It’s been 24 hours since we downloaded Nokia Email and already we’re impressed. Is it enough to make us thoroughly bowled over? Not yet. Okay, so it’s Beta, but one niggling issue just won’t leave us alone. In fact, it’s enough for us to leave feedback to Nokia. Speed. Like that kid in school who used to laugh 10 minutes after the punchline delivery, Nokia Email is, to be polite, a bit sluggish.

But it’s getting better. Yesterday I had to wait an hour or two for mail to pop through to my E71. Today the current record is four minutes. That’s four minutes after Mac Mail tells me I’ve got a new message, my little E71 rattles to life to tell me what I already know (and probably responded to). But it’s getting better and I’m sure by the time this crawls out of Beta, it’ll be as fast as you like.

The app itself is a revelation. I’m hugely impressed and hadn’t expected it to be truly this good. It’s fast, slick, looks nice, easy to use, obvious – all the things I really want from a mobile mail app. It receives (eventually), composes and sends with ease. On the E71 it’s a dream and I’m ever so thankful that this device isn’t going on sale without a decent mail app.

Setup was a cinch and all done online. Once the app downloaded (I’d recommend downloading over WiFi – it’s 1.6Mb) the email folder filled up reasonably quickly. It took a few syncs to get it all in place. It doesn’t seem to be keeping a record of sent items either, for some reason. Irritatingly, it doesn’t sync sent items from the phone to my Mac, despite me using an IMAP account (surely the whole point of IMAP).

Dipping into the help file reveals some interesting things though. Directory, Calendar, Contacts and Files icons are all mentioned, but aren’t actually shown in the Beta app. Looks like there’s more to come from Email with integration to Calendar, proper integration to Contacts and something to do with Files, which I figure has to be Files on Ovi.

So the bones of it is there, the app looks and works well (as long as they get the syncing sorted out). Grab it yourself now and give it a whirl.