It’s smart (entire phone is chrome), sleek and very thin (112mm high by 57mm wide by a mere 11mm thick).

The middle select key serves as the notification light, too. So when you have a missed event, the border around the middle key will glow white until you cleared the event, or until the expiration time you set for the notification light expires.

The 320*240 screen is clear and easy on eyes.

It has a 3.2 megapixels camera with optional auto-focus and LED flash. The processor is 50 % faster than its predecessor and the free RAM has been tripled.

The keys themselves are terrific, despite the miniscule size, with good feel and travel.

As with the E51, the ‘S60 menu’ key is now a ‘Home’ icon, plus there are shortcut keys for Calendar, Contacts and Email - and, even better, you can define extra apps to switch to/launch for long presses on each shortcut key.

Around the sides of the E71 are: Top: power button and mono speaker (good volume and quality). Bottom: charging port. Right: Volume up/down, voice recording button, standard 2.5mm 4-way stereo headset jack. There’s a microSD card slot right above the microUSB port on the handset (at the left hand side), so you should be able to expand the memory of the phone to the largest microSD card you can find.

It is packed with BP-4L battery, which means that even with heavy Wi-Fi use and music/camera activity, the E71 will easily last a working day - and even two.

The handset supports BlackBerry Connect. The messaging application is extremely readable and looks good. It is a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone with 850MHz/1900MHz UMTS/HSDPA support, Wi-Fi 802.11 a,b,g, Bluetooth 2.0, and GPS.

In a nutshell, E71 is an amazing phone which is extremely comfortable to hold and use.

From the design, to the specs, to the size, the feel — it has the entire package.