Nokia E71

At long last, the Nokia E71 has arrived to our shores after its recent launch. Vodafone has it listed as "coming soon" and its available SIM free from several outlets.

I've been using the phone for over a week now and must say that I'm extremely impressed by it.

I had the E61 previously which served me well. The E71 does everything the E61 does, but better and in a much smaller and more stylish package.

Although the E71 is much smaller, the keyboard is a work of genius and is surprisingly much easier to type on than its predecessor.

The phone supports push email on both POP and IMAP services which is handy for checking out emails on the move without resorting to taking out the laptop.

The web browser on the device is also very capable and makes it very easy to check the internet when needed on both 3.5G and WiFi.

The user interface has been improved and the phone's screen and hard key shortcuts are fully customisable. What's more, the Symbian OS is much faster and there is practically no lag when using it.

I've also found the battery life (which is changeable) to be excellent, easily lasting for over two days of solid use.

The only negative point so far is that when syncing with a Mac using iSync and the Nokia plug-in, the descriptions field in the calender is cut short and will only carry a long paragraph. The E61 didn't have this problem and long text could easily be added and synched from computer to phone and back again. I find this a huge problem as it means I can no longer put long details for assignments on the phone. I do hope this is sorted out soon.

Apart from that, I'm very impressed by the phone and can't recommend it enough. The only other phone which has caught my interest is Apple's new 3G iPhone which I'm toying with getting on a separate phone line.