First and foremost, I’m using Google Apps (aka Gmail for your domain) which integrates all the Google applications such as Mail, Calendar, Wave etc with your own domain.  This means that the Gmail Java app works with it directly, but it also offers push mail (via Microsoft Exchange) and POP/IMAP.

First: The Gmail Java App (Free)

The Gmail Java App is actually very good, but also very basic. This doesn’t offer Push mail of any kind – it automatically polls your email approximately every ten minutes and vibrates the phone if a message is received. The vibration is quite easy to miss, however, and there’s no audio or screen-based alert. There is also virtually no support for attachments – the app allows you read only access to certain images, and will display plain text from some attachments such as Microsoft Word documents.

I found the Gmail app to be useful especially when roaming abroad because it uses minimal data and allows you to choose what emails you want to read and downloads them on request rather than automatically.  The downside is that I found the formatting of outgoing messages a bit strange since line breaks are added at strange places, meaning it looks strange when you view the email on your computer. It sends and displays email in plain text only, there’s absolutely no html support. The upside is that it works fast and gives you full access to all your Gmail labels and contacts.

In summary, a good basic mail app with certain applications. Better than the built in E71 mail app but only if you use Gmail.

Next: Gmail Push with Nokia Mail For Exchange (MfE) (Free)

The Gmail Push service operates using the Microsoft Exchange protocol and this requires an Exchange-capable client – this is where Nokia MfE comes in. You can configure MfE to connect at certain times so that your email is only pushed to your device when needed, and you can also set it to sync your calendar and contacts with a Gmail or Google Apps account.

In terms of email push, I found this to be reasonably reliable – there was the odd time where email was not pushed out to my E71 immediately, but it usually got there in the end. This had the benefit of giving you free push email integrated into the phone’s OS, but the major dis-benefit was that you had to use the E71′s built-in mail application. This didn’t display html emails, but gave you all the html code with it. Long emails were occasionally truncated and it was not a straightforward process to go online and check your email, then come offline again. While it was useful for the push email, I found the poor user interface (the fault of the Nokia E71 software, not MfE) to be a major disadvantage.

RoadSync ($49.99 / £8.00 GBP from the Ovi Store directly)

After the issues I experienced with the MfE / Nokia E71 email software, I found RoadSync which offered a completely new user interface for email and boasted good integration with Gmail and Google Apps, and most importantly it supports html email. It was basically a direct replacement for MfE, offering the ability to sync your email, contacts and calendar but with a better user interface.

I installed it and configured it for my handset and I made a bit of an error – I told it to do a full new sync of my calendar which deleted the existing entries (as expected) then tried to re-sync all the data from my Google Calendar. Unfortunately, it only seemed to pick up the recurring events in my calendar, didn’t sync past events and left me having to restore all my calendar data from a backup. Not the best start.

After that, things seemed to be ok – the html email was a massive improvement on the built in E71 email system, but I found that the email just stopped being pushed to the phone. Over several days I tested the software and found that around 2-3 out of every 10 emails were actually pushed to my phone, and the others didn’t arrive unless I manually synced. I tried adjusting the settings but found no solution to the problem. I was quite disappointed because RoadSync was an app I really liked and would have spent the money on it (it’s much cheaper on the Ovi store than it is direct from dataviz.com) but in my experience, it was nowhere near as reliable as MfE and the calendar and email sync didn’t “just work” as it should. I therefore can’t recommend RoadSync.

Nokia Messaging (Currently Free – will charge in future)

Nokia Messaging allows you to configure up to ten email accounts which are checked by the Nokia Server and are then pushed out to your phone. The Nokia servers connect via IMAP Idle, meaning that they check your mail accounts every 15 minutes and any email received in between checks should be received by the Nokia servers immediately.

Fundamentally, I didn’t like this arrangement – this means that you need to turn over your email account password to Nokia to enable them to access your email account. As described by another blogger, this seems like one big man-in-the-middle attack. However, I tested the service.

While the email was regularly checked by the Nokia server, I found that push times could vary – often, email was pushed out immediately and the software on the phone was quite slick and integrated well with the homescreen. I didn’t like that the homescreen integration showed the subjects of the latest three emails in your inbox – I’d rather just have had a simple unread mail count. Nokia Messaging also supports full html emails. Other than that, the software was very polished and felt “premium” although the bottom line in a compose window always hung half off the bottom of the screen when I was typing a long email, making it difficult to read exactly what I had typed. Which was irritating.

Despite the occasional service glitch (and slow to receive email), I found Nokia Email worked well. The fact that it is currently free “on a trial basis” is a worry, and as I said, I was not comfortable with handing out my password to Nokia so I felt that this wasn’t the correct email solution for me.

ProfiMail ($27.99)

ProfiMail is a POP/IMAP client for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices that offers IMAP Idle functionality. This means that while it isn’t strictly “push” email, it only connects to the mail server at regular intervals, and any email received between these times is “pushed” out to your phone as required. It is highly configurable to do what you need it to, and it integrates its address book with the phone, giving you access to any email addresses you have stored. ProfiMail also flashes the LED and displays an on-screen notification when new email is received.

For my usage, I’ve found it very easy to launch and check email at individual times where necessary, and it’s also possible to leave the program running in the background for as long as you like, either checking at regular intervals, or running in “push” mode (IMAP Idle – I know it’s not true push, but it works). ProfiMail also has a number of visual styles and colours to choose from, and I’ve had absolutely no problems getting it to work. It supports full html email and attachment support including Word documents etc. Admittedly, it is a little expensive at $27.99, but it’s available at handago.com which often runs discount promotions – either sign up for their email newsletter or search for a discount code online and you could quite easily save around 25% of this cost.

Summary

In summary, if you need push email but don’t want to pay for it and you are a light user, Gmail / Google Apps push with Nokia Mail For Exchange is actually a good enough solution. The interface is clunky, and if you’re a heavy user, I have no doubt that this won’t be good enough however.

Nokia Messaging is a good solution, but security concerns would certainly rule this out for corporate use.

The Gmail Java App is very good and I would recommend it. Again, this should be more suited to the light user, or if you simply use your mobile to read email rather than to compose long replies.

In my opinion, the hands-down winner of this test is ProfiMail. It is highly configurable, supports IMAP Idle, and is well suited to the heavy email user. I agree that it is expensive, but it is also worth the extra.

Note: Any push email system requires your phone to be constantly connected to your data network. This means that you could run up increased data charges, and will absolutely result in a reduction in the battery life of your device.

Did you find this helpful? Can you suggest any other email solutions for your E71 or other Symbian device? Please feel free to use the comments section below.

A screenshot of the Here and Now weather forecast

I was browsing the Nokia Beta Labs site today and found an excellent little weather application called Here and Now. Here and Now uses your E71′s GPS to determine your current location, then gives you an overview of the forecast weather for that location. It’s surprisingly handy, especially if you’re on the go, and saves a lot of time browsing the web on the E71′s browser and trying to decide what the nearest town is for a forecast!

Here and Now also offers news on any public events for the area you are in – this is handy if you’re holidaying in a place and looking for ideas of things to see and do, but the accuracy can be a bit off (ie. a number of events are not listed) and this part is really just a novelty. As far as I’m concerned, this app is all about the weather forecast which I genuinely find useful.

Here and Now is available from http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/here-and-now or as a direct download link to your E71 via the following barcode:

* To use the above barcode on your Nokia E71, hit MENU > TOOLS > BARCODE > SCAN CODE then hold the camera up to the barcode. You’ll be given the direct link to the .SIS installer file, and all you have to do is select “open link” to start downloading.

Free upgrade to Quickoffice 6 on the Nokia E71

Nice surprises don’t come along too often, but as a Nokia E71 owner (or an owner of any Nokia E series device for that matter), you can now get a free upgrade to Quickoffice 6. This update adds support for MS Office 2007 documents along with other general performance increases.

To get your free upgrade is very simple – open Quickoffice (usually via MENU > OFFICE > QUICKOFFICE), select UPDATES & UPGRADES from the Quickoffice menu and then select “Quickoffice 6 – free for Nokia Eseries). The application will download to your handset and install – all you’re asked to provide is an email address to register.

I found the upgrade very simple and had no problems at all. If you don’t have a data plan on your mobile phone contract, you should be aware that the download is over 1Mb in size, so Wi-Fi may be the best option to download it.

PS: I found the original story here and thought I’d pass it on!

I originally found the link to Free iSMS via the E71 Blog when it was at version 1.01. It has now been updated to 1.03, and this fixes the stability and a few general issues with the software. I’ve been extremely impressed with how the new version works and I couldn’t be without this great app.

You can download Free iSMS 1.03 from Nokia Addict but please be aware that this app is unsigned.  This means that you have to sign it before you’ll be able to install it on your E71 – don’t worry though, this is an easy process and it doesn’t involve any hacking of the E71.  A full and excellent tutorial showing you how to self-sign apps is available here.

Bsically, you will need to register with a website and request a certificate – unfortunately for the impatient amongst you (and I’m including myself in that category!), it takes around 24 hours for you to get the signing certificate. You then need to install a free program, download your signing certificate, link them up and point them at the unsigned Free iSMS .sisx installer file and click “SignSis” – it really is as simple as that.  The signing certificate can be used as many times as you want, so you’ll be able to sign other applications or new versions of Free iSMS as they’re released.

Any problems or issues? Drop a comment below and I’ll try to help out.

The before shot

I took the following image before updating my E71 firmware, so this used the 210.21.006 release. I tried to be helpful and put out a watch, cigar case and an empty Diet Coke bottle on my mouse mat to give an idea of detail, and before I took the image, I hit “T” to focus on the silver band of the bottle. Here are the results:

Image taken before the firmware upgrade - click for full, un-edited resolution

As you can see, there is a fair amount of blurring and a lack of detail – a lot of noise is present, especially on the wall and door in the background. If you zoom in, the watch face is not easily read.

The After Shot

I upgraded the firmware (which involved installing an updated version of Nokia Software Updater, backing up my device in Nokia PC Suite, downloading the 108.4Mb Firmware file, installing it then restoring my data) which took around an hour all-in (see the watch face), and then took another photo of the same “scene”. The results are shown below:

Image taken after the upgrade to 300.21.012 firmware. Click for full-resolution, un-edited image.

While the angle of the shot isn’t exactly the same, the camera was again focused on the silver label of the Diet Coke bottle using the “T” shortcut. If you zoom in, it’s clear that there is less noise in the background and the image appears to be much sharper. You can read the text on the cigar tube and the watch face is far clearer when you zoom in compared to the previous image. The lighting is exactly the same as in the previous image too – a desk lamp (giving off a slightly orange-tinted light) is on the desk above, and natural light is coming in a window opposite the desk. On the basis of these photos, I’d say that the imaging from the camera is slightly improved, but it doesn’t show anywhere near such a strong improvement as in the cans of Coke in this test. I’ll put a disclaimer up and say that there may be camera shake etc involved in the above since I didn’t use a tripod, so it’s up to you as to how many pinches of salt you take with this test. But I’m going to say that I’m pleased with the resulting apparent quality increase.

General update issues

Generally, the update has been a positive experience for me. I’ve noted that another bug has been fixed (you can now mute an alarm when the phone is off and the snooze will actually work) and the image quality increase is a bonus. It would also appear to be worthwhile for the security and stability fixes for the web browser and the phone software generally. I didn’t have any problems with the GPS, language or other settings.

However (and this is always the case with an E71 Firmware Upgrade), all the data was lost on my phone. No biggie, I backed it up with PC Suite before I started, but I did have to reinstall a load of my applications including Nokia Messaging, Psiloc World Traveler, Birdstep SmartConnect and Free iSMS to name only a few. It’s something I was expecting to have to do, but it’s a major problem if you don’t have access to the original install files. Before you go ahead with the update, make sure you have copies of everything that you consider to be critical to your use of the E71 (for me, this is SmartConnect and Free iSMS).

I like to keep my phone as up-to-date as possible, but if you’re nervous about performing the update yourself, always remember that Nokia will update your software for you free of charge if your phone is under warranty – just take it to your local care centre and have a chat with them about it.

The Fissure premium theme on a Nokia E71

This theme is great – it has transparencies on the selection boxes and dialogue boxes, and it really feels like a truly “complete” theme. The icon package used is great, and I can’t find fault with it. Full details and several more screenshots are available here.

The difference between the Fissure theme and the other tehkSeven themes I’ve highlighted is that Fissure is a premium theme, so it’s not free. It is, however, a total bargain at only 2 euros (£1.75 GBP when I bought it and this includes the extortionate PayPal foreign currency fees!) I can’t recommend it enough, and I’m sure that like me, you’ll not grudge the small amount of money for such a great theme.

I fully believe in supporting developers like tehkSeven who spend a great amount of time to make themes for people like me who don’t have the artistic talent, knowledge or time to do it ourselves. He’s given away a number of great themes for free, so I have no problem in paying for one every now and again. Can you believe that on his announcement thread for Fissure, someone posted saying that he was going to buy the theme and then distribute it for free so tehk didn’t make any money from it!?!?

Go on people. Show your support.

The Nokia Photo Browser App

One of the big drawbacks of the Nokia E71 is its poor ability to handle lots of photos. When I first got the phone, I transferred around a thousand photos from old phones etc – it became quickly clear that it was very difficult (and pretty slow) to browse and find photos that were taken some time ago. Luckily, Nokia Beta Labs has come up with a Photo Browser application.

The Photo Browser allows you to preview, and quickly flick through thumbnails of your photos, and allows you to open them up full-screen to show them to friends. All you have to do is install the Photo Browser application on your phone, launch it (you’ll need to give it a few minutes to index all of your photos the first time you run it) and you’re free to browse your images easily and quickly.

Full information and the download can be found at Nokia Beta Labs. You may also notice an excellent little link on Nokia’s Photo Browser page – “barcode link to this page”.  If you select this, you’ll be given the image of a barcode on your screen – on your E71, go to MENU > TOOLS > BARCODE READER and select SCAN CODE. Show the barcode to your camera and it’ll give you the direct link to the download page on your phone – this is great and saves you spending time typing in a long link.

For some, this may seem like old news since the Photo Browser was actually released back in March. However, what you may not know is that Nokia are constantly updating their products in the Beta Labs, so the Photo Browser software was last updated on 15 June 2009 (at time of writing), so make sure you’re running the latest and best version of this great utility.

The Touch (Zen) theme from tehkSeven

The Touch theme is a dark theme with some intricate icons – available with your choice of Ovi, Seven or Standard icon types. It has obviously been painstakingly put together, and the results are an excellent theme. It’s easy to install – simply download the .sis to your computer and install it via PC Suite, or open the .sis file with your phone and it will add it for you.

tehkSeven's free Prestige (Solace) theme

tehkSeven’s Prestige Solace theme is arguably my favourite free theme for the Nokia E71. As with all tehkSeven’s work, it has been crafted carefully and the result is another smooth, great looking theme than adds a bit of class to your device. Why not download it and give it a try?

The Nokia E71 Smartphone

So I recently bought myself a Nokia E71 – the first phone that I’ve actually “wanted” for quite some time. My initial impressions are generally excellent and I’ve enjoyed making good use of it, so I thought I’d put together a review of my experience with the handset. I’ve had it for just over a month, so the experience I’ve had with it will hopefully help you make a decision about the phone if you’re interested.

The Looks
Firstly, the looks. It’s the best looking business phone by far – IMO it looks much tidier than the qwerty Blackberry offerings that are available, most likely to do with how thin the phone is. If you lay it flat on a surface, the screen sits slightly higher than the width of a plastic CD case off the surface. The phone feels thinner than this though, since the camera housing protrudes from the back slightly. The metal battery cover is very nice to touch, although it does get badly fingerprinted with use and this appears to be unavoidable.
From a purely operational point of view, the phone is going to have to last at least 18 months – you therefore don’t want it to look scratched or generally worn. I invested in an Invisible Shield for the screen of mine and I was quite happy to pay a few dollars for peace of mind. Generally, the phone doesn’t seem to be too scratch prone, but the chromed plate on the front where the microphone is does seem to mark. As I’ve said, I’ve had my E71 for just over a month and there are light scratch marks. The metal back, camera lens and sides don’t seem to have marked at all however, so I don’t feel that Full Body protection from the likes of the Invisible Shield is necessary, but if you think that light scratches on the microphone plate might bother you, then I’d recommend buying an Invisible Shield and only covering the screen and plate.

The phone comes with a plastic case to keep it scratch free, however I was extremely disappointed in the one I got. It seems to be made from some kind of pressed plastic with a thin fabric material covering on the inside. Along the opening edge of my case, there is a sharp “tag” hanging off the plastic and I simply didn’t use it because I thought it would scratch the phone. My impression of the case is not good – it’s cheap, plastic and feels pretty crappy. If you think you’re getting a nice case to go with it, think again. If you must have a case with your E71, you’ll need to buy one separately.

As a phone
As a phone, I’ve found the E71 pretty easy to use. The menus and operations you need to go through are pretty straightforward, and the contacts search is extremely useful. The small numeric buttons on the keyboard are surprisingly simple to use, and it doesn’t take too long to get used to the zero, * and # keys being to the right hand side of the rest of the keypad. The raised dot on the 5 key is very useful.
Call quality seems to be excellent, and the range of volumes both in-call and of the ringer are good. The one disappointing thing about it is that the vibration alert seems pretty weak – in silent mode, the phone only vibrates once so on the move it can be easy to miss an incoming SMS message or email.

Thanks to the qwerty keyboard, text messaging is a breeze and you can definitely type messages faster than on a standard phone with predictive text. The problem with this is that you get used to sending out long emails, and you can type so quickly that you’ll end up sending way more multi-part SMS messages than you used to! The predictive messaging is subject to a few irritations though…

Predictive messaging
You have an option to use predictive messaging that essentially auto-corrects some spelling errors, or predicts what you’re about to type and allows you to accept the longer word after typing in a few characters. This isn’t perfect thought, and I’ve found a number of limitations:
Firstly, as soon as you type a long word, it’s remembered forever. I typed something like “Holier-than-thou” once (I din’t actually use this, but can’t remember the exact phrase) and now every time I start typing “Hol”, I am offered that as opposed to something sensible like “Holiday” or “Holding” or, in fact, any of these. It’s a small issue since you can select another word from the up/down menu, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to get rid of words you no longer want to be offered.

Secondly, the auto-correct function can’t deal with commas. By far the most common error I make when typing something is to press “,” instead of “m” – when you do that, the predictive text stops working and moves on to the next word, meaning you need to go back and fix it yourself. Yes, I know it’s a minor issue, but it seems to be all that I end up correcting these days!
On the plus side though, it’s extremely easy to teach the E71 a word. Simply type it in, and if it’s trying to correct it when you don’t want it to, press up on the D-Pad and it’s learned. It’s also very good at picking up small errors, and it speeds up typing generally, so I’d certainly recommend that you leave it switched on rather than off.

I should also add at this point that I own an iPod Touch, and absolutely without a doubt, I find it far easier to type on the Nokia E71. On devices such as the Touch and the iPhone, it’s very easy to accidentally push extra buttons or have “fat-finger syndrome” and simply miss your keys. The E71 keyboard is well laid out, and the keys are shaped in such a way as to be easy to feel and type on despite being small. Having physical keys to touch is and always will be ultimately preferable to use than a touch screen. In my opinion anyway.
As an email / communications device

The E71 is excellent at email and messaging. The built-in email client is very easy to use, and it automatically configures itself to accounts such as Gmail (or Google Apps like I use). I’ve not had any problems getting this to work and being able to receive and send email so easily on the move is a big plus. Despite what a lot of people seem to suggest, the E71 supports push email either through its Mail for Exchange app or using the Nokia Email service. I’m quite happy retrieving my email using IMAP though.

The built-in mail client doesn’t directly support html, although you can open any html attachments from an email quite easily in the web browser (you just click on the attachment in mail and it opens for you). The only issue I’ve had with the email client is that it doesn’t always mark your email as read on the server when you open it on your device. Again, this isn’t a big issue, and it doesn’t happen all the time. But it would be nice for that to be fixed.

In terms of retrieving your email, you have two options: Auto Retrieve and Mail Notifications.
Auto Retrieve automatically connects to your mailbox even if the mail app is closed, downloads all your new emails and notifies you via a tone / vibration that you have new email. This is extremely useful, and you can even configure it to automatically check on certain days and you can change the interval between checks. Again, slightly annoying, but you can have a range of times from 5 minutes to 6 hours – there seems to be a missing magic number in there though, because you can choose 30 mins or 2 hours, but nothing in between. I would’ve liked it to check once an hour…

Email Notifications: As far as I can tell (and I say this because the documentation in the manual on this feature is “minimal” to be kind), the notifications simply alert you if you receive a new email – the phone will play a tone and / or vibrate depending on the profile you are using. However, I believe you need to have your email account open in the background and be constantly connected to the web. Personally, I don’t really see the point unless you have push email enabled. Even then, the hit on the battery life would probably not be worth it.
As a multimedia device

The Nokia E71 is not a multimedia device. If that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere. The built-in web browser is ok – it displays html reasonably well, and you can even watch flash videos on the likes of youtube. It has its limitations though, and when loading a particularly large / multimedia rich website, it’s prone to simply closing. For casual web-browsing, checking train and bus times, reading the news etc, it’s absolutely fine. It should be noted, however, that the iPhone web browser is far superior – it’s simply no comparison, nor do I see the E71’s browser even coming close. But I’m comfortable with that.

The camera
Well, it’s not good. Images it takes are grainy, and when you get them onto your computer you would be fantastically surprised they were from a 3.2 megapixel camera. In very good light conditions, it does the job, but if you’re out on a night out, indoors etc, the results are pretty woeful. I would say, however, that this is comparable to several devices in the same league as the E71.
The phone displays videos via Real Player without any problems (although the lack of support for .wmv files is both surprising and mildly annoying) and you can view photos just fine. Music playback isn’t fantastic, but it’s functional. The lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack makes it a poor choice if you want to use your phone for listening to music on the move though. It does offer some good features on the music front though – online radio and an FM tuner. For casual listening with the supplied Nokia hands-free it’s fine.
The 3G HSDPA connection is superbly fast (when you’re within a coverage area) and I never fail to be impressed with the speed when on the move.

GPS
The GPS system (A-GPS, Assisted GPS) is excellent and I’ve found it to be quick and accurate at locating the position. You can also use it to calculate your speed, average speed, trip distance etc, so it can provide hours of fun on the train or on a long car journey! I didn’t get a trial of route directions with my Nokia Maps installation, but I’ve found that much the same functionality (without audible turn-by-turn directions) can be found with Google’s Maps app.

Syncing your data
I found it a bit frustrating that unless you install a load of third party apps and register on various websites, it’s not possible to sync your calendar to the likes of Google Calendar (or Google Apps Calendar). It is possible (see instructions at E71 Fanatics) but I felt that it was a bit too much like effort. In the end, I registered with Nokia’s free Ovi service which lets you sync your E71 Calendar, Contacts, To-Do lists etc with an online Ovi account over-the-air. You can’t export the data from Ovi however, so it pretty much serves as a backup rather than a working calendar. It is good though, and I’ve not had any problems with the service.

Apps
There are a number of apps available for free via the “Download!” option in the E71’s menu (and more recently, but arguably less successfully, via the Ovi Store). I’ve tried a number of apps, but there is only one that I think is absolutely worth having: BirdStep SmartConnect.

This app allows you to set up a list and hierarchy of your connection access points which it will cycle through until it finds an available connection. This means that you can make your phone automatically detect if you are within Wi-Fi range of a known network, and if you are, it will connect you via Wi-Fi. If not, you’ll be connected via your mobile  network. You can then set SmartConnect as your default access point for all your programs (such as Mail, Web Browser etc) and you’ll be automatically connected to the best available network without being asked how you want to connect every time. It’s brilliant.

There is an app that I would not recommend – Skyfire browser. I read on a number of sites that it was excellent, it handled flash well etc, but I found it to be quite unstable and I wasn’t keen on the terms and conditions that basically stated if you used their browser, you had no right to privacy whatsoever.

The “Download!” menu is full of apps that sound like a good idea, but unfortunately many of them require you to register to use them before you can even try them out. This isn’t a limitation of the E71 of course, it’s the app store that Nokia have implemented.

The Verdict
I love my E71. It has its pros and cons, but generally the wide range of capabilities as a phone, email and messaging device, basic web browser and GPS system are superb. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is in the market for this kind of handset.