I saw a report on The Boy Genius stating that the E71-2 has a “horrible signal problem”, and I wanted to reinforce my experience. I’ve been using my E71-1 for about a month and in that time I haven’t had any troubles with my signal strength. My previous phone was the N95 8GB, the best phone I have ever used when it comes to signal, and the E71 shows the same amount of bars as it did. The signal bars certainly aren’t a scientific measure, heck the Nokia battery meter is pretty much a joke, but I can safely say it holds it’s signal well, and coasts along when other phones drop out.

TBG’s device may be faulty, or maybe there is some other difference between the E71-1 and E71-2 other than available bands, but my E71-1 is working great on HSDPA. For those interested my E71-1 has the 100.07.76 firmware, dated June 8th, 2008.

EDIT: After reading petesonline’s comment, I ran a 1MB speed test of my own and this was the result:

That is one of the fastest speed tests I’ve had on one of my phones, if not the fastest. AT&T’s network mustn’t be as good as Three here in Australia.