London Calling the mobile advertising blog

“Initial assessment is that it will require more than a keyboard fix. We hope to find a solution that will ensure that the optimal Good user experience is maintained as much as possible on the E71 as well. I will post an update on the ETA as soon as I have it.”

Regards, Reena Nadkarni, Group Product Manager, Motorola Good Technology Group

UPDATE 4: I now have a Nokia E71 - see my first impressions in a new post. While the goodlink keyboard issue on the E71 is annoying, I have managed a workaround. I am still using Goodlink for email notification. I am lucky that my web host allows both Goodlink and direct push (enabled in exchange 2003 SP2 and exchange 2007).

I am using Nokia Mail for Exchange (MfE) for sending email as well as syncing contacts and calendar. Not a pretty solution but it does work for now. Good on the E71 does not have the contact API hooks so the Good contacts are stand alone and are not presented during calls/SMS etc so you need to have the contacts synced via MfE. If your host or system admin allows both Good and MfE then you can also use this workaround.

Some of the normal shortcut keys do work normally in Good so I can still move mail around from subfolders to the inbox to have them appear in MfE. Hopefully there will be a fix soon because The Nokia E71 + Good mobile messaging will make the E71 a complete business tool to rival anything Blackberry comes up with - even the Blackberry Bold.

The good forum on this topic is now alive with posts from many companies who have a large installed base of Goodlink users wanting to upgrade to the E71 - head over to https://www.good.com/begood/message/1816 to add your voice to the discussion and help Good fast track a fix to the E71 goodlink issue.

The rest of the original post is below.

For those following London Calling (thankyou to those 165 230 RSS feed readers and 100’s of casual visitors every day), you will know that I have been hinting ever so slightly about wanting a new Nokia E71.

Ahead of upgrading my E61i to the E71, one of my key considerations is will Good Mobile Messaging (Goodlink) work on the E71 as there has been a lot of discussion on the Nokia forums about how Goodlink does not work properly on Symbian 60 3rd edition handsets that run feature pack 1 such as the E65, and N95.

In particular, when setting up Goodlink, you need to enter a PIN number, and apparently on these phones, it is nearly impossible to do so. The forums even suggest having to use a bluetooth keyboard to get started.

As an aside, I think Goodlink is simply the world’s best email client. When coupled with an exchange server, it simply provides the best push email experience, with features such as subfolders, intelligent push, as well as being able to search messages, and see calendar items, contacts, tasks and notes from your server on the mobile - simply brilliant! I would say that of all the push email clients available, nothing touches Good.

[Please note, I do not work for Good or Motorola - I'm simply a user of the goodlink service via my web host who provides me with managed exchange and happy to say I am very pleased with it and have used it for nearly 3 years.]

Having to entertain the loss of my Goodlink functionality on a new E71 is a showstopper, so ahead of investing £329, I wanted to see for myself if the service would work on an E71.

What better way than to head down to the London Nokia Experience Store on Regent Street at lunch time to play with an E71 (not a plastic dummy, but the real thing).

If you’ve ever asked to look at a real handset in a typical mobile store, you will know the looks you get, or the excuses (we don’t have one out of the box on display) etc etc

Imagine my delight when I located the E71 stand in the Nokia store, and I was able to play with the handset and even download software to try out on it via their wireless connection. Within seconds of sitting down, a helpful assistant came over and started talking about the new handset and it’s features (I’m already sold - I don’t need the sales pitch, - but he was helpful and not “selling” it to me).

I explained my issue, I wanted to see if the goodlink client would work on the handset as I have it on my E61i and it is vital I can transfer it to the E71. About that time the Store Manager (didn’t get his name) walked past and heard my question.

“Why don’t you try installing it on mine” he said - and handed me his personal E71 and allowed me to put my SIM into it and test it! How about that for customer service. I asked him about the price of the handset - listed in store for £329, but I just checked Expansys, and they are still advertising them at £369.95 - that’s nearly a £41 saving in-store. He said that as they get 8,000 people a week in the store, they aren’t tied to sales targets per se- it’s all about the experience. His willingness to hand me his phone to play with proved this point.

He had to go off, so left me with another assistant, who asked me more about Goodlink and what I thought of it (he had not heard of it - it is one of the best kept secrets). I showed him the client on my E61i and explained the excellent user experience and functionality available from Good.

I showed him the contacts function by typing in Nokia, and up popped a screen full of Nokia contacts. “Do you work at Nokia?” he asked - amazed I knew so many in the industry (perhaps he thought I was a mystery shopper from Head Office sent to ask hard questions!).

This friendly person left, to be replaced by Kasim (I know his name as we swapped cards). He is a Product Specialist and vowed to do more research into the Goodlink E71 issue and see what he could do to help. I agreed to keep in touch via email to collaborate.

Bottom line: The Nokia flagship stores are all about the experience. No pushy sales people, and they allow you to actually play with the phones!

Footnote: The excellent technical sales team at Good in the UK have also been in touch and tell me that they are working on it and will “have a fix in the next release of the Nokia client”. This can’t come soon enough for me.

In all, a very good experience (pun intended) all round and I will definitely go back to the Nokia flagship store to purchase my E71 (unless my strong hints have been enough - in that case someone from Nokia PR should get in touch with me), as I am the E71’s biggest fan - and Goodlink on an E71 is mobile heaven.