Nokia is finally taking form factor much more seriously: at the new size 112mm high - 57mm wide - 10mm thick, the Nokia E71 is actually one of the slimmest Nokia phones to date and remarkably compact phone given it’s feature load and form factor. It’s a huge improvement. Nokia claims the Nokia E71 is the thinnest QWERTY smartphone on the market, to feature Wi-Fi or a built-in GPS receiver and powered by a good 1500 mAh battery.

The Nokia E71 attacks the drab, plastic looks of its predecessors with chrome accents and a glossy screen. The phone is incredibly pocketable, and comfortable to hold and use. Of course, with the smaller size has brought its own drawbacks along — Nokia had to cut down on screen real estate - The Nokia E71 display has shrunk to 2.36″, but is still technically what we here call a large display. Then, there’s the QWERTY keyboard is small and it can be hard for people with larger fingers to thumb their way across the alphabet. The keyboard had a much more rigid, clicky feel to it compared to the spongy keys of the E62, and reviewers were virtually typo-free on it within minutes.

In practice, the QWERTY keyboard is nice overall - keys have excellent tactile feedback and usability hasn’t been hurt by the limited size. It’s only some key combos that would make you wish you had a good old desktop-sized typewriter at hand (to do ‘Ctrl-X’, for example, you actually have to press three keys at once, really tricky on something so small). Beside the D-pad, there are three predefined shortcuts and - typical E-series - they all mean business. The keys lead straight to Calendar, Contacts and Email.

Around the sides of the Nokia E71 are: Top: power button and mono speaker (good volume and quality). Left: microSD slot, microUSB port. Bottom: charging port. Right: Volume up/down, voice recording button, standard 2.5mm 4-way stereo headset jack. The microSD card slots will allow users expanding the available internal memory with up to 8GB worth of additional storage .

The Nokia E71 manages to squeeze in an 1500mAh, promising power for 20 days of standby, 10.5 hours of GSM talk or 4.5 hours of 3G talk.

The camera is now 3.2 megapixels with auto-focus and LED flash (the E61i was 2mp with no focus or flash), and records VGA video at 22 fps. The processor is 50% faster in practice, using a rather capable processor (369MHz) with very rare interface hiccups only evident in some multimedia applications. But there are also additional resources to help things further - the Nokia E71 has got 128MB of RAM (71MB of which are user available). That’s triple the amount of available RAM, as compared to the Nokia E61i. So you are basically looking at one fast, lean machine here that will handle all your multi-tasking needs with ease. In addition, the use of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 has made things smoother and nippier at all turns - with the inclusion of up to date audio and video codecs, including H.264 and WMA, notably.

The Nokia E71 traditionally has an exceptional Nokia display - a trans-reflective unit that deals perfectly with direct sunlight. On a different note, all but the display and keypad is shiny mirror-finish metal all over. That does the beauty trick but leaves a lot to be desired when fingerprints come into play.

The QVGA screen resolution is a standard one and it’s enough - all details and colors look nice and crisp. Plus you get compatibility with almost all existing applications. A larger resolution would have also meant a performance hit, so QVGA is really ok. The landscape orientation of the display also comes in handy when browsing images or web sites.

The Nokia E71 runs on the Symbian S60 3rd Edition UI with Feature Pack 1, which lacks the screen transition fanciness of FP2. Nokia also added some new features, which are not present in other similar devices. First of all, it’s the ultra easy email setup. If you are using any public email service, all you need to do is enter your email address and password to start enjoying emailing-on-the-go. Nokia E71 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.

Next, there’s a special Mode Switcher, which practically toggles between two homescreen setups - one for work and one for leisure for example. The Calendar application has also received a face lift - now it offers a much streamlined view of what’s on and what’s ahead. Then there’s the improved web browser, with full Flash support (Flash Lite 3), as well as seamless secure Intranet support via the mobile VPN client that’s also set up on the handset.

And finally, there’s a new feature, you might know as Remote Wipe. It’s not a new feature per se, but up until now it was usually reserved for corporate scenarios. Now it’s available to everyone. In case your Nokia E71 gets stolen or lost, you should simply send a coded SMS message. It gets locked down and after three unsuccessful attempts of unlocking it, it wipes itself clean of all personal or sensitive info. You might not get your Nokia E71 back, but at least nobody will get your personal data either.

There’s a lot to really like in this latest Eseries miniaturised masterpiece. The build quality is fabulous, the styling striking, the communications options vast, text input potentially fast and flexible, the software support and built-in enterprise features almost second to none. And all in something that’s as thin as your average feature phone. The Nokia E71 fills a very important gap in the line up of 2nd generation Eseries device. While the E90 is an extremely capable device, its form factor and price point make it rather niche. The E51 is a great entry level enterprise device, but lacks the power that a full size keyboard provides. The completed portfolio of 2nd generation Eseries devices (E51, E66, E71, E90) has a real sense of maturity about it. The Nokia E71 and its sisters look set to give Nokia’s Enterprise rivals (Blackberry and Windows Mobile - and, yes, in time the iPhone) some sleepless nights.