Nokia E61i PDA with Excellent Features####

Nokia has made subtle design changes to the Nokia E61i, enhancing the back with a sturdier aluminium case and changing the all-silver design by introducing "mocha" (purpley-brown) highlights around the edges. Although it's quite wide its dimensions are 117mm by 70mm by 13.9mm it's comfortable to hold in your palm and thin enough to slip into a pocket. Aside from the addition of a 2-megapixel camera, Nokia E61i's upped the battery life to 400 hours of standby and nine hours of talk. Connectivity options are still extensive, with the Nokia E61i supporting quad-band GSM networks and 3G great for travelers Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and for some reason that escapes us, infrared.

Corporate mobile e-mail solutions such as Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email, Good Mobile Messaging, Mail for Exchange, Seven Mobile Mail and BlackBerry Connect to turn the Nokia E61i in to a push e-mail device are supported. There's also the video camera, a music player and a video player for a bit of fun. Quickoffice and Adobe Acrobat Reader are onboard for viewing and editing documents, and Nokia also includes an application called Teams that lets you set up groups of contacts for conference calls and mass messaging. Unfortunately USB connections still require a proprietary Nokia Pop-Port cable no borrowing someone's spare mini USB cable if it goes missing.

Nokia's changed from miniSD on the Nokia E61i to the smaller microSD memory format on the Nokia E61i PDA, with a 256MB card bundled with our review model. It's hot swappable once you remove the battery cover. Nokia seems to have addressed most of the downsides we found with its predecessor, namely a fiddly joystick, lack of camera and the menu layout. The 2-megapixel camera has quite a shutter lag, but we were impressed with the clarity of low-light shots, even if they were a little noisy. Battery life with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth switched off was decent at four days during normal use, dropping considerably with wireless use.