Nokia E70 - Mp3-Ringtones-Mobile

3.8 out of 5Average user rating :

NokiaManufacturer :

December, 2006Date :

-Price :

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4User opinions :

Nokia has released another handset based on the 3rd edition of Series 60 user interface. This phone runs on Symbian 9.1 as the other new smartphones from the Finnish manufacturer. With its interesting design solutions and great features, it surely aims for lots of fans and will be a huge success. With its 2 megapixel camera, folding QWERTY keyboard and great connectivity features like WiFi, Nokia E70 is more than just a business phone; it is a dream phone.

Main features:

Great display
QWERTY keyboard
75 MB internal memory + miniSD memory card slot
3G connectivity
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth, Infrared, USB
2 megapixel camera
Very good videos with smooth digital zoom
Blackberry connectivity
Great battery

Main disadvantages:

Rather heavy
Controversial looks when closed
Slow display orientation change

Nokia E70 inherits the looks of Nokia 6810, 6820 and 6822. This series of phones are gradually improving in time and E70 is the first one with smartphone capabilities. The phone's features remind of the E60 model but the difference is that this one has a camera, more internal memory and different card type in use. This is the only phone from the E series of Nokia which features a camera. The QWERTY keyboard of E70 may seem as an answer to the rival manufacturer's models on the market which offer QWERTY handsets but E70 form factor is a Nokia brand.

A perfect gamepad

When closed, the phone doesn't look good at all. It leaves an impression of something cheap and looks more like a dummy toy than a great smartphone. The front view fails to impress because of the "shoulders" of the keyboard. The back is so blank that it scares. But the magic begins when the phone is opened and it reveals its true potential. The keypad is greatly elaborated in silver and the soft touch adds even more joy of use. The display stands firmly in the middle of the separated keyboard and provides maximum visibility for such (relatively) small device.

Nokia E70 measures 117 x 53 x 22 mm and is rather bulky when held closed in hand. When you open it, you must operate it with both hands, of course, but the phone allows you to use its features so easily, it even brings delight of work.

Multiple keypads

Even though E70 is made of plastic, it doesn't creak or feel cheap. It is solid (probably because of the 127 g it weighs) and creates impressions of a massive tool. When opened, this first impression vanishes mysteriously. The two-hand grip is confusing in the first time, especially as you may be scared not to break the keyboard part. Not to worry, the Nokia people have undoubtedly considered this and have manufactured it very well.

The keyboard part opens with a swivel motion going to the other side of the phone, revealing the right part of the keyboard beneath the numeric keypad. You will be offered a fully functional QWERTY keyboard when you finish the opening process.

When the phone is closed, Nokia E70's front panel features the main speaker, surrounded by a light indicator and the Turn On/Off Profiles button, on the very top of the phone. Just below it is the great 2-inch (35 x 41 mm) high-resolution TFT display, capable of displaying up to 16 million colors. The display has a black frame all over with very slim borders and a bit larger black banner on its top with the sign NOKIA on it. Below the display there are the two functional keys and the navigation joystick. The keys are in matt grey as the joystick is in shiny silver.

The numeric keypad is located on the swivel part of the phone. The keypad structure is typical for Nokia smartphones with the red and green receivers on top and the Pencil, Menu and correction C buttons just under them. The other keys are situated beneath them. They are all made of nice soft rubbery plastic and provide very pleasant touch. When the handset is opened, the marking job of the Pencil key is replaced by the combination of Shift and the Arrow keys on the QWERTY keyboard - much like on a computer.

The phone's back is very clean. So clean, that it even looks poor. On the top left side you will find the loudspeaker grill, fighting for attention together with the camera lens and NOKIA sign. The camera lens is put in a silver frame with a protecting glass. The battery cover uses more than half of the back part of the phone. It ends with the release button which is more than easy to use.

When you remove the battery cover you will see the BL-6C Li-Ion 1150 mAh battery which should provide the user with up to 220 hours of stand-by and up to 7 hours and 20 minutes of talk time, according to Nokia. On the right side of the battery is the miniSD memory card slot which allows hot swap functionality. The SIM card is accessed easily when you remove the battery. You should just push toward you or the opposite way in order to insert or remove your card.

The left side of the phone accommodates the Sound recorder button and the opening mechanism of the keyboard. The right side holds the other side of the opening mechanism plus the Infrared port. The phone's bottom is reserved for the Pop-Port and the charger port. The top of the closed Nokia E70 is absolutely blank which is understandable as when you open the phone, its top gets covered with the keyboard.

The opening mechanism of the phone is very simple; you grab the numeric keypad and turn it towards the display, rotate until it clicks ready and voila.

Nokia E70 battery connector type is the older, bigger one. The battery works great as it made it through the testing period with only one charging and that's impressive, having in mind the aggressive work with the phone.

Obsessively fine

Nokia E70 has a very good keypad (numeric) but there is no point in talking about it when the phone offers such a fantastic QWERTY keyboard, right? Anyway, to summarize in one sentence, the numeric keypad is very well elaborated and will suit you fine, just like any good mobile phone keypad.

The QWERTY keyboard is even better. The buttons are made of a fabulous plastic which makes touch very comfortable but what's more - the keyboard produces very clear, distinctive button presses. One of the pluses of the keyboard is the "bulb" shortcut key which switches on and off the keypad backlighting. It also has a Menu button, red & green receivers, Ctrl, Shift, Backspace, Enter and Space buttons. The Ctrl, Shift and Space buttons are doubled for your convenience as you may press them with either of your hands effortlessly. This makes the writing much faster.

16 million reasons

The wonderful display of Nokia E70 visualizes 352 x 416 pixels and offers a remarkable picture with vivid colors and perfect shapes. The large dimensions of the display allow the phone to show more content which is crucial in Internet browsing and text reading. The display is legible under direct sunlight but there is still room for improvement. The backlighting of the display is of the highest quality. It glows evenly and every part of it is perfectly illuminated.

When active, Nokia E70 display its active stand-by display with six icons of applications, list of calendar tasks, missed calls and received messages and the labels of the assigned functions on the two soft keys. Above all this, there are the signal strength bar, the clock (digital or analogue), operator name, and date and battery status. After several seconds of inactivity, the display light goes off and it displays the date and time, the current ringing profile (if different from General) and the missed calls and received messages, if any.

Nokia E70 provides very good sound during calls and there aren't any noises and distractions in the signal. The network signal is strong and reliable, too. The vibration is normal and can be felt in almost every occasion. When somebody calls you, the phone displays the caller name and picture. E70 also displays the picture of the phone (home, work, other) if it is in your phonebook.

Series 60, the 3rd

The main menu of the phone is made of a 3 x 4 matrix grid but turns into a horizontal 4 x 3 matrix when you use the phone opened. You can also set the menu to be viewed as a list. Some sub-menus can also be viewed in grid view but there are some that offer list view only. The horizontal mode of the phone can be very useful when browsing in the Internet or viewing a text document as it allows you to see much more.

There is a Voice aid application which pronounces everything you do when started. We cannot see the need of such application unless you are driving a car and you need to dial a number or something. Besides, Voice aid is available only in several menus.

Generally, the speed of Nokia E70 is about the same as all the recent Nokia smartphones from the E and N series. This means that it is fast for a smartphone, but it doesn't react as fast as some phones without operating system. The switch between horizontal and vertical mode is very annoying as it is almost always accompanied by a huge delay.

Vast phonebook

The phonebook of Nokia E70 knows no limits as it uses the shared memory. You can add as much contacts as free memory you have. It offers an endless list of fields to assign for every contact. First and last name, job, home and work address, several different phone numbers, email addresses, web sites, etc.

You can order the phonebook list either by first or last name. Search in the phonebook is performed by gradual typing of the desired contact's name. As all Symbian phones, E70 phonebook can be synchronized with PC very easy. The PC Suite can export your contacts in several format types, including the most popular Lotus and Outlook formats.

Detailed logs

Nokia E70 has a very good call records log. It is used for the data transfers and connections too. It has 30 records capacity and can show all recent calls made with the phone. The phone calls log is divided in three tabs: Dialed, Received and Missed calls. As usual for Symbian, there is a separate Log application, which can store all the events in the last 30 days. The connections are logged with the phone calls. General information about the duration of the connection and data transferred is stored too.

There is a Recent calls menu which shows all calls in the last few days but it is only accessible from the Voice aid application. We couldn't find a reasonable answer to that mystery but probably the manufacturer will improve this feature in the next firmware version.

Fast writing

The QWERTY keyboard of E70 will make you an unbelievably fast SMS writer for sure. Writing was never easier on a mobile phone. Getting used to the keyboard is easy and comes within the first days of use. The numeric keypad is also very well elaborated for writing text messages.

The messaging menu of the phone is not at all different from any other Nokia Symbian phone. It has an Inbox for all incoming messages except emails and asks you for the type of message you want to create when you initiate the editor. The SMS editor is the same as in previous models and shows a character counter with a digit for the amount of messages that will be sent. T9 dictionary is available to assist, of course. The editor displays up to 6 lines en bloc.

Emails are stored in a separate folder and the phone operates with them seamlessly. E70 supports POP3 and IMAP protocols and handles attachments without any problem.

Camera not as good as expected

Looking at the camera lens and specifications we expected very similar performance to the one of the very good camera of Nokia N71 for example. It turned out that Nokia E70 produces very soft images and resolves significantly less detail than most 2 megapixel camera phones. The colors are fine, the processing is good (there are no unwanted artifacts) and the noise levels are low, but the amount of captured detail is too low for the 2MP label.

The camera in Nokia E70 is also stripped of features - it doesn't have even the basic and most useful adjustment - the exposure compensation. We can only set the resolution, compression, color tone, white balance and night mode.

Very nice videos

In the video department, however, the things are completely different - Nokia E70 captures very good videos with CIF resolution (352 x 288 pixels). The quality of the video of E70 is the same as N71 or N80 for example, but what made us a very good impression was the smooth digital zoom. In contrast to shooting stills, when capturing videos the digital zoom is a very useful feature and when it's nicely implemented as in Nokia E70 it adds to the fun. Take a look at the samples and you will see what we mean.

Music player

Nokia E70 has a fine music player which handles different file formats as well as playlists. It also has an equalizer with some presets. The phone produces good, loud and clear sound and may even surprise some skeptics as it may be used for a music phone, and what's more it has large internal memory and a memory card slot.

The music player can play in the background, of course, and the song will be displayed on the active stand-by display below the calendar events. Nokia E70 also has a Flash player and a Real Player and thus it can play videos, too.

Connectivity is not an issue

The phone supports GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, UMTS, PTT, Bluetooth, IrDa and USB. Nokia E70 works with Bluetooth Specification 1.2 supporting the following profiles: Basic Printing Profile, Generic Access Profile, Serial Port Profile, Dial-up Networking Profile, Headset Profile, Handsfree Profile, Generic Object Exchange Profile, Object Push Profile, File Transfer Profile, Basic Imaging Profile, SIM Access profile, and Human Interface Device Profile. Unfortunately, the A2DP profile is not among them which makes impossible the use of stereo Bluetooth headset with the phone.

The phone offers a Printer connection application which can be very useful if you intend to use a printer more frequently. The phone makes a connection with the printer via Wi-Fi, USB or Bluetooth, it's your choice. The USB connection can be made only with a custom USB data cable as Nokia E70 doesn't have a normal USB port.

The fast data transfer can be used via GPRS, EDGE or 3G UMTS. You can also try the Wi-Fi connectivity, in which case you have to be near a Wi-Fi hotspot. You can set the phone to detect and connect automatically to such hotspots or you can search them manually. When you are connected, E70 automatically creates an access point for the hotspot and starts using its Internet broadband. The connection speed depends on the distance from the hotspot and on the provider. The signal is displayed as the network signal strength.

Comfortable browsing in portrait or landscape mode

In Nokia E70, as in other 3rd edition Series 60 Nokia smartphones, there are two browsers - a great one and a poor one. The poor one seems to be for simple services only, like downloading ringtones, pictures, etc. The great one, however, is one of the best, if not the best. It can open web pages just like you're browsing them on you PC. The great display makes this browsing even better. The horizontal mode of the phone is very useful for viewing web pages. You can see more and better when you use the phone in landscape mode.

There is even a mouse cursor which can be operated through the navigation joystick. Surprisingly, it works great and is very easy to control. A semi-transparent mini-map of the page displays on the screen when scrolling a webpage. The mini-map can also be accessed by a shortcut - the "8" key. You can zoom in and out on the page using the "•" and "#" buttons. It's amazing to see how small the text can be and still remain readable.

Most of the sites we visited (including gsmarena.com, take a look at the screenshots) looked exactly like on the PC. Even when loading complex pages, the web browser was operating fast and there was no slowdown in the scrolling speed. The browser also loads Flash clips (not all of them, pitifully) and has no problems dealing with Java Scripts.

Business after all

More than everything Nokia E70 is a business phone. That's why it offers great office features. It has Word, Excel and PowerPoint editors which work very well. You can zoom in and out the file, jump to other page or edit the content. You can also create new files. These Office applications are much better, compared to those in Nokia N80, which could only read office documents but couldn't edit them.

E70 features a dual clock. You can set two different times and dates in two time zones. The Calendar has Month, Week, Day and To-do view. You can assign Meeting, Anniversary, Memo and To-do tasks in the Calendar. You can also put alarms on those assignments.

There are also the Notes, Converter, Calculator and Recorder applications in the Organizer menu. The Converter converts Currencies, Area, Energy, Length, Mass, Power, Pressure, Temperature, Time, Velocity and Volume. If you open the QWERTY keyboard and press any key, the Notes application starts automatically, very convenient indeed. The calculator is very simple and easy to use. Regrettably, the Recorder has a one minute limit for voice records as in all Nokia smartphones.
Organizer menu • Notes • Converter • Calculator • Voice recorder

PDF and ZIP come welcome

The phone has a PDF reader application which is very useful if you need to open a document in this format. E70 also has a zip archive application which opens archives with this extension.
Installations menu • PDF options • zip archive name

The test phone we had didn't have any preinstalled games but there will be a Pro Golf Tour game announced by Nokia which is supposed to come preinstalled on E70. Fortunately, installing games is very easy and if you're near a Wi-Fi hotspot, it is a two minute job. There is an update application in E70 which connects to the server and offers you to download the Pro Golf Tour game. There is no doubt that this golf game is graphically far from the golf game in Sony Ericsson M600 but its gameplay is rather amusing.

Brilliant, especially if you type a lot

Nokia E70 is an outstanding phone almost in every aspect - convenient QWERTY keyboard, high-resolution display and full set of connectivity options. The controversial design and the annoying response delay during the switch between landscape and portrait orientation of the display doesn't seem enough to create a bad reputation of this great mobile phone. If it is offered on a reasonable price, there is absolutely no doubt that Nokia E70 will be a huge success.