Customer Reviews

Nokia E61 Unlocked Smartphone with International 3G, Wi-Fi, MP3/Video Player, MiniSD Slot--U.S. Version with Warranty (Silver)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nokia is making two versions of this phone, the E61 and E62. The only difference is that the E61 is capable of wireless LAN and CDMA connectivity, whereas the E62 is not. Otherwise, they are exactly the same.

Now, on to the review. I've been through several cell phones from different manufacturers. My very first cell phone was a Nokia (and at 8 years old, still would make a great phone today!). I have since tried Motorola, Samsung, and Sony-Ericsson (I consider the latter the worst of the bunch). My last phone was a Nokia 6600 and when I wanted to upgrade, I tried the latest-and-greatest Samsung t-809. I was sorely disappointed in that purchase, which was promptly returned (you can read my review about it on Amazon), and I started looking for phones that were not (at the time) being sold directly in the US. The Nokia E61 was my savior - the E61 is the most PERFECT phone I have ever used.

Why did I like it? Number one - it's a NOKIA. I think Nokia has perfected the user interface. If you've owned a Nokia before, your transition will be easy because many things are carried over. You will also like the easy transfer of everything from your old Nokia to your new one (go to the nokiaUSA website and search for "phone-to-phone transfer"). The way the phone book is setup is better all others. Nokias, in general, all use the same adapter.

Number two - it's a smartphone. That means you can upgrade the software, you can download new applications, you can personalize with themes.

Number three - it is QUAD band. I travel a lot and I need this feature. In general, two frequency bands are used by GSM services in the US (850 and 1900). Two different frequency bands are used by GSM services elsewhere in the world (900 and 1800). A phone that works in one frequency band unfortunately can not also work in the frequency band next to it unless added as a specific extra frequency band. Ideally, you'd want a phone that can work on all four bands - commonly called a quad-band phone. But these are still rare and expensive. If choosing a tri-band phone as a second best choice, be careful which three bands your phone has. In the US, many rural areas are served with the 850 band (because the signal travels further). Some tri-band phones are 900/1800/1900 and people wonder why they get poor service in some cities (mostly rural) in the US!

Number four - all connectivity options are available. WiFi, EDGE, GPRS, and 3G. Sign up for a data plan with your provider (cheapest with T-Mobile) and you can surf the net at about 128kbps anywhere there's cell service! Or you can use your Wifi network to surf for free wherever there's a wireless g signal. You can even use the WiFi feature to use this phone with a VOIP provider (such as Vonage). Lots about this over at HowardForums. And this is the particular feature that is scaring the US telecoms - hence the lack of WiFi in the US-destined E62 version. 3G is not available in the US, but is all the rage in Japan (blazingly fast downloads - even enough for VIDEOS!). The E61 also supports CDMA connectivity, although this is absent in the E62. That really won't affect US GSM users much - as far as I know.

Number five - push email. This means you can set it up like a BlackBerry and have your E61 notify you everytime you get an email. The software provided with the phone makes this easy. If you need more help, just search for "E61 forum" - lots of helpful people.

Number six - NO CAMERA. This for me is an advantage. I never used any of my prior cell phone cameras. Their presence in a phone only serves to make it more bulky and more expensive. Eventhough there is no camera, you can still upload pictures to use for wallpaper or as picture caller-ID - use bluetooth or WiFi.

More good stuff;
7. Bluetooth works great.
8. Screen looks good, even in daylight. It doesn't have as high a resolution as the latest Palm Treo, but believe me, 65K is more than enough.
9. You can add more memory with a miniSD card - you don't have to remove the battery to change cards. I've already used a 1GB Kingston miniSD card and it worked fine.
10. The charger it uses (which works 100-240V) uses a smaller plug than all other previous Nokias, but the E61 comes with a short adapter that allows you to use your old charger! I wish Sony and Samsung would remember this!
11. The buttons are nicely configured and easy to type with (not too small, not too flat - just right). Someone will invariably write a review saying the phone is too wide. I don't understand why people will do this? It is a business phone with a full keyboard layout - what do you expect? If you don't need the full keyboard, then don't get this phone. IT is definitely thinner than you'd expect though.
12. Battery life is pretty good. When I use it as a phone, I can go about three days without recharging. Using wireless services can drop the battery life pretty quick. In general, I charge it every other night.
13. Case is brushed aluminum with a magnesium-alloy back. Fingerprints will not show like they do on the shiny Samsung t-809. Feels sturdy in the hand too. I wouldn't drop it, though, because the screen is pretty big.
14. Speakerphone works nicely. Loud. Single button switchover to speakerphone while on a call (I don't know what Samsung was thnking hiding it under a menu)
15. You can use it as an MP3 player and even assign MP3s as ringtones. You will want to truncate your MP3s to 20 seconds or less though because it will only play that much before looping. Having more would be a waste of memory - unless you still want to keep the song so you can listen to the whol ething using the media player (included in the software package).

Anyway, all that being said, there are a few things that aren't "perfect". Using Wifi is slower than expected. While connected to a "g" network, you don't get speeds higher than dial-up. Connect using EDGE though, and you're good to go (but that requires a data plan with the service provider). Also, this phone uses Symbian software - that's great BUT you will not be able to use the readily available Palm or WinCE applications. To sync it with my Outlook at work, I had to call the computer department to give me privileges to install the special Nokia syncing software. It works great, but just a little hassle.

Also, you will find it difficult to use phone numbers that are based on letters, ie 1-800-CALL-ME (or whatever). This is a keyboard layout, so the letters are in QWERTY fashion, and the numbers keys just take up the center spots. Not a big deal for me, and I'm sure there's software available (or soon will be) to use an onscreen guide. That's the beauty of this being a smartphone!

This is a business phone, so don't expect a lot of games. It came preinstalled with some Golf game. No Snake! Part of the reason I love Nokias is because of the snake game. I'll get around to downloading it sooner or later.

Another thing (which Noia has already addressed in more advanced phones such as the priced-like-a-computer N91) is that there is no input for regular headsets. This means that if you want to listen to MP3s, then you'll have to use the single-ear headset included with this phone. They might have a double-ear (stereo) headset available once the phone gets more popular).

All in all, I think this is a great phone. It gives me almost everything I want and none of what I don't want. I wish it could accept standard headsets. It's a keeper!

I hope this review has been helpful.

Looking for a smartphone to replace my Motorola L7 and Palm V combination, I bought this phone because it had (1) WiFi, (2) a QWERTY keyboard, and (3) all the good cellphone features I appreciate from Nokia (battery life, call quality, etc.). First, let me say that I had to return it because of a problem with my home electricity - it seems that the european multi-voltage charger couldn't generate enough voltage off my low 109VAC to charge the phone. This has been reported by some others, but is apparently pretty rare. Unfortunately, it was a deal-breaker for me. Strangely enough, the phone did the initial charge fine, but would never charge again.

But in the 4 days that I used the phone, I was quite impressed. It really is an outstanding product, and the only thing else on the market that has everything this has (and more, in fact) is the HP iPaq 69xx, which is too new to know much about. I would generally agree with the glowing reviews already written, so I won't repeat everything they've said - it's pretty much true. But coming from a Palm PDA experience, I was somewhat disappointed by the PDA capabilities of this phone.

For example, there is no search capability! OK, the File Manager allows you to search material that's under its control, but that doesn't include the phone's contacts, notes, and calendar/ToDo apps - the very things you need to search! There's a decent search application from sept-solutions.de, but it can't search the notes - a serious limitation for me.

Next, the sync can't use many of the phone number fields from Outlook. For example, I sync'ed my Palm to Outlook, and many entries use the "Main" phone number. Outlook got these fine, but the Nokia PC Suite couldn't sync them to the phone. A real nuisance. A simple remapping setting in sync could eventually solve this, but for now, I'm out of luck.

Next, there are no categories for any of the phone's applications. The very nice AquaCalendar 3rd party application allows you to assign categories to calendar items (including tasks), but these aren't transfered in a sync with Outlook. Personally, I can't see how anyone could survive without categories for tasks, notes, and contacts (not to mention calendar, but Palm doesn't have that, either). The E61 has contact groups that are essentially categories, but these don't seem to get transfered in a sync.

Another problem I never found a solution for is that my Palm has several hundred items in the ToDo list, all undated. Outlook has undated tasks, but it seems the E61 does not - all were assigned to the day I sync'ed. And there were too many for the calendar app to handle without getting memory full. So basically no way for me to transfer my ToDo list!

Yet another problem is that you can't attach notes to calendar, task, or contact entries. This is a deal-breaker for me. AquaCalendar does allow notes ("descriptions") on some calendar entries, but it's not nearly as useful as what's on Palm.

Another problem is that when you want to change the date of a calendar entry, or simply go to a date that's a couple of months away, you don't get a nice month view the way you do in the Palm's calendar app. It's quite a nuisance to have to scroll or guess and correct when going to or setting a date that's far in the future.

Finally, while this is not another show-stopper for me, I use PocketQuicken on my Palm. This outstanding app is also available on Windows phones, so should work on the iPaq, but I haven't found anything this good on Symbian or J2ME platforms. A very nice free app, JabpLite, seems like it would do the trick, but I've never managed to get it to read QIFs from Quicken other than by very slow bluetooth file transfer.

In summary, if you want a truly outstanding smartphone (without a camera), the E61 could easily be your best choice. But if you're expecting the usability of a Palm-based device, you'd best look elsewhere. The Treos might make a good choice, but they don't have WiFi (yet), and as a phone, they can't touch the Nokia. As for the iPaq, it might do the trick, but it's somewhat larger than the Nokia. Motorola Q? Nice, but also no WiFi. I haven't been able to check out everything from HTC, yet, but the last time I looked, they didn't have everything I was looking for. The perfect phone still doesn't exist, but the E61 sure has raised the bar.

This is my first smartphone, and my expectations were high, that is why I give it a 3 stars. It does have a good performance, and now that I am used to it I cannot live without it (but I would switch to a phone that would solve the "bugs").
Problems:
1. there is no way to connect to a wifi by itself, and then use all applications as you like (web, e-mail, etc). You have to connect to a wifi using an application.
2. The phone freezes very often, and as there is no ctrl-alt-del and not even the on-off button will work, I have to remove the battery and then restart the phone.
3. Not a lot of software available for Symbian OS.
4. For those that are used to Palm OS, the basic applications are sub-standard

Maybe next version of it will solve some of these problems.

First off the bat, when it comes to the GSM wireless space, nobody does better than the Nokia cell phones. Voice reception is great and is always the best in class (as all other Nokia phones that I have experienced do!); nothing betters it -- iphone, Motorola, Sony Ericsson etc.

Most would have read all the good things about it in the other reviews and they're not lying. But let's have a closer look at the "darker underbelly" of this monster (so to speak)...

MP3 MEDIA PLAYER:
As we all know, this phone plays MP3s and accepts a miniSD Card. So here I am brandishing my 1GB miniSD card all ready for my first MP3 cell phone dreaming of carrying hundreds of songs in my pocket wherever I go ... Perish the thought! Around the time I upload 80 or more songs, the phone starts going crazy; it freezes when you try to access the media player to play the songs, the music library's playlist keeps having amnesia every now and then that you need to keep telling it to update the playlist. And how do you ask it to scan the storage to update the playlist ... you need to go through FOUR layers of menu to reach "update music library". And every day or two you find that the media player's playlist has gone back to either 0 or 7 songs in its playlist.
At 80 songs, it takes forever (ok, about 20 minutes --- but why in the world would you need 20 minutes to update a playlist???) to update its library. The best I could manage was a 110 tracks playlist that went with me for about a week ... and that too it would "happily" turn up with only about 95 of them. I seriously wonder *WHO* wrote the software ... and this is the latest version of the OS that I downloaded from the Nokia website.
Let's just forget about carrying video around.

PICTURE GALLERY:
Upload any large picture about 150KB in size and you are going to have a major problem if you try to access the "Gallery" the phone freezes for at least 5 minutes and you can even get back to the main screen even after pressing the red "hang-up" button. The solution --- wait out the 5 minutes, or press the "magic button" to shut down the phone and restart ... wait this sounds so familiar (CTRL+ALT+DELETE anyone?) and it's not even MS-Windows!

USER INTERFACE RESPONSIVENESS:
The interface is very sluggish to say the least. Access "Notes" and it takes at least a good 1 sec for it open up the notes application. I know you must be saying "1 sec? What's so bad about that superman?" The point is for such a light weight application (and after using any other phone) you expect these things to be instantaneous --- a newbie may think he/she didn't press the button and might even press it harder a second time (I did it quite a few times) ... but I can live with that ! (Can't we all?)

THE MUCH TOUTED SKYPE SUPPORT:
It's over hyped and nothing like it leads you to believe! You don't save any money anyway as it doesn't support VOIP on skype over Wifi. All it allows is for you to initiate a skype call from your computer to your cell phone if you want to make a long distance call through your cell using skype (most probably international since most cell phones have domestic long distance anyways) --- either ways you don't save any money as you spend airtime on receiving the skype call (if it's out of the weekend/night time-band) and you don't need it if it's weekend/nights as you get the free airtime anyways! Besides, you need to have a "skype-out" account which entails a $30 annual subscription fee.

I haven't tried the other VOIP features as it's a paid subscription service.

1-800-DIAL-A-WORD:
The ugly side of the QWERTY keyboard is that it's hard to dial a number listed as 1-800-ACME-HELP since the letters are all set differently. Ergo, you will always need the numeric version or you'll have to work it out yourself which is not such a great thing if you're in a hurry or have frequent attacks of brain-fade.

WISH:
I wish it had support for stereo Bluetooth headphones.

CONCLUSION:
Why do I stick with it, and why 3 stars? Because it does a very good job as a cell phone, its Wifi support is decent and nothing to complain about, it's got a full browser (with RealPlayer support for limited YouTube usage), has full JavaScript support instead of a wimpy WML browser, and the usual battery recharge is about once every 3 to 4 days unless you're in love or terribly home-sick --- then you might have to recharge every single day but that would be the least of your problem once you get your monthly statement (but I digress!).

well I got the phone after sticking with a Motorola V710 for about a year, the phone arrived without a hitch. [...].

one concern I had about the phone was the following several people in the forums and even here in amazon where complaining about the phone not charging properly this honestly had me worried I was risking quite a large sum of money for the product, after doing some hard and honest research I found out what the issue is, if you currently have another motorola phone that one has it's own power adapter, the e61 uses a smaller sized tip adapter for power and brings an adapter for you to use your old power adapter please DONT do this, since the newer phone the e61 uses a bit more power to get charged and the older charges dont provide enought power (juice) for this. Now not everything is lost don't go out buying a separate adapter the nokia e61 also includes the correct type of adapter for your phone and the one I bought from amazon brought me a converter for my wall outlet, this is due to the fact that this phone is from europe and has the funky 2 rounded prong connector, you can swing by your local radioschack and get an adapter for this and it would work without a hitch. also if you are into getting all your original accesories you can purchase the Nokia AC-4U Travel Charger that works great for the phone. My phone gives me about 4 to 5 days of charge depending on the use a lot and read a LOT more than most Motorola phones I've had.

Highly recommended, Wi-FI works great and there are a lot of great apps out there for it really cheap.

got this phone from MCO for pretty low price
it was 3 branded, and the fw is pretty old (1.x), changed product code to Hong Kong version and update, the phone is alot more stable, however, the symbol layout on keyboard changed, that I have to make a sticky on the back to show the difference (be aware of that if you want to change the language)
the screen is big, and in landscape mode, I am pretty impressed how pleasant when browsing internet with this big screen
the keypad is pretty pleasant to key in message, the joystick is easier to use, email button is also handy for checking email (it supports regular POP and secure US Army IMAP, but it doesn't support GMail IMAP)
reception is kinda weak, in the gym locker room, I can make/receive calls with N73, while E61 shows nothing
thanks to the 1500mA/h battery, the battery time is on par with N73
no cam included may be a plus when using in a high secure precinct (where cam is prohibited), then I just use it instead of N73
like other S60 phones, it can retrive WAP/MMS setting right out of SIM, except you have special setting (I have VPN total internet, that I have to put separate APN setting for net browser, realplayer, and tethering)
bt is version 1.2, which is on the slow side, I get about 500kbps when transferring files, while I got 1200kbps on N73
some special tips: go to tools->application manager->options->settings->software installation, use all (default is signed only, that prevents non-nokia application installation)
conclusion: the phone is pretty low price now, get it if you use messaging alot of use alot of internet on your phone, this won't disappoint you; if you decide to change product code to change language, you have to be aware that the symbol on keyboard will be changed

I got my Nokia E61 two weeks ago . At the beginning it looked complex but soon I realize that is a very helpful tool to manage daily tasks.
It is a smartphone and is difficult to master all the function without
some readings but you have a build-in Tutorial that is very useful.
I enjoy very much this smartphone which is more a small computer than a phone and I recommand it warmly.
Ing. Dragu Stanescu

One of the best phones I have used
Pros: The wi-fi is good, big screen, very good visibility and colour resolution and also the help functions are really great.
Cons: Some downloaded games, freezes the phone and its bulky

While this phone is a bit bulky... I like it's top functionality.
Very easy to sync, bluetooth enabled... Wifi. The built in email manager it's not the best if you use it for Gmail, but Gmail makes available a nice application that solves this issue.

Great phone, but don't buy it here. You'll save a hundred bucks if you order it online directly from Nokia. And free second day shipping.