Nokia
E70

The Nokia E70 was part of Nokia’s business-centric Eseries devices and was introduced at the same time as the Nokia E60 and Nokia E61. The E70 was a Symbian version of Nokia’s already established fold-out split keyboard phone series (also known as a ‘handlebar’ keyboard). This allowed easy “thumb typing”. The Nokia 6800 was the first phone to use this design and was followed by the Nokia 6820. Nokia described its Eseries models as products that combined “attractive and easy-to-use designs that appeal to individual business users with new underlying technologies that allow IT departments to effectively manage security settings, corporate applications and data.” A particular focus was placed on supporting corporate email platforms including BlackBerry Connect, GoodLink from Good Technology, Seven Mobile Mail, Seven Always-On Mail and Visto Mobile. There was considerable excitement about Nokia supporting BlackBerry services, but the BlackBerry Connect integration proved hugely problematic, only offering a subset of BlackBerry’s services. Siemens had similar issues with the BlackBerry Connect solution on its SK65 phone. Subsequently it emerged that BlackBerry had deliberately dragged its feet on this solution to hinder rivals.   When the E70 was announced Nokia declared it to be “the all-in-one messaging device”. Ultimately it received a mixed reaction, with the E61 proving to be a more popular qwerty based design.