A couple of months ago I did the unthinkable. I made the switch from the coolest phone since sliced bread (iPhone) to the sexy Nokia E71. I obsessed over the decision for weeks/months. Read all the reviews comparing it to the iPhone (they have lots) most of them actually favored the Nokia in most categories. I played with the thing at stores. I asked people I knew if they had used it (they hadn't). I ended up going to microcenter in cambridge, negotiated the price down from online competitors, and made my purchase.

Fast forward a few months I have switched back to the iPhone. Why would I ever switch back if all the reviews for the E71 were so positive? Those reviews must have been payed for is all I can think.

Here is what is wrong with the E71.

• Horrible email - Only two accounts that the phone will actively check, and those get reset every couple of days so you are messing with the email settings constantly. One of the main reasons I got this phone was so I could type better with the full keyboard. Lots more issues with email that I don't want to spend more time on. Just understand that getting email right on this phone should have been the number one concern for Nokia and they failed.
• Music - The interface for email is clunky at best. I use music on my iPhone constantly. I literally only used the music player on the E71 once to test it. The plug for the headphones is on the side making the E71 awkward in your pocket. The sooner phone makers realize that a quality music player is paramount to taking iPhone market share the better off they will be.
• Web browser - You don't realize how good the iPhones is until you go back to the 1990s style browser included on this thing. Admittedly, it is probably better than other phones but that doesn't make it usable. I had issues accessing one site in particular that made my life very difficult because it wouldn't render a scrollbar?
• User Interface - This is another area where they lose me. If I pulled out my old ass Treo 300 and compared it to the E71 I wouldn't be able to choose which one is newer (except the Treo is black and white). Again the bar has been raised by new phones in this regard and the user interface shouldn't be so business user rigid (even if that is the target audience). My suggestion is to hire a graphic designer who knows what they are doing and tell the engineers they aren't in charge of the look anymore.
• Battery Life/Charging - The batter life wasn't great. Charging the phone required a propriety cable when the phone also had a USB port. I only want to carry around one cable with me. Now when I travel I bring my laptop to charge my phone not a charger just for my phone. I also went out and bought a dock for this thing, that would only charge if one cable was plugged in at once. I'm not sure if that is the phone or docks fault. But Nokia didn't offer a dock - this was offered by a third party. I miss by Nokia to make money and have a better user experience.

The phone has some positives for sure that I am not going to talk about because I think Nokia needs to improve on the bits above before any other power users buy this phone.

Basically the only reason I didn't switch right away was because I didn't want to admit that I made a bad purchase. Plus the fact that the phone itself is really good looking. It's too bad the software can't keep up. That's the easy stuff, trust me I do it for a living.

I've got a posting on craigslist hopefully it finds a home with someone who isn't a power user.

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