Nokia E61i

Expected Q2 2007
22nd February 2007

Those of you familiar with Nokia's line up of phones will recognise that the "i" designation means an improvement to an existing handset, and indeed the Nokia E61i is a slightly tweaked Nokia E61.. although whether or not it is an improvement depends on your point of view.

The biggest difference between the E61i and the E61 is the inclusion of a 2 megapixel digital camera, which Nokia say was added "in response to customer demand". We're not sure which customers Nokia mean, because the kind of corporations that are interested in a device such as the Nokia E61i usually hate to see camera phones proliferating.

The keyboard has been tweaked, and the E61i looks a little tidier than the E61 overall. Aside from these cosmetic differences, the E61i's software has also been tweaked and updated somewhat.

As with the previous model, the Nokia E61i has a large 2.8" 320x240 pixel display, 3G capabilities, WiFi, Bluetooth, a multimedia player and expandable memory. The E61i can also support a wide variety of corporate push email solutions which earned it the nickname "Nokiaberry" with some. Of course, the E61i is a Symbian S60 smartphone too, as are most E-series devices. The battery life is a pretty impressive 5 hours maximum talktime on 3G with up to 19 days standby time.

Unlike some other similar phones (such as the Motorola Moto Q q9). the E61i does not support HSDPA, and it's maybe not as snazzy as the BlackBerry 8800, but it's certainly very competitive and unlike those two devices, the E61i offers both 3G and WiFi support.

It's a well-rounded device from a technical perspective, although it's not really much of an improvement over the original E61 Nokia say that the E61i should be available from Q2 2007 for a price of around €400 before tax and subsidy.

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