E-mail phone showdown
They’re both e-mail phones, both have Qwerty keyboards and both support 3G. But the Nokia won hands down. Here’s why.
The E61i is the follow-up to Nokia’s popular E61. The phone software is more or less unchanged but the design of the handset has been improved markedly. It now sports a brushed metal casing and a coloured strip around the front which makes it much more attractive – a big improvement on the E61’s ugly, grey plastic.
The keyboard has been improved, the joystick is less finicky and two new quick keys have been added – one for contacts, the other user-definable. There’s also a 2-megapixel camera, a feature that was absent on the E61. (Nokia will continue selling the E61 as some companies prefer, for security reasons, to supply their employees with handsets that can’t take photographs.)
The E61i is a near-perfect handset but there is one niggling problem with it: like its predecessor, the e-mail application is a little unstable and occasionally shuts down of its own accord.
Also, the E61i does not support HSDPA, a kind of 3G on steroids – perhaps that will come in the next version – but, like its predecessor, it can connect to Wi-Fi networks. That’s great for browsing the Web when in a wireless hotspot or making cheap voice calls on the Internet.
The Samsung i600, on the other hand, has full HSDPA support. Unfortunately, that’s the phone’s only real advantage over the Nokia. The i600, which runs Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, is slightly lighter and smaller than the E61i, but on a device with a full keyboard this is a disadvantage. The Samsung’s keyboard is tiny, and I regularly hit the wrong buttons when composing e-mail.
The i600 also has a noticeably smaller screen, which makes browsing the Web a less pleasant experience. The phone has a bit of a cheap feel to it, too.
So, the E61i is easily the better phone. It is, in fact, one of the finest handsets that Nokia has made. And it’s cheaper than the i600.
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