I have had blackberries for years and the E71 is only my second Symbian phone over the years (first was an N75 in 2007 which I got rid of very quickly). BBs are great phones, yet somehow they always left me wanting that little bit more. They sorely miss the "x factor." Which brings us to the E71 which seems to ooze "x factor" from all angles. Nokias are similar to BBs, good battery life, solid OS and good build quality. So I said what the heck and bought an E71 the day I saw it. Quite a lot of money for an impulse purchase at $475 in India, but there are worse things to be addicted to (at least that's what I tell myself!)
On the positive side (I am a positive kind of guy 😊), the E71 outshines the competition on various counts:
1. Form factor and sex appeal - The super thin chrome body which is made of actual metal (as opposed to metal-like plastic on BBs and other devices) is a big win. You will not pull it out at an airport or shopping mall without people noticing it. In a good way. I don't know why there is an inch or two of wasted space below the keyboard, but I won't complain.
2. Build quality - This has been a Nokia given for years now. It feels really solid. I can't speak for the European or American batches, the batch that is sold in India is really solid. No squeaks and rattles and loose doors here (BB, you lost some credibility with the Pearl and early batches of the Curve). Its properly weighted and feels "right" in the hand.
3. Battery life - BBs tend to have good battery lives, but this one does better. With solid data and phone usage, it still lasts two days and two nights which is very good in my book.
Speaking strictly about the OS, Symbian will do most everything a BB OS will do, except in my opinion, it takes a few extra clicks to accomplish the same tasks compared to a BB:
1. Take for example texting someone from the home screen. On the BB, you just type the name, hit menu - text and off you go. On the Symbian though, you have to type name, select contact, then select menu - send message and most amazingly click again for text message (I DON'T want to send an email, I just selected create message from the text message field, not email field!).
2. Copying and pasting things on the Symbian is also a bit of a kluge - menu - use number - copy when it could very easily be menu-copy. Extra clicks.
3. Take dialing alternate number for instance - I dialed someone's cell and hung up and now want to dial their home number. On a BB, you can just hit send, go to call list, menu - dial home. On Symbian, you can't seem to dial alternate numbers from call history. You have to go back into the contact and hit the alternate number you now want to dial. Extra clicks.
4. Symbian also insists on telling you what its doing and wants your input for every little thing which can get annoying. "Packet data connection active." "Packet data connection on hold." "Profile changed to general." I know the profile changed, becuase I just changed it!! It announces that I just plugged in the ear phones. I know I plugged in the ear phones because I just did! I don't need to be told when the bits and bytes move over the wires, just for the phone to do its work and let me do mine. I spend too many hours on conference calls where you have to input several numbers in sequence - toll free, followed by passcode followed by other key combinations. These annoying system messages get in the way and I most always have to enter passcodes a second time to get it right after having dismissed the system notices. Extra clicks that are really annoying.
5. Geotagging photos - On the BB, its seamless. The camera app automatically uses the current GPS location (or last known GPS coordinates if current position is unavailable). In Symbian, you have to download a separate application from Nokia to tag your photos. Even more annoyingly, you have to launch that application first before launching camera and wait for the damn thing to acquire GPS signal. The application will also not run in the background (at least on my phone) as it will periodically quit. Sure, I can ask the train thundering past me to wait and pose for the photograph while I launch an application and wait for it to acquire GPS signal. That's practical. The 3.2 MP camera is abominable and has well-documented image quality problems that we are all waiting for Nokia to fix with a firmware update (they have done that in the past).
6. Then there are the icons. While iPhone and the BB Bold (I haven't seen one in person, just going by online reviews of pre-production models) are moving the benchmark further and further on graphics and screen resolution and what not, the Symbian OS has a distinct 1970s Nintendo Console feel to it. Who makes phone these days where the pixely pop-up messages have a teal background that clashes with the screensaver or the application you have open??? I mean, get with the program.
I will admit at this point I am being nitpicky. Overall though, while it doesn't match the usability of a BB or the amazingly intuitive futuristic feel of an iPhone, Symbian will do most of the smartphone tasks pretty well. On the plane of smartphone OSes (strictly from a user interface perspective), I would place BB first, iPhone's OS X second, Symbian third and Windoze mobeel a distant 99th. When it is combined with really good hardware such as in the E71, I will take it happily.
Your mileage may vary.