Review: Nokia's E70 is a clever, connective smart phone

Computerworld - The Nokia E70 is a technically adept smart phone, but it's most unique characteristic might well be its gullwing keyboard. Initially, the phone looks like a typical "candy bar" phone, but half the keyboard slides out to one side of the screen and the other half slides out the other way, making the device look, very roughly, like a bird on the wing.

But beyond this surprisingly useful feature, the Nokia E70 is a very full-featured device that will appeal to both individual and business users. In particular, it is one of the most connective phones I've seen, with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular data support.

The technical side

This is a phone for GSM-based cellular networks in the 850-, 1800- and 1900-MHz band of spectrum, which means Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S. Interestingly, neither one is offering this phone, but you can buy an unlocked version for under $400.

Nokia's E70

The E70 is based on the latest update of the Symbian 60 platform, which is a variant of Symbian OS 9, the most widely used smart phone in the world. As always, I found the Symbian interface easy, even pleasant, to navigate. While the screen is physically smaller than those found on many other smart phones, it sports a 16-million-color display of 352-by-416-pixel resolution, ensuring that even the smaller screen is able to show a substantial amount of information.

In addition to its support for slower cellular data systems, the device also has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support. It comes with a host of e-mail options, ranging from BlackBerry Connect to GoodLink, as well as POP and IMAP support.

Besides software for reading Adobe Acrobat PDF files and editing Microsoft Office documents, the device comes with wireless presenter software that enables you to connect the handset to a projector to give a PowerPoint presentation.

As a phone, the E70 has all the features you'd expect in a high-end device, including speaker phone and voice dial capabilities, call waiting, conference calling and Caller ID. It also is media-savvy, with a built-in two megapixel camera and playback support for 3GPP h.263 video, and adaptive multirate audio.

Test drive

This device was seamless to use from minute to minute. Besides the simple Symbian interface, voice quality was excellent and I encountered no operating system lockups, not a trivial benefit these days as devices and mobile platforms become more complex. Navigating with the built-in joystick nub takes just a bit of getting used to but overall it is quite accurate and responsive.