LONDON, England – We’re live from Millbank Tower where Soren Petersen is telling us about two new devices – the E71 and E66. We haven’t had them in our hands yet, but already they’re sounding very tasty. Email and messaging get a big boost with full email support for 1,000s of email services supported out of the box, ridiculously easy email set up and a neat little feature for people who only want to use one device for home and work.
Soren told us a little about email as an intro to the new devices and interestingly there are more personal email accounts (800 million) than there are business email accounts (700 million). Of these, only about 25 million business email accounts have been mobilized. In Soren’s words “we’re at the beginning of an exciting market”.
The two new devices look fantastic (okay, we’re biased, but they do, really!). The E66 is a simple slider whilst the E71 sports a full QWERTY keyboard. Setting up an email account on either is super easy. Simply enter your email address and password and the device does the rest. Three email clients are on offer to handle your messaging needs, serving personal email like Gmail, business email like Exchange and other mail services with Intelisync.
Calendar functionality has also been improved with some very neat touches including day view alongside week view and very fast view switching and “one-glance” views for most calendar functions, showing how usability has been improved. Calling functionality is fully integrated into Calendar as well now so dialing a number from an entry is a one-click affair.
The biggest boon of the new devices though is the ability to switch personality between day and night. You can run two different profiles on the new device, the idea being that one is for business and the second is for personal use. Fast switching between each means you can shut your work off at the end of the day and not need to pick up another device. Email, calendar and other settings can be set for profile along with a dedicated home screen for each.
Other little highlights include the 3.2 megapixel camera (with Autofocus), the new chipset that sports double the speed of previous models and the stunning 17 days standby time.
Here’s a first-look up-close video of both devices in action: