Nokia E70 review: Folding typewriter

Music player

Nokia E70 has a fine music player which handles different file formats as well as playlists. It also has an equalizer with some presets. The phone produces good, loud and clear sound and may even surprise some skeptics as it may be used for a music phone, and what's more it has large internal memory and a memory card slot.

Music player • Clip details • Equalizer • Bass booster

The music player can play in the background, of course, and the song will be displayed on the active stand-by display below the calendar events. Nokia E70 also has a Flash player and a Real Player and thus it can play videos, too.

File manager • Gallery • Media menu

Connectivity is not an issue

The phone supports GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, UMTS, PTT, Bluetooth, IrDa and USB. Nokia E70 works with Bluetooth Specification 1.2 supporting the following profiles: Basic Printing Profile, Generic Access Profile, Serial Port Profile, Dial-up Networking Profile, Headset Profile, Handsfree Profile, Generic Object Exchange Profile, Object Push Profile, File Transfer Profile, Basic Imaging Profile, SIM Access profile, and Human Interface Device Profile. Unfortunately, the A2DP profile is not among them which makes impossible the use of stereo Bluetooth headset with the phone.

Connectivity menu

The phone offers a Printer connection application which can be very useful if you intend to use a printer more frequently. The phone makes a connection with the printer via Wi-Fi, USB or Bluetooth, it's your choice. The USB connection can be made only with a custom USB data cable as Nokia E70 doesn't have a normal USB port.

The fast data transfer can be used via GPRS, EDGE or 3G UMTS. You can also try the Wi-Fi connectivity, in which case you have to be near a Wi-Fi hotspot. You can set the phone to detect and connect automatically to such hotspots or you can search them manually. When you are connected, E70 automatically creates an access point for the hotspot and starts using its Internet broadband. The connection speed depends on the distance from the hotspot and on the provider. The signal is displayed as the network signal strength.

Available WLAN

Comfortable browsing in portrait or landscape mode

In Nokia E70, as in other 3rd edition Series 60 Nokia smartphones, there are two browsers - a great one and a poor one. The poor one seems to be for simple services only, like downloading ringtones, pictures, etc. The great one, however, is one of the best, if not the best. It can open web pages just like you're browsing them on you PC. The great display makes this browsing even better. The horizontal mode of the phone is very useful for viewing web pages. You can see more and better when you use the phone in landscape mode.

E70 web browser: browsing in landscape mode

There is even a mouse cursor which can be operated through the navigation joystick. Surprisingly, it works great and is very easy to control. A semi-transparent mini-map of the page displays on the screen when scrolling a webpage. The mini-map can also be accessed by a shortcut - the "8" key. You can zoom in and out on the page using the "•" and "#" buttons. It's amazing to see how small the text can be and still remain readable.

E70 web browser: browsing GSMarena.com with mini-map overlay

Most of the sites we visited (including gsmarena.com, take a look at the screenshots) looked exactly like on the PC. Even when loading complex pages, the web browser was operating fast and there was no slowdown in the scrolling speed. The browser also loads Flash clips (not all of them, pitifully) and has no problems dealing with Java Scripts.

E70 web browser: History