With the largely metal body, large 2.8" screen (only rivalled recently on the Nseries by the N95 8GB) and full qwerty thumb keyboard, the E61i should have been just about the perfect smartphone for an awful lot of people.
Running S60 3rd Edition, all the core S60 components are here: Contacts, Calendar, Notes, Web, Messaging, Converter, Zip manager, and so on. Some applications are in fact enhanced over the Nseries software package, with Messaging gaining an active standby screen plugin, and with Quickoffice being the editing version by default, so you can do basic edits without having to pay a little extra.
The fact that this is S60 3rd Edition without the 'Feature Pack 1', as seen on most recent Nseries devices and the newer E90 and E51, doesn't make that much difference in practice, although I suspect there's a slight speed penalty and the likes of the N80 and E61/E61i aren't noted for being speed demons in the first place. Still, by using the Symbian/S60 multitasking properly, speed should rarely be an issue.
Pimping the E61i
Making more of the limited RAM. After booting, an E61i should have around 24MB of RAM free. While not exactly abundant, this is still fine for almost everything you'll want to do on a smartphone, provided you don't let anything unnecessary auto-start. If something's loaded in RAM then you want it to be something you asked for an use all the time. You might want to avoid Java-hosted apps like GMail: not only do they take an eternity for the Java runtime to load (10s or so), they also use 10MB or so of RAM on their own. With GMail, incidentally, you're better off setting up your built-in Messaging to use Google's new IMAP4 servers.
Make the most of the limited processor power. The E61i is optimised for battery life. Which it has in spades. But in order to minimise delays while applications are started, keep all your most used apps running in RAM by using the Menu/S60 key to switch away to something else rather than hitting 'Exit' all the time. This is especially important if you used to be in the habit of turning your smartphone off at night - DON'T DO IT. Symbian OS and S60 have around 100 background processes that need starting when you power up, with more that gradually load as you use the device. If you want a responsive E61i then keep Symbian OS ticking away, with all the little bits it needs and don't keep powering the hardware off!
Web is a potential problem, with no WAP capability, meaning that many mobile sites will need accessing in the seperate (pre-FP1) Services browser. Still, it's only a minor inconvenience and you'll probably find that the free Opera Mini 4 works better still for general browsing, especially on the landscape screen of the E61i - make sure you install this (though see the caveat above about Java-based apps - close Opera Mini after use!).
Steer clear of push email, at least until you've got a feel for your E61i's normal performance and battery life. Then you can introduce 'push' if you really, really want to (e.g. Mail 4 Exchange, Visto) and monitor the (usually pretty heavy) impact. If you want most of the benefits of push without the hassle or processor hit, just set Messaging to auto-retrieve emails in the background (every 30 minutes, between the hours you specify).
With the largely metal body, large 2.8" screen (only rivalled recently on the Nseries by the N95 8GB) and full qwerty thumb keyboard, the E61i should have been just about the perfect smartphone for an awful lot of people.
Running S60 3rd Edition, all the core S60 components are here: Contacts, Calendar, Notes, Web, Messaging, Converter, Zip manager, and so on. Some applications are in fact enhanced over the Nseries software package, with Messaging gaining an active standby screen plugin, and with Quickoffice being the editing version by default, so you can do basic edits without having to pay a little extra.
The fact that this is S60 3rd Edition without the 'Feature Pack 1', as seen on most recent Nseries devices and the newer E90 and E51, doesn't make that much difference in practice, although I suspect there's a slight speed penalty and the likes of the N80 and E61/E61i aren't noted for being speed demons in the first place. Still, by using the Symbian/S60 multitasking properly, speed should rarely be an issue.
Pimping the E61i
Making more of the limited RAM. After booting, an E61i should have around 24MB of RAM free. While not exactly abundant, this is still fine for almost everything you'll want to do on a smartphone, provided you don't let anything unnecessary auto-start. If something's loaded in RAM then you want it to be something you asked for an use all the time. You might want to avoid Java-hosted apps like GMail: not only do they take an eternity for the Java runtime to load (10s or so), they also use 10MB or so of RAM on their own. With GMail, incidentally, you're better off setting up your built-in Messaging to use Google's new IMAP4 servers.
Make the most of the limited processor power. The E61i is optimised for battery life. Which it has in spades. But in order to minimise delays while applications are started, keep all your most used apps running in RAM by using the Menu/S60 key to switch away to something else rather than hitting 'Exit' all the time. This is especially important if you used to be in the habit of turning your smartphone off at night - DON'T DO IT. Symbian OS and S60 have around 100 background processes that need starting when you power up, with more that gradually load as you use the device. If you want a responsive E61i then keep Symbian OS ticking away, with all the little bits it needs and don't keep powering the hardware off!
Web is a potential problem, with no WAP capability, meaning that many mobile sites will need accessing in the seperate (pre-FP1) Services browser. Still, it's only a minor inconvenience and you'll probably find that the free Opera Mini 4 works better still for general browsing, especially on the landscape screen of the E61i - make sure you install this (though see the caveat above about Java-based apps - close Opera Mini after use!).
Steer clear of push email, at least until you've got a feel for your E61i's normal performance and battery life. Then you can introduce 'push' if you really, really want to (e.g. Mail 4 Exchange, Visto) and monitor the (usually pretty heavy) impact. If you want most of the benefits of push without the hassle or processor hit, just set Messaging to auto-retrieve emails in the background (every 30 minutes, between the hours you specify).
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