New Nokia phones separate work and leisure

Nokia has unwrapped two new E-series enterprise handsets with a focus on email, security and manageability, but built in GPS and a nod to the fact that phones are now an intimate part of their users' lives as well as a business tool.

The Nokia E66 and E71, a compact slider phone and a qwerty device, respectively, both cost about €350 (£275) and will be available from July. Both have an enhanced version of the S60 user interface with easy setup for both corporate and personal email accounts, plus the ability to switch between separate home screens for business and personal use.

"You can have a completely different second home screen for personal use, so you can hide business emails and notifiers outside of office hours," said Søren Petersen, Nokia senior vice president for Devices.

However, both are still very much corporate phones, with built-in support for Microsoft Exchange email servers, hardware-based encryption to protect data stored in the device and on memory cards, and an embedded VPN to let workers access resources on their company intranet.

"We comply with the needs of our enterprise customers for security, encryption and remote control," Petersen said.

One interesting new security features allows the user to send a pre-defined "secret SMS message" to their handset if it should be lost or stolen, which will cause the phone to wipe itself clean after a number of failed attempts to unlock it.

The E66 is essentially a development of the E65, according to Nokia, for people who want business information but on a small device. The E71 is a BlackBerry-like handset, but smaller than Nokia's existing E61 devices.

"We narrowed down the design significantly, while retaining the full keyboard," said Petersen, describing the E71 as "the world's thinnest full qwerty handset". However, this slimming down has not affected the battery life, he claimed.

Both devices are quad-band GSM phones with support for high-speed HSDPA networks and also have Assisted GPS (AGPS) for navigation using the Nokia Maps application, supporting both in-car and pedestrian navigation.

Other features include easy configuration of email for both corporate and personal accounts, requiring the user to supply little more than their email address and password, according to Nokia. An intelligent contents search allows users to key in a name direct from the home screen rather than going to the address book, and Nokia's browser now has integrated support for Flash.