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Nokia E61 First Impressions
Yes, I finally got a new cellphone. My Nokia 6630 lasted me 2 years, and has been a great phone. But, I'm finding the need for a smartphone -- calendar, to do's, and email at my fingertips. Hence, sticking with my favourite platform, the Nokia E61 was the best choice for me. If I wanted to do more multimedia with my phone, I would have held out for the Nokia N95, with 5Mp camera and integrated GPS, including geotagging of photos on the fly. *drool* If I had wanted a phone with camera in the same price range as the E61, my pick would have been the Nokia N80 (which is what Kris just picked up to replace his Sidekick).
Regardless...I will miss having a cameraphone. I'll have to see what kind of camera or picture taking workflow will make it easy to still upload photos on the fly.
Even better, I didn't even have to travel to Europe to actually buy the phone. I got it at Cellular Baby, just a few blocks from my house.
My first impression of the phone: fast! The UI is very responsive, and it comes loaded with applications. I haven't had much of a chance to add extra applications. I'll be putting Opera on, even though the built in browser is surprisingly usable in some ways.
But of course, does it work with Macs? Well, it's not officially supported by iSync. I used this post to add an entry to the plist file to trick iSync into working with it.
I really like the keyboard. It's a compact QWERTY keyboard, and I've already sent several test emails from it. Oh, and of course, it does have wifi. There is a hotspot finder that makes it easy to scan for connections and then create an access point / connect, without having to predefine them.
More soon, as I add some more apps.
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Hi B-man, just to drop by because I stumble upon this post about E61, N95. I started to use N91 about 3 months ago before I got the privilige to use N95 for a short time (I work at Nokia Burnaby as an engineer). I gotta say, N95 is really-really-ultra sweet from size(model) to feature perspective. The monitor is extremely big for a mobile phone :-). Love it so much.
Unfortunately I have to separate with that phone because of various reasons :(.
Hi Edwin:
I am very lucky and am part of the Nokia Blogger Relations program. So far I have received the following phones: N70,N91, N73, N93, N80i. Hopefully the N95 is next!
I would love to chat at the Bryght offices downtown or at the next Mobile event or at Northern Voice about Nokia phones and mobile in general. Email me roland AT rolandtanglao.com or call me at 604 729 7924. Coffee/tea and first beer is on me!
I would have thought someone like yourself Boris would be all about a Blackberry, perhaps the new Pearl? Seems to have everything you look for.
It's a closed platform from a single company.The only applications I can add to it are ones from the small pool of "approved" suppliers. The Nokia runs on the Symbian OS aka Series60, and there are hundreds of applications, ranging from small open source apps to many developers that write for the phone.
So open system vs. closed, single source hardware and software. It's a bit like Linux vs. Windows. Nope, I don't like the Blackberry :P
Good info Boris, thanks. I must say though, a guy here at work just got himself a pearl and it's a pretty sweet piece of hardware. That being said, I haven't had a look at the Nokia that you're talking about so...
I look forward to a review! I am curious to know how well it syncs with your mac! I am considering the e61, e70 and drooling over the n93/n95.