3.5mm audio jack. It’s cost on Pay as you Go is about  £70 more than Tocco or Cookie. As you see, considering it’s features and price, 5530 appears to be somewhere in the middle.

It’s enough with comparisons, let’s explore 5530.  Firstly, you can choose from comfortable touchscreen implementation- either your finger or stylus. In both ways you will have a pleasant experience of user interface due to it’s responsiveness. It can also be stated that display of 5530 is best in it’s class with it’s 2.9 inches,  640 x 320 resolution and  16 million colors. These features are really important as if you chosen touchscreen you will matter about it’s quality. You can customize home screen and make it comfortable for you, for example accessing Facebook with one touch. You are also enabled to put up to 20 people on your home screen. The screen includes automatic rotation feature also. Virtual alphanumeric keypad with predictive text or regular text input can be used in order to enter numbers and text in portrait mode. Enjoy a great punctuation in your text messages with QWERTY keypad in a landscape mode.

As 5530 is branded as XpressMusic phone, it’s audio is really great. You have a possibility to enjoy an impressive music player with equalizer in addition and FM radio too. A great 3D sound effect appears due to two speakers on both sides. Your music will sound even more greater with bass booster. You can also plug in the headphones which are in the box and AV connection thanks to 3.5mm audio jack. Any negative thing can be said about the music capabilities of this device.

The camera can’t be considered as very impressive with it’s 3.2 megapixels, however it includes autofocus and a flash. You are enabled to use this phone easily and record pictures very fast. Moreover, they can be uploaded to Facebook and printed. One more good point is recording video camera at all resolutions up to VGA (640 x 480 pixels).

5530 offers you a great connectivity too:  Bluetooth, USB and WLAN connections. However, 3G is not included.

This handset has a 70 MB of memory. Don’t be scared- you will find a 4GB micro SD card in the box with the possibility to upgrade it to 16GB.  Battery gives you 27 hours of music playback time.

In general, 5530 appeared to be a very impressive phone! As for the mid-range phone, it has a great variety of features. You will find it’s working also great and smooth. Despite the fact that this phone’s camera is quite poor, don’t forget that it’s music phone and it really does it’s job. What about price, you won’t find it expensive neither on contract, nor on Pay as you Go, what makes this phone much better than the LG Cookie with all it’s great features.

6700 looks so beautiful and feels to be bullet proof when you take it to your hands. However when you start to use it, you encounter with hopeless unreliability. Nokia seems to be cheating on us.

This phone is kind of replacement for 6500 Classic. Their size is almost similar, but 6700 is a little bit thicker and heavier, like it was really made of steel. This handset’s style is classic, however it doesn’t look bad when compared to the latest touchscreen phones.

You are enabled to create SMS and text easily with a flat keypad and T9 predictions. Menu also appears to be very simple and comfortable to use with a great navigation button making your using of the phone faster. 6700 has a bigger 2.2 inches screen with the same 16mln colors and  240 x 320 pixels like in Nokia 6500.

6700 has a greater camera with 5 megapixels, autofocus and LED flash. Those features make this handset above average between other it’s class phones. Video camera works with VGA resolution and you are enabled to make video calls with another front-mounted camera.

MP3 player supports a limited number of formats, such as MP3 and AAC. You can also enjoy FM radio and see current station thanks to RDS.

Only Nokia stereo headphones and Bluetooth stereo headset can be plugged in as there’s no 3.5mm audio jack. MP3, video ringtones and 64-voice polyphonic can be also played with phone.

One more great feature as for this phone is A-GPS. 6700 has a HSPA feature which is a faster kind of HSDPA. So you are enabled to transfer data with 10 Mbps.

6700 has a 170 MB of built-in memory and a possibility to purchase memory card with 8GB. You will find a 1GB card in the box supplied.

In general, 6700 appears to be a handset which represents an updated 6500. The previous one had it’s problems with poor 830 mAh battery so the 6700 is supplied with 960 mAh. The quoted standby time increases about 50% in such a way. However such things can’t be said about software which constantly encounters various problems such as switching and freezing. Moreover, don’t be cought with this handset’s steel image, it can crack very easily. Be careful with this item as you use it.

It’s a pity that Nokia don’t learn from their mistakes. You can choose 6700 if you like risks. However if you want something with 6700 features but not so dangerous to use, try Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Samsung Jet or Sony Ericsson W995 if you don’t prefer touchscreen phones.

6303 is kind of updated 6300, which was one of the most popular Nokias of all times and best sold phone during past few years. 6303 updates technology and the styling of the 6300 and fixes it’s problem of a poor battery.

Nokia 6303 is a little bit larger and rounder than 6300. It’s also a few gram heavier and has a larger screen at 2.2 inches across, with 16.7 million colors and 320 x 240 pixels. Despite it’s heaviness, 6303 is very comfortable to hold in a hand. You will have a good experience while using this phone with a large screen, well-designed keypad and familiar Nokia menu.

A very significant improvement is the camera with 3.2 megapixels, autofocus and a dual LED flash. It appears to be quite good enabling you to take pictures of print quality. You can also record video. The resolution of  640 x 480 is quite high however it allows only 15 frames per second. This phone doesn’t support 3G so you won’t be able to make video calls.

All standard formats are supported by the music player with a stereo radio including RDS. As a consequence you can see various details of music played. One more great improvement is that now you can plug any standard-fit headphone due to the 3.5mm headphone jack.

It’s a pity about the amount of memory for music player which is only 17MB. However, you can add a 4GB Micro SD.

A great improvement is a longer battery life of 7 hours talktime, however it seems that it hasn’t been tested standing next to a mobile mast.

6303 provides you with a quite good connectivity, including 3.5 mm audio jack, USB and Bluetooth 2.0.

Don’t expect a great variety of high-end features from this handset as it’s price was around £100 mark at launch. On the other side, you will still find some interesting features such as Nokia Maps, however without GPS, web browser, e-mail support, voice commands. While buying phone you will get a micro-USB cable, stereo headset and 1GB memory card. The 6303 is a great update of beloved 6300. If you are searching for something solid, reliable and not expensive, try Nokia 6303.

You can also try Nokia 6303i which has improved social networking and a more powerful battery.

This one is the first from Xseries, however it’s not based on the Nseries phones. Nokia X6 runs the Symbian operating system. This touchscreen smartphone is more robust as it’s branded as XpressMusic phone rather than bug-ridden from Nseries.

It’s not cheap handset as X6 appears to be 5800 pimped to the max. It’s size is similar to 5800 except a few millimeters slimmer. You will be surprised how it’s nice to hold. Moreover, it’s  a little bit bigger in weight what makes this phone more solid and purposeful. It’s not such bulky as other touchscreen phones and has the advantage operating it with one hand.

X6 has capacitive touchscreen display which is very responsive. The size and resolution is the same as in 5800- 3.2 inches with 640×360 pixels. Thus it appears to be compact form factor being quite small size among phones with high-end touchscreen. So the price paid goes for X6′s compact form. The screen lets you to do your job while being not very big. Display rotates automatically and you can choose from virtual alphanumeric and QWERTY keypads. You are enabled to access friends on your home screen with the help of contacts bar. X6 has quite nice user interface. You can dial, call records and texts up to 20 friends. It’s so great to use this phone due to the responsive capacitative touchscreen.

What’s for music, this phone appears to be a great choice as it’s branded as XpressMusic phone. X6 includes Nseries music player and an FM radio. You will be able to listen to songs in MP3, WMA and AAC formats. Moreover, it will provide the selection of song by artist, composer, album and genre. Album graphics are also displayed. You will enjoy a great sound of your favorite songs with dedicated audio chip, 3D surround stereo sound when with bass booster, stereo widening and loudness effects in addition.  8-band graphic equalizer for additional control and 3.5mm audio jack are also included. You will be able to plug in your own headphones and enjoy the 32GB of built-in memory. Finally, download music all year using optional Comes With Music feature.

X6 has also a very good camera with 5 megapixels. As for a phone, that’s quite impressive. Moreover, it includes  Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual LED flash and also can punch above 5 megapixels weight. X6 also offers video recording capability with 640 x 480 pixels and 30 frames per second. As you know this is standard definition TV quality. This phone enables you to make video calls with another front-mounted camera.

You will be able to use assisted GPS with Ovi Maps. X6 offers a great connectivity, so that you will be able to use your phone in almost all places with it’s quadband GSM and triband 3G. This phone has HSDPA which gives the speed of data transfer up to 3.6 Mbps. You can get faster downloads in a WiFi zone with WLAN.  Bluetooth, USB cable, TV-Out socket and a  3.5mm audio connection are included so you can choose from different connections.

As already mentioned, the screen is 3.2 inches what makes web browsing just satisfactory. However responsive touchscreen and fast speeds makes web browsing quite good. You are also enabled to download a great number of applications form Ovi store due to the fact that X6 is runs Series 60 5th Edition Symbian version 9.4 OS/interface.

The 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery is quite impressive and should let you 8.5 hours of talktime or 35 hours of music playback. However, it’s much less in reality- about several days.

In general, X6 is a great phone of a great quality and durability.  It’s compact and solid-looking with  a great camera and music player. You are enabled to use all the connectivity boxes. A huge memory, great battery and stable operating system. It’s screen doesn’t appear one from those biggest, however 3.2 inches is respectable. X6 is kind of phone which represents taking Nokia and making it even better. 5 stars for X6!

Finally Nokia released 5800 3G  touchscreen smartphone branded as an XpressMusic phone which can be titled as catching up with Apple, LG and Samsung.

5800 appears to be extra stylish phone worth waiting. However all touchscreen phones seem to be good- looking to say honestly. What impresses most about it’s look is that 5800 is very sleek and appears to be narrower that iPhone 3G. Maybe it’s even the narrowest between touchscreen handsets with it’s width of 52mm and lets you to use it with one hand easily. User interface can be much greater due to a big screen and high 640 x 360 pixels resolution. It lets you to enjoy  finger touch, stylus and plectrum with a virtual alphanumeric keypad, full and mini QWERTY keyboards and handwriting recognition. 5800 also includes automatic rotation when you rotate the phone. You can quickly access music controls, gallery, web browsers with virtual media bar as it’s like other XpressMusic handsets. 5800 has physical keys too:  send and end, menu, screen lock and volume. Sad to say, but it’s touchscreen isn’t as good as iPhone’s. On the other hand, it’s not as bad as it could seem- using stylus sometimes will bring you a great experience while using the phone. Important to mention, that 5800 beats iPhone in a lot of cases, so think carefully before purchasing.

What about camera, it isn’t the best one included in a phone but beats iPhone for sure with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, a double LED flash and respective 3.2 megapixels. Video camera is quite good with ability to record at up to 640 x 480 pixels and at 30 frames per second, with stereo sound. It also lets you to make video calls on a 3G network with front- mounted video camera.

5800 can also boast an excellent music player. Touchscreen controls appear to be very easy with various features, such as  8-band graphic equalizer and a 3.5mm headphone jack. You will be provided with 8GB memory card which lets you to store up 2000 tracks in MP3 format or 4000 tracks in AAC. If it’s still too small for you, take advantage of upgrading it to 16GB. Download music whole year without any limits with optional Comes With Music features! Use built-in FM radio. Any bad thing can be said about 5800 in terms of music.

Enjoy a quick web browsing. 3G HSDPA implementation gives you incredibly fast download speeds.  It also supports Flash meaning, beating iPhone here also. 5800 is WiFi compatible what enables you to transfer data with super fast speeds in the vicinity of a WLAN network or a WiFi Hotspot.

5800 includes GPS with Nokia Maps in addition. Apart from 3G and WiFi, this phone has  Bluetooth and USB, plus a TV-Out connection. Cable is also included in the box.

5800 is a Series 60 phone. You can enjoy a great number of applications which can be easily downloaded. A couple of games, standard Series 60 organizer applications, document browsers and a good organizer are also included in the phone.

What about the battery it does it’s job despite the fact that such phones with so many features are very hungry for power.

You can choose from red, black and blue colors with all the cables, stereo headphones, 8GB memory card, case, stand and stylus included.

5800 has the occasional bug like all smartphones, but there are only few of them and they should be ironed out quickly with firmware updates. This phone is great because of it’s touchscreen benefits and Nokia is worth applause due to their attention for details. Nokia doesn’t seem to create just another copy of iPhone. Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s really good. 5 stars for it.

One important footnote: 5800 doesn’t include Comes With Music service and then it turns out to be standard XpressMusic handset.

This cellphone is kind of similar to Nokia 5530. Sometimes it can be thought that 5230 is below 5530 but that’s not true. It’s quite interesting how they complement each other: if you won’t find some feature on one phone, be sure that you will find it on the other one. For example, Nokia 5230 has 3G, A-GPS receiver and a larger display, but doesn’t have WiFi, the camera is poor and it’s bigger and heavier in comparison with 5530. What about the price, it’s the same on contract.

But now the basics. Nokia 5230 is for those who want to pay less than £15 a month or pay as you go users. It is  S60 smartphone and is expected to be relatively high volume handset. The firmware has been ironed out from bugs as it’s the latest phone from similar series.

5230 has almost similar to 5800 look- like. Nokia 5800 is known to be the greatest model of this type of phones. That’s a great thing as 5230 offers you 3.2 inch display with 640 x 360 pixels resolution. It’s not like iPhone in terms of inches but it has more pixels so you can tell this to your friends owing iPhones. 5230 has a resistive touchscreen and stylus. The display enables you to browse the Web and work with menus very easily. Moreover, it’s ideal for multimedia. What about size, it appears to be larger than 5530, but it’s due to the fact that it’s screen is larger and the battery is bigger too.

5230 offers a 3G while 5530 supports WiFi. So decide what is more important for from these two features. If you are interested in having both of them, purchase 5800 which also has Bluetooth and USB connectivity. Having 5230 enables you to download data with speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps due to  high-speed HSDPA.

Important to mention that 5230 doesn’t include stereo speakers as it’s not XpressMusic. It includes FM radio, music player and a 3.5mm audio jack. Moreover, it has A-GPS receiver, with Ovi Maps in addition.

The worst thing about 5230 is it’s camera with only 2 megapixels. So you can only make quick snaps. Its video camera is better but doesn’t allow video calls. If you are interested in better camera just choose 5530.

Talking about the memory it’s quite big at 70 MB. However, if you will decide to expand it to 16GB, it won’t be included and you will need additional money to purchase it. Moreover, you won’t find USB cable in the box too.

As it was mentioned earlier, 5230 is bigger in weight due to it’s battery however you can enjoy it’s great life in exchange.

In general, 5230 with all it’s advantages of  large touchscreen display, Ovi Store for apps, 3G, GPS, great battery and disadvatages of rubbish camera,  no WiFi, no video calling and poor music player is not a bad choice if you are searching  for a touchscreen smartphone with affordable price.

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