Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

We are most definitely BACK this week — back in London after the international shows we’ve been publishing over the last two weeks. The team is in one place. In fact they’re positively beaming with excitement.

In this week’s show:

- We visit the LG Renoir launch and take a look at the handset ( 00:27 )
- We talk to some LG chaps about the Renoir ( 09:23 )
- We chat to some other bloggers at the LG event ( 12:09 )
- We head to Helsinki to hear Rafe Blandford discuss the Samsung Innov8
(The S60 Samsung handset) ( 16:10 )
- James Whatley flies to Las Vegas and brings us his view of the Nokia E71 ( 13:52 )
- We preview the G1 Google Phone (we’re seeing that this coming Wednesday) ( 22:18 )
- And, of course, we’ve got *FREE STUFF*. Lots of free stuff. ( 28:02 )

The Nokia E71 is coming within two weeks to 3UK.

Followed by the Nokia N96, the Sony Xperia and the Blackberry Bold.

Geez.

The 3UK Christmas strategy was revealed to us here at SMS Text News this morning at their launch event — the mobile equivalent of a fashion collection preview.

Standby.

I’ve got photos. I’ve got QIK. I’ve got prices.

Also:

3′s going live with laptops very shortly. And some pretty sexy ones too.

And the 3 Skypephone … it’s much sexier, built-in modem driver so you can use it a a dongle (literally just plug it into your laptop to get started) and it’s got a heck of a lot more features worthy of it’s HSDPA status.

More coming.

If you want a really thorough review take a look at what Steve has written over at AllAboutSymbian (launch review, multimedia, screen size) – I had the pleasure of meeting him for the first time at the launch and the depth and detail of his write-up is top-notch. This are my first usage experience…

The good:

• I was wrong about the ‘leatherette’ case. There I said it… wrong. In podcast 10 I scoffed and called it ‘low rent’. This evening it came between the E71 and the pavement – not a scratch on either. I love it.
• The design is gorgeous. Not just ‘better’. People are actually going out of their way to say how nice it is. Even an E51 owner (which shares much styling) commented it was better. My E61 was not a pretty thing… this just is.
• The size is excellent and its noticeably the slimmest phone I’ve had for some time. The screen is a good resolution and size combination and the keyboard, although tighter than the E61 and E61i feels great – I believe Nokia when they say 70% of people who blind-tested it preferred it.
• The software that had changes is much better – big ones for me are the customisable home screen and the alert icons that now appear at the bottom to show received SMS, missed calls etc. Also the new calendar is a vast improvement as is the ‘long press’ clock preview screen that shows the time when the keyboard is locked.
• The battery life is still excellent – I’m getting the same amount of usage as I did on a recent N82 loan for a few days between full re-charges. The N82 often barely lasted a day.
• The GPS is incredible – 15 seconds is the longest it’s ever taken to get a lock from cold… coupled with the much-improved Maps 2 it’s a life-saver. With the high capacity battery I’ve been geo-tagging and navigating without a second thought.
• Phone and memory card encryption ‘just works’ with no appreciable speed impact. It’s good to know my personal data on the memory card is safe, at least, from opportunists.
• The price – at €350 unsubsidised that’s mid-range S60 money and in line with previous models.

The bad:

• It’s a fingerprint magnet. The back particularly doesn’t just show marks, but visibly discolours until wiped clean. Do the Finn’s not have sweat glands in their hands?
• It didn’t have Mail For Exchange on by default…. and it’s supposed to be a mail-centric phone. Once on it behaves well, but Roadsync does’t appear to be happy – freezing occasionally. A shame as I’d prefer to use Roadsync for the folders capability.
• The mail client isn’t updated, nor is the crappy IMAP handling. Really… This is Nokia’s class-leading e-mail phone? To be fair, it’s unchanged, but that means it’s unchanged since the E61 as far as I can tell. I would have traded half the improvements in the now-excellent calendar for something in this area.
• Media performance is patchy. I asked at the launch if people would be confused by the overlaps in the E and N-series ranges and they said ‘no’. They weren’t joking. Day time images are fine otherwise things get a bit dicey. The processor can only handle the choppiest of QIK streams over 3.5G although local video capture is smooth. To be fair it’s good enough for my business needs (white boards, business cards), but not for anything else. At this price that feels fair, but it does leave me wanting a premium E-series device with something more in this area.
• The new ‘orchestral’ Nokia ring-tone irritates everyone who hears it except me so far… not sure why – it just does. I think it’s something to do with it being similar, but noticeably different to all the other ‘standard issue’ phones in the office.

Overall? It’s good but not great. Do I feel let down? A bit, but we’d all assumed this would be a top-end all-singing, all-dancing model and in many respects (particularly form-factor it is in many ways), but inside it’s a mid-tier business phone and that it does very well… except for the basic messaging interface which is still too basic and deserves Ewan’s anticipated bile.

Improved in many areas, no worse in the rest. A strong ‘B’.  Will I pay my own cash for it?  Yes… but I’ll secretly long for a premium E-series in a similar shape.

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A few demo pictures… The good:

And the pretty awful:

The best QIK I managed on high quality:

The most reliable setting:

Apologies for the occasionally-poor sound quality this week – the SMS Text News outside broadcast unit suffered a technical fault and I’ve done what I can to clean it up… we’ll replace the battery next week. In the meantime, enjoy its ‘authentic’ charm.

Listen now using the player below or see the links below for other options:

Episode link and feeds:

[Link] Direct link to this episode’s MP3 to download
[iTunes] Subscribe or listen in iTunes
[RSS] Subscribe via your feed reader or another podcatcher

Episode ‘warm-up video’:

Podcast images:

Ewan – hard at work

Dan – Not enjoying himself quite as much

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The contributors:

Dan Lane’s blog is at http://invalid.name. He’s CTO at Howler Tech.
James Whatley’s blog is here. He works for SpinVox doing clever social media stuff and also writes their blog. Sometimes he writes for SMS Text News and you can read all of that stuff right here.
Ben Smith is a management consultant. He has a blog, but anything worth reading is contributed here.

Sites mentioned in the podcast:

Nokia’s E71 is here and E66 is here.
Dan’s self-build phone is here.
Krystal’s Canadian mobile data article is here.
Unlimited Drinks Dublin is here.
Nokia’s SportsTracker is here.
E71blog.com is a blog. About the E71.
Salling Clicker is genius.

We’re really keen to get your feedback on the podcast – please let us know in the comments or tell Ewan – ewan@smstextnews.com.

Here’s what was discussed:

Q: Why FP1 not FP2?
A: Nokia needed a stable and reliable platform to build the unique (security and messaging) E-series features on. At the time the products started development FP2 wasn’t suitable.

Q: Where’s the GPS receiever on these devices?
A: On the top (learnt the lesson from poor N95 placement).

Q: What is the rational for the Contacts quick-access entry process?
It starts with letters from contacts in the phone book then reverts to numbers if something is entered that isn’t in the phonebook. There seems to be an exception for entry of the first character (always a number) which was noted.

Q: Will there be E71 variants – QWERTY in different form factors?
A: Considering it (reference was also made earlier in the day to other QWERTY devices in the pipeline).

Q: What’s happened to the E70 form-factor?
A: There’s no similar form-factor devices in the foreseeable future. Not ruling anything out very long-term though.

Q: These devices support Ovi services. Does that include N-Gage?
A: No – that requires additional hardware acceleration. Games are available (and included), but not N-Gage ones.

Q: So these are all ‘single chip’ products?
A: Yes – done for size and cost.

Q: Does the inclusion of Ovi services risk customer confusion over the difference between E and N series?
A: No – there’s a common suite of functions, but games and media are really only consumable on N-series and messaging and security features of E series identify it as business-focussed. Some consumers will choose E-series for styling, but they will understand the device’s capabilities.

Q: Will there be a special US variant like the E62 was for the E61?
A: Both E71 and E66 are US-capable and will launch in Q3 there. There will be 3 variants of each handset for Europe, Asia, and a special Brazilian variant.

Q: What about syncing services?
A: No comment on Ovi offering – MFE and corporate or hosted Microsoft Exchange is best for the moment. Blackberry not supported on this platform for now – concentrating on core offering initially. Blackberry will have to develop a client if one is to be made available (reading the body language – forget it).

Q: How was the camera spec decided?
A: It’s the best compromise of spec and size.

Q: Why does the E71 have infrared?
A: Primarilly for the Asian market where it is still very popular.

Q: Why have light-up keys on teh E66? Doesn’t it make it hard to see what they do in bright conditions?
A: It’s not an issue – it’s only the top function keys and people learn their functions quickly without reference to icons. They wanted the device to have physical appeal too and this is part of that.

Q: On the E66 the delete key is immediately below the square-pad. Is it easy to trigger delete key by accident?

A: It’s in the same position as previous phones which have received this complaint, but harder to hit – as pad is more raised. Not found to be an issue in testing.

Q: What was the test feedback on the smaller E71 keyboard, paticularly regarding speed of typing?
A: 70% of test users choose the E71 keyboard over competitors in testing

Here’s my snaps and video from the launch:

As you’d expect with an E-Series event the focus is on mobile e-mail.

They’re launching the E66 (announced first) – shame he’s calling it the ’6600′. Not a Steve Jobs presentation!! It’s the first E-series announced with a full suite of entertainment services (from Ovi) [note: later clarified to exclude N-Gage], has screen auto-rotation and auto-silences by being turned over.

They’ve also just announced the E71 – ‘an un-compromising e-mail experience’.  Specs are as widely leaked – the form factor is clearly something they’re very keen on as it’s being discussed a lot as well as the speed of the device. ‘World leading in this size’ – the thinnest device in this class ever.

Both ship in July for around €350 unsubsidised.

They’re both S60 ‘open platform’ with over 10,000 applications available for them.

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Update: There’s now a a full review of the E71  by the AllAboutSymbian guys, I have posted some first pictures and videos and covered the blogger Q&A.