At $149.99 with a two-year contract, the Nokia E71x is AT&T's best smartphone deal right now. A variant on the Editors' Choice–winning unlocked E71, this handset is strikingly slim, classy-looking phone with excellent e-mail and Web support—all at half the price of competing handsets. AT&T subscribers looking for a phone that can act as a mobile office can't go wrong with this Nokia.

The talented and attractive E71 is one of the phones I carry with me most often. It's super-slim (only 0.4 inch thick) and incredibly slick, with a stainless-steel back and small, domed keys. The phone's voice performance is superb; it feels fast; and it runs thousands of Symbian programs. It also syncs easily with your PC. AT&T's version uses the same hardware (except that it's black, whereas the E71 is silver), but makes some firmware and software changes, which I'll focus on in this review. For more details, check out the E71 review.

The E71x sports a newer version of the Symbian Series 60 OS, with AT&T-customized firmware. It adds a few useful options, like a menu item that lets you see what programs are running, and really speeds up downloads—I got around 1 Mbps down and 120 Kbps up, both using the E71x as a modem for a Windows PC and through its own browser. Also, AT&T has stripped out some of Nokia's software and added its own. The E71x loses Nokia's podcasting client, Active Notes, download catalog, on-device search app, Adobe Flash support for the Web browser, and file manager. I tried downloading the podcasting client separately, but AT&T blocks it. That's odd, because AT&T didn't block any of the non-Nokia third-party programs I tried, like Google Maps. AT&T also won't say whether it will support Nokia's upcoming Ovi Store, which would be like Apple's App Store for Nokia smartphones.

I've come to terms with the phone's so-so music and video players, although its 2.5mm headset jack prevents the use of standard music headphones. With my E71, I've been using the Plantronics MHS-213 earbuds ($20 to $40 street), the best pair I could find with a 2.5mm jack, and I've had no problem listening to music or watching 320-by-240-pixel, MPEG-4 videos.

Productivity is where this handset shines. The e-mail options are Nokia's Mail for Exchange and AT&T's XpressMail, by Seven. Mail for Exchange is a terrific Exchange client with push mail and live syncing of messages, calendars, and contact books. I've been using it for months. It runs down batteries pretty quickly when you keep it in push mode, but if you set it to sync every 15 minutes the battery will last several days. Seven XpressMail handles AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, MobileMe, Yahoo, and any POP or IMAP account. Unfortunately, both e-mail programs are text only, but they handle all sorts of attachments. You can also load Google's own, superior Gmail client if you want.

Nokia Maps is out, and AT&T's TeleNav GPS is in. It's not as pretty as Maps, but on my tests, it locked on to my location much more quickly, offering audible driving directions. Sadly, there's no pedestrian mode. But if you don't like TeleNav GPS, feel free to use Google Maps. That's one of the joys of the E71x: For almost every built-in function, there are two or three downloadable alternatives.

The bundle of entertainment apps that AT&T has included are a mixed bag. Cellular Video, AT&T's streaming video service, plays smoothly but is extremely blocky, ugly, and compressed-looking. MobiTV, which costs extra but works much better, provides sometimes smooth, sometimes mildly jerky streaming TV channels over AT&T's network. But the mSpot Music Sync program is pretty great: It streams music from your Internet-connected PC (although the tracks might skip, depending on your network connection). AT&T has also gotten rid of the FM radio; I have no idea why. And there's one toxic application: AT&T's location-based WHERE service, which opts you in to a $2.99-per-month subscription as soon as you click on its icon.

AT&T has the strongest smartphone lineup of all the major U.S. carriers right now, and the E71x has three tough competitors: the BlackBerry Curve, the BlackBerry Bold, and the Apple iPhone. All are more expensive than the E71x. The iPhone is a better entertainment device than the E71x, and it's still our Editor's Choice because of its amazing App Store. But it doesn't have a physical keyboard, which is a deal breaker for some, and the E71x is a better voice phone. If you're not on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, there are plenty of reasons to get the E71x over the Bold, starting with the better Web browser and Exchange support—the only (big) downside is that missing 3.5mm headphone jack, which compromises the E71x's abilities as a music player. Still, the Nokia E71x is one of the absolute best smartphones anywhere. If you aren't enraptured by the iPhone or tied to BlackBerry, the E71x is a top-notch choice on AT&T.

Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 4 hours 28 minutes

Compare the Nokia E71x with several other mobile phones side by side.

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