The forgotten smartphone: Nokia E71 from 2008

March 20, 2022 Luisa Rey

Nokia released the Nokia E71 in 2008; a smartphone with a full keyboard and a nice alternative to the BlackBerry smartphone. A good moment to take a look back at the E71, in this edition of our weekly column ‘The forgotten smartphone’ and ‘The forgotten phone’.

Nokia E71

The Nokia E71 was the successor to the previously released Nokia E61 and E51, and was, as the name indicated, part of the E-series. This series of devices were released in the business segment. The E71 was considered one of the best Nokia smartphones ever released. In 2009 a successor came for this device, in the form of the Nokia E72. Characteristic of this device was the full QWERTY keyboard, which was reminiscent of a BlackBerry. Not only could you quickly type your messages this way, you could also quickly access various options such as the calendar, contacts, mail app or anything else. There was also a navigation key that let you go four ways.

Nokia supplied the E71 with a 2.36 inch display, with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. There was an ARM 11 single-core processor that delivered a computing power of 369MHz. The working memory came to 128MB, while the internal memory of 110MB (fortunately) could be expanded with a memory card. The Nokia smartphone was delivered with Symbian Series 60. There was a special application for editing Word or Excel files, for example. Thanks to the support for GPS and A-GPS, you could navigate using Nokia Maps. Furthermore, the smartphone was equipped with an application with which you could keep track of sports movements.

The device of the Finns had a housing of stainless steel, as we saw with many models in the E-series. In addition, the smartphone was equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera on the back; equipped with autofocus. The back cover of the phone was also made of metal. You could change the 1500 mAh battery of the E71 yourself. The price of the phone was between 350-400 euros.