Day 1
O joy! The E61 was delivered today, and I was soon holding something really wide-nothing like what I’ve come across thus far. Believe me, this is one hell of a display screen. The menu structure is quite the same as that of any other Nokia smartphone.
Day 2
My four-year-old SIM had problems getting detected, so today I had to get a new one. That done, the phone got going. A Settings Wizard meant all the network settings were automatically set, and I was on my way SMSing.
Day 3
Truckloads of work, but I’ve decided to spend some time with the gadget-on the pretext of needing to write this! The shimmering screen is sharp and inviting. With 16 million colours, icons, graphics and text are life-like. The full QWERTY keypad is not the best; I would rate the Blackberry’s and Treo 650’s much higher. Key spacing and the way the keys wiggle are the sore point.
Day 4
Pleasantly surprised by the quality embedded speaker. The player is similar to the one on the N91, and music quality is good. But Nokia has taken the business definition too far, and has included a single-earpiece headset-ludicrous! Had to buy a Nokia stereo headset. The bundled MiniSD card is just 64 MB, so I got myself a 1 GB card.
Day 7
Themes add a dash of freshness, but there are a limited few available due to the screen size.
Day 11
Going through the manual, I figured that the Nokia catalogues provide additional software to try out. For that I have to get the E61 to work with either GPRS or Wi-Fi and connect to the Net. Used a Wi-Fi router to test the phone’s Wi-Fi capability.
Day 13
Connecting the phone over Wi-Fi is dead simple-define the access point and you’re online. The default Web browser is simply fantastic! The large screen does help here…
Day 17
Been using the E61 more than my Desktop PC for browsing! Tried some themes to jazz up the interface. Installing applications is a royal pain in the a***: most Series 60 apps aren’t compatible with the E61 due to the larger screen size. There are a very few apps out there to try-for now.
Day 24
The most-touted feature of the E61 is its e-mail functionality. While it does support a myriad push e-mail providers, our mail server doesn’t have any, so I tried POP-ping them. There’s a Wizard for setting up mail accounts with most popular services. I tried Gmail, and it was set in no time. Automatic mail retrieval delivers mail right to the device-but GPRS and Wi-Fi drastically affects battery life.
Day 30
The E61 delivers everything it claims to be. There are issues such as the less-than-perfect keyboard, lack of applications, and no camera, but it makes up by delivering where it counts-an excellent browsing experience and instant e-mail delivery. I’m somewhat satisfied, but I guess that’ll only last until I get my hands on a Motorola Q!