Jogja Ponsel

Now then, now then. Nokia has flipped. Well, we think so, anyway.

The N71, yet another handset in the N range of multimedia rich phones, is a flip (or clamshell) phone. Nokia doesn’t do these very often – the 3G N90 with the Carl Zeiss camera lens and the non 3G 6131 are the two most recent examples, but they are mere droplets in the vast ocean of Nokia handsets. So we had somewhat baited breath waiting for the N71 to land on our desk.

When we took the N71 out of its box, our first reaction was raised eyebrows. ‘Are you sure this is a clamshell?’ we asked ourselves, and exclaimed, ‘it’s huge!’

As we see it, the plus points for clamshell phones are: they are small and so ideal for tiny pockets; they look cool as they have a smooth opening mechanism and are easy to open one-handed; just as with sliders, you can control a lot of features without opening the handset; and inside there is room for a large screen and a big keyboard.

Nokia does not agree. The N71 is vast – 98.6 mm tall, 51.2 mm wide, and 25.8 thick. At almost 10cm high, it is a rival for Nokia’s solid candybar performer the N70, for example. The size matters because it means you are likely to need two hands to open the flip, and this is particularly annoying because Nokia hasn’t built any spring-loading into the mechanism.

It is also irritating because when you do open the N71 what you find inside is a reasonably small screen. At 2.4 diagonal inches it is actually a pretty good size for a mobile phone screen, but it looks a bit lost in its large surround, and nowhere near fills the available space. And the chunky-fingered, who often like clamshell handsets because they afford space for a larger than usual keyboard will find rather smaller number keys than they might like inside, and a wodge of ‘dead’ space occupied by no keys at all.

While we are carping, let’s talk about build quality. Many phone manufacturers are going for new looks and new ideas. Shiny back and touch sensitivity in the LG K800 Chocolate, un-phonelike looks and controls in the LG U400, smooth lines in Sony Ericsson’s W900i. Nokia has chosen, by comparison, a rather plasticy and low quality feel for the N71. Go figure.

Back to the front for a moment (to coin a phrase). The front screen is pretty small, surrounded by a large frame of shiny silver. It isn’t all that capable. It shows the handset status and the time, and a single button beneath the screen will pause and resume music. But you can’t choose tracks using this button.

Nor can you start the main, 2 megapixel, camera, whose lens sits on the front of the clamshell case, running with the handset closed, which means you are a bit hampered when it comes to shooting quick snaps. We are quite used to seeing front screens on clamshell phones doubling as viewfinders, so not having that option here makes the N71 feel a bit dated.

So, user ergonomics aside, what’s the N71 got going for it?

Well, the music playback quality is great. You’ll need to store tracks on a miniSD card as there is only 10MB of storage built in, but you get a 128MB card with the phone to get you started. And another plus is that while the headset connector to the N71 is Nokia’s Pop-Port, you get a converter to a 3.5mm jack so you can use your own headset if you prefer it to the one Nokia provides.

We like the multimedia key which sits at the very top of the number pad area. Press it and you can quickly get to the music player, FM radio, your photos and the Web.

We also like that infra red is built into the N71. Bluetooth is here too, of course, but we find infra red is ideal for quickly swapping files between two different handsets – much less hassle than using Bluetooth. There is no Wi-Fi, though, something we are starting to see in more and more handsets.

When making video calls using the VGA camera that sits above the screen, you can either hold the N71 in your hand with the clamshell fully open, or open it point where it clicks into a gentle lock at a suitable angle to sit the handset on a desk. It is no problem to switch from the front camera to the back one, so that the person you are calling can easily see what you are looking at rather than your own, er, ugly mug.

And the camera controls, once you’ve got the thing running, are very straightforward. You use the softkeys and the navigation key to access the camera settings, and working your way through them is fast and easy.

A novelty we really like is the range of options for auto shooting a sequence of images. Shooting a sequence – or ‘burst mode’ – is not exactly rare on phones, but in this case you can set the time lapse at intervals between 2 frames a second to one frame every 15 minutes. It’ll carry on shooting for as long as storage memory holds out.

Battery life was a bit of a let down. We listened to music non stop for as long as possible, which turned out to be eight and a half hours. We maxed out the screen brightest and power save settings during this test, and if you minimise them instead you’ll get longer life, but still we’d have liked a bit more from the battery.

We didn’t find the N71 an especially great handset. Hampered by its size it really needs to offer some extraordinary features by way of compensation, and while we like the sequence shooting mode, that isn’t on its own enough.

Source: 3G

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