It's always been a shame that Nokia's E series of
smartphones (as well as the Nokia N series for that matter) rarely make
it to U.S. carriers since they offer great business features in slick designs. However, AT&T customers got good news at CTIA 2009 when the companies announced that the carrier would bring the Nokia E71x to its shelves.
Sharing the same design (though coming in a classic but sexy black color) and similar features as the unlocked Nokia E71, the E71x is an extremely sleek and messaging
smartphone for business users. However, AT&T made an attractive device even more attractive by giving the Nokia E71x a $99.99 (with two-year contract) price tag. It's a great value, especially compared to AT&T's other QWERTY
smartphones, such as the Samsung Epix and RIM BlackBerry Bold, considering what you get and the quality of the phone's design.
As we noted earlier, the Nokia E71x's features are akin to the unlocked version, but it adds a number of AT&T services, including AT&T XpressMail, AT&T Navigator, Yellowpages.com Mobile, and AT&T Music and Video.
We tested the quad-band Nokia E71x in San Francisco using AT&T service and call quality was good. We enjoyed mostly clear audio during our conversations with just some minimal hissing in the background, and we did experience a dropped call. On the other end of the phone call, our friends reported no major problems or complaints. Speakerphone quality was decent with good volume.
The smartphone offers Bluetooth 2.0 with support for a number of profiles, including stereo Bluetooth, file transfer, object push, and dial-up networking. We successfully paired the E71x with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.
In addition to being a quad-band world phone, the Nokia E71x also supports AT&T's 850/1900MHz HSDPA bands. Wi-Fi is also onboard as an alternative if you're out of 3G coverage. The 3.5G speeds made Web browsing fairly painless. CNET's site loaded in about 50 seconds, while ESPN's mobile site came up in 17 seconds, and CNN's mobile site loaded in 18 seconds.
General performance was good with minimal delays. We were also quite pleased with the multimedia experience. Tracks sounded rich even through the phone's speakers; we only wish Nokia had equipped the smartphone with a 3.5mm headset jack so we could plug in our own headphones. Video playback was smoother than other smartphones we've tested, with minimal blurriness and synchronized audio and picture.