Nokia E75 (4)

Nokia’s recent enterprise device, the E75, may well be targeted at the mid-level office workers of the world, but what happens when it’s handed to the man in the street? Well, he should be pretty happy, as this is a really good all-round smartphone for day to day use, in addition to the enterprise features.

I’m pretty sure that the design remit for the device did have this group included, at least as a secondary consideration – the choice of colours for the E75 (coming in silver and black, red or copper yellow) hints at this dual nature.

All the way through the E75’s design is this paradox of two discrete things living next to each other; you have the market segment issues; you have pairs of buttons rather close to each other; hard hitting business apps next to N-Gage gaming, the dual homescreen modes, and of course you have the portrait and landscape modes living side by side, as you switch from Qwerty to ABC keypads at the slide of the screen. Does all this make the E75 a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde machine, constantly fighting the other side, or is it a buddy-cop movie, working in tandem by the end of the film?

Thankfully it’s more the latter than the former (but it’s not as clear cut in some cases). Let’s start off with the hardware. For the technically minded, S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2, 2.4 inch QVGA screen, 50MB internal memory, microSD card support, micro USB connector and all the expected connectivity options, including Wi-Fi, 3G data and quad band GSM and WCDMA for the European or American market. Two years ago, we would have poured over a list like this to see what’s missing – thankfully that’s no longer the case as Nokia are pretty good at providing the same hardware across the whole S60 platform.

The biggest feature of the E75 has to be the slide out Qwerty keyboard. It takes a short (but positive) action to slide the screen to the side and reveal a four row keyboard. As this happens, the screen automatically switches from a portrait view to a landscape view. Nokia have had a fair bit of experience both in running the S60 platform in landscape mode (starting with the E61 devices, as well as the auto-rotation on the N-Series devices) so there are no fundamental problems in how everything works. I do wish that it could be a little bit faster when the transition happens, there always seems to be just a little bit too much of a blank screen as everything gets worked out by the E75 and re-displayed.

Because of the off-centre screen in landscape mode, the layout feels comfortable for a right-handed user, but lefties may feel the placement of the cursor and soft keys is a little bit awkward for them, but the small form factor doesn’t hamper the ergonomics in a huge way. The Qwerty keyboard is a success though – the decision to move the number keys to be shifted keypresses on the top letter row allows the remaining space to be populated with keys closer to the expected square shape. Because of the sliding mechanism, there isn’t much tactile feedback from the flat keys.

Unusually, there is nothing to guide your fingers to the home keys, without any marks on the ‘f’ and ‘j’ keys, and that feels unusual. The central silver bar which splits the two sides of the keyboard is a strange design decision as well – while it clearly divides the keyboard for those using the two thumbs method of typing, I’m not sure of the actual benefit of this. Perhaps it’s required because of the construction methods used? [Yes, it’s part of the slide mechanism – Ed]

The success of the keyboard doesn’t continue to the ABC keypad. While the number keys have a nice dome effect, and the ‘5’ has raised elements to help you find it by touch, the keys surrounding the d-pad/cursor ring are very tightly packed together, and having home/delete on the same bit of plastic as the two soft keys is asking for trouble – and it won’t take you long to find said trouble. It’s just about manageable in portrait mode, but switch to landscape mode and you’ll find that you still need to use the same soft keys for the options and functions in an application, and you will be hitting the incorrect key thanks to the tightly packed keys. This needs more thought.

Going round the edge of the device (the comfortable heft of metal means the E75 feels an incredibly robust phone that could hammer in the proverbial reviewer’s nail), you find a standard 3.5mm headphone socket that also has a mic connector for Nokia’s regular hands free units, volume keys and the camera shutter button, and the charging port. Unlike the N85 and other newer designs, the charging port is still the straight AC adaptor connector, although like the N85 the E75 will charge over microUSB as well.

What is missing is a power key – this is now integrated on the End Call red key, so don’t lean too long on that key when you hang up a phone call. This has the side effect that the quick way to change your profile (tap the power key no matter where you are to bring up the menu) is also on the same key that powers down the entire device. Again, this just seems to be asking for trouble.

Unlike other recent Eseries enterprise devices, the software suite that comes in the E75 is very close to that in the Nseries roll out, there are no obvious applications that are not available on the E75. Given that there are close to 60 icons available to choose from straight out the box, that’s not surprising. Nokia have not gone down the simplicity route in loading up their budget communicator device.

I worry that this tsunami of choices for a new user will leave them confused as to the capabilities of the device. That’s all well and good if they have already bought the E75, but standing in a shop and having a little navigate through the device is not going to be pleasant. Nokia have made the decision that folders in the app screens should not look like folders (with smaller icons above them, as you see on devices like the N95) – when you click on an icon on the E75 you have no idea if it is a folder (leading to more icons) or an application (that could start up something that looks like the home screen, or the S60 icon’ed list, or something completely different). Leaving users unsure of what is going to happen when they click on something is not a good state of affairs.

The E75 comes with the regular PIM applications of S60, and these are still the underpowered, lightweight Calendar, Notes and To-Do applications – but on a device that’s not going to be tied into an Exchange server or handle a huge work-based diary (remember I’m looking at the device from the point of view of the man in the street) the PIM suite is a slightly better fit. There is still a lack of category support, and you generally don’t get more than a few lines of information on the screen at any one time, but if you follow the assumption that a consumer will not be using these applications for more than a few items a day, then the PIM suite is passable for the consumer, but only just.

It should be no surprise that the Contacts application is fully formed and handles the job of being the hub of your device (calls, texts, mails, incoming alerts tagged with names, group handling, allocating a custom ring tone, and so on). This is what you can do when you evolve an application over time. The new tweaks in this S60 version include a specific call to action in “type to search” to help you know what to do, and by touching ‘right’ on the D-pad you get a little pop up menu that lets you jump to quick actions, such as calling the contact or sending a message. It’s a nice touch, and shows what continued development can do.

The other app that has had a major overhaul is the email portion of the Messaging application. Previously, the email part has been shoe-horned into the same look as the SMS/MMS inbox of an S60 phone. That’s gone out the window now, with a brand new look and filters designed specifically for using email. Clicking on your mailbox in the Messaging app leads you into the new view, where you have two drop down choices well suited to email. The first allows you to jump around the classic Inbox, Draft, Sent Items and Outbox folder; while the second chooses how the email is sorted, by date; sender; subject; priority; unread; attachments or size. This is a vast improvement on previous S60 mail clients, and makes it feel more like a desk bound mail application.

Nokia’s web browser, powered (as many of you know) by the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari web browser, hasn’t received any changes in the way that Messaging and Contacts has, but it still gets the job done. It follows the ideology of steering a pointer around the screen with the d-pad, which is the closest analogy possible on a non-touchscreen smartphone to what people are used to on the desktop. It’s workable, but a touch unwieldy, and I personally wish that some method of ‘page down’ was still available, instead of having to move that pointer constantly down, but this is what happens when your devices are geared towards the mass market and not a smaller pool of power users (who after all, will be au-fait with installing a different web browser if they must).

Having a Qwerty keyboard actually helps the web experience – so many sites nowadays in the Web 2.0 world are interactive, so visiting your Facebook and MySpace’s of this world means it is far easier to update your status and leave comments for your friends. The same goes for the rich vein of blogs, both in commenting on others and writing your own posts. So in that sense the web browser is actually a little better than on other devices, not because of the software, but the hardware.

Another reason I think Nokia were always looking for the E75 to make inroads with the consumer segment is the inclusion of the N-Gage client – the first E series device to do so. On the face of it, these seems a good thing to do – after all, the point of N-Gage is that it uses standard S60 code, so if it runs on one, it should run on all. Unfortunately, there are some problems with N-Gage on the E75, and they can be showstoppers. The first is that while many of the titles will default to a landscape display (thus having you play with the keyboard slid out), the client itself will not rotate – and you ‘ll have to do some mental gymnastics to move the cursor around the screen.

The E75 is not suited for the whole spectrum of games (but then having a demo for every game will help you decide), but the stumbling block for many will be the control layout – the d-pad is under the right thumb, and not the left… which is completely the opposite way to pretty much every other game controller on the planet. In itself not a problem, but enough to make people think ‘something isn’t quite right here’ when they pick it up. And with a full Qwerty keyboard available you would think you could redefine some keys to make it more comfortable. Unfortunately not, and the ‘A/B’ action keys are permanently mapped to ‘q’ and ‘w’. Easily fixable in a firmware update for the client, but perhaps harder to change individual games. It’s also something that I expect was noticed in play-testing the E75 and Nokia were happy to leave as is.

Even Screenshot doesn’t understand the N-gage App’s Orientation on the E75!

Yes, it is a first attempt, but perhaps it would have been a better option to download N-Gage from the website (as the first N-Gage compatible devices had to do) as opposed to having the client in the firmware and available to all, albeit hidden in the menu and icon structure of the app screen.

Connectivity to the desktop comes from Nokia’s now mature PC Suite, and part of this allows the E75 to be seen as a Windows Media device to facilitate the transfer of music to the player. Again we’re looking at a tried and tested solution from Finland, which has become pretty much standard for the S60 platform. Music player is still one of the best available, and while the new iPhone interface is a shade better, Nokia’s music player, when coupled with a Qwerty keyboard for quick searching through your music list, wins out every time.

While there are no dedicated music playback keys, the D-pad competently controls the main functions (play, pause, stop, fast forward/skip and rewind/skip) and the volume controls on the side mean the E75 can stay in your pocket while you jump around your playlist. And the regular headphone jack on the top of the device means you can use your own favourite headphones.

Nokia’s appreciation of the smartphone camera has led them to have some brilliant optics on some of the higher end S60 devices (e.g. N95) and, while the E75 does not carry the Carl Zeiss option, the 3.2MP camera that is in the package can do the job pretty well. While the video and still pictures are not quite at the level of devices like the N85, it’s worth remembering that these standard Nokia optics are probably some of the best available for the price range of the phone. It’s also nice to see the self-portrait mirror continue to be included

The results of the camera are also in line with the E75 as a whole. They’re above average when compared to pictures taken by similar phones, and you would be happy to use them as required. The E75 is exactly the same… it’s an above average phone for the price range, it performs most of the expected smartphone functions well (if not perfectly) in a decent sized package that has a good balance of style and practicality. There are some areas I would tidy up a little, but I’d have no qualms if I was left with an E75 as my day to day smartphone.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E75-The_Consumers_Viewpoint.php 

Nokia E75 (3)

Leaving aside my own personal feelings about the Nokia E75’s hardware design, there’s no doubting that some elements of its specification and implemention make for better multimedia than we’ve seen so far on Nokia Eseries. Partly this is down to the use of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, which brings additional codecs and multimedia routines, but credit must also be given for the inclusion of a surprisingly good camera/sensor, seemingly better even than that in the flagship E90.

Despite this compliment, Nokia don’t seem quite so sure of the multimedia aspects of the E75, hiding almost every function inside a (cunningly disguised) ‘Media’ sub-folder inside a general ‘Applications’ folder. Still, the functionality is there, from Camera (of course) to Radio to Music player to Video centre to Podcasting. All of these applications will be very familiar to S60 users but, as ever, it’s great to see what were once Nseries exclusives now firmly in the firmware of the business-focussed Eseries.

Camera (stills)

When I saw that the E75 came with a 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash and non-branded optics (i.e. not Carl Zeiss) I was put in mind both of the E71 and the E90. In theory the specifications are the same, but the quality of the components (mainly the sensor) are higher than those in the E71’s camera, while the software algorithms are more sophisticated than those in the now-ageing E90. The end result is the best camera in a Nokia Eseries phone to date.

Here’s a brief gallery, culled from photos from myself and Rafe. In each case, click through for the photo at full resolution:

Some impressive photos in that bunch, though all were taken under good natural light. Still, the colours are great and there’s little over-saturation, as it common with cheaper camera units. As I’ve proved in the past, you can do a lot with 3 megapixels and it’s certainly quite good enough for printing out photos at 6″ by 4″ or viewing on a PC screen or TV.

And all this on a phone which rather deprecates its camera and multimedia. In addition to the hiding of the apps, there’s the bizarre positioning of the camera shutter button, almost midway along the top edge, where it’s tricky to squeeze the shutter closed without partially opening the E75’s QWERTY keyboard (because of where your thumb braces itself for the pressure, though you do get used to the handhold needed in time). All of which make the photos all the more spectacular.

But how does the E75’s camera, as good as it is, compare to identical shots taken with other well known camera-toting Nokia smartphones? Let’s run a few tests. First of all, here’s the same pond scene, taken on the E75 and the (five megapixel, Carl Zeiss-lensed) N82 and with the central region (showing the sign) blown up so that we can see the differences:

Not bad at all, the overall level of detail in the blow-ups is certainly comparable. Is this the best 3 megapixel camera Nokia has yet used? Let’s try comparing shots from the E75 to those from the E90, the previous Eseries camera champion. Here’s a close-up of an indoor shot of a digital radio:

Disregarding the differences in the angle of view, the E75’s photo is a lot clearer and sharper. Let’s try an outdoor shot, of my r/c plane taken in overcast conditions:

At first glance, the E90’s photo looks much better, with more pleasing colouring, but in the E75’s defense, the sun wasn’t out and the grass certainly wasn’t that saturated a shade of green. Moreover, if we look closer at a detail:

You can see that the bands holding the wing on are clearly picked out by the E75’s lens and sensor but are invisible on the E90’s photo because of the over-saturation/over-exposure. So, another win for the E75.

Both the E75 and E90 have a single LED flash, which means that neither produce very good photos, in comparison to Xenon-equipped phones like the N82 or even compared to dual LED flash phones like the budget N79.

Still, there’s no doubting the Nokia E75’s camera performance in reasonable light conditions – it’s possible the best 3 megapixel camera I’ve seen on a phone, taking into account both the hardware (sensor) and the now-mature Nokia Camera software.
Camera (video)

Video quality is harder to quantify (in a text piece like this), but here’s a sample, for your interest, click it to download or open the MP4 file etc:

As with the E90 before it, the E75 records video at full VGA and at a full 30 frames per second. In other words, the same as the N95, N82 and most top Nseries devices. There’s no branded lens, so quality doesn’t quite match that of (e.g.) video from the N95 or N82, but it’s close enough for most casual use (there’s no TV out, by the way). Captured audio is good too, certainly up with that from the E90 and many Nseries phones. As with still image taking, I really can’t see any E75 owner complaining that video taken on it isn’t of high enough quality.

Of special interest is, like the E71, the LED can be turned on as a ‘video light’, making taking ad-hoc videos possible of close up subjects in dark conditions. The results aren’t brilliant, but they’re better than on the E71 and hey, at least you’re shooting and capturing a moment, whereas on older S60 devices (or the N82) you’d be stuck with the ambient lighting and perhaps struggling more. The only caveat is, as I’ve mentioned before, the LED video light is (literally) dazzling for your subjects (relative to the surrounding gloom) and you will get complaints!

Gallery and Video centre

As with each successive version of S60, 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 brings extra multimedia codecs and compatibility, compared to the version before. We’ve now got to the stage that most MP4, FLV and WMV videos can be handled in the OS and presented at a reasonable frame rate, with no silly compatibility issues or complaints about audio or video. This is the first Eseries device to feature FP2 and as such has better multimedia performance than previous phones (e.g. the E71).
Loading up native MP4 and WMV videos of various resolutions played fine in Realplayer (from, for example, Gallery), with smooth frame rate, albeit on the small QVGA screen. Some WMV clips showed audio/video sync issues though.
Clicking on FLV videos in File manager (or Gallery, though thumbnails were broken) produced reasonable playback although, curiously, there was no way to fast forward through a clip in this Flash video implementation (unlike, for example, on the Nokia 5800, running S60 5th Edition)
YouTube Mobile, the native S60 client, worked well but the frame rate of videos wasn’t brilliant. Watchable, but occasionally jerky and always hovereing around (or below) 10 frames per second.
Flash video within web pages was slower still, often very jerky, but acceptable for very occasional use.

The presence of Video centre isn’t surprising in 2009, although I still find the duplication of functionality between this and Gallery somewhat irritating. The idea of being able to plug in different mobisode/trailer video feeds is a good one, but most people will get far more out of the free third party YouTube client.

The biggest limitation on video consumption on the E75 is probably the small screen, which pales compared to newer efforts like those on the Nokia 5800 and N97. Surely, in 2009, it’s time to break away from QVGA, 2.4″ screens now?
Music, Podcasting and other Audio

As with (almost) every other smartphone since about 2005, music quality over headphones on the E75 is good enough for most people – the biggest limitations are the quality of the headphones being used and your ears. There’s only one loudspeaker in the device itself (on the rear housing) and it’s predictably phone-like in terms of response, though at least decent volumes were possible.

Nokia Music player itself is rather bare bones by modern standards, but does the job, including a custom equaliser.

The presence of a 3.5mm jack is the single biggest boon here, after the 2.5mm ‘smartphone audio’ jacks of the E71 and E90, to name but two… Being able to slap any pair of headphones in without fussing with finding an adapter is very welcome indeed.

Podcasting is also present, now standard with Eseries phones and one of my favourite uses of a Wi-Fi-connected smartphone. There’s a bit of a learning curve in its interface but, once mastered and set up, you’re good to go for offsetting boredom forever.

Although there are no obvious music controls, the canny E75 user will do what I did and assign Music player and Podcasting to ‘long presses’ of the Calendar and Email one-touch keys. Thus, each app is only ever one keypress away – a neat solution.

The default way to transfer music onto the E75 is via MTP compatibility and Windows Media Player, but it’s also easy enough to connect the E75’s memory card as an extra disk on your desktop and to simply drag and drop music folders (MP3, WMA, ACC, eAAC+, etc) on as needed. There’s also the Nokia Music Store client – this is very handy for grabbing (i.e. buying) specific tracks when out and about, but few owners will want to buy music on a large scale this way – you’re hampered by Nokia’s restrictive (Microsoft-licensed) DRM.

The presence of a ‘Radio’ shortcut isn’t a surprise by now on Eseries devices, and it’s good to see the choice here between FM radio and Internet Radio – I’m a fan of both and especially like the way the latter here is built into the firmware and not left for a user to discover on the Internet and add later. Of interest is the fact that Nokia’s new ‘Here and Now’ portal is a permanent advert at the top of every genre listing – I suspect that we’re going to see more from this service.

‘Recorder’, the standard (simple) voice recorder utility, rounds out the audio offering on the E75.
The E75 for multimedia

In summary, while you wouldn’t buy a Nokia E75 for its multimedia prowess, it’s certainly not going to disappoint. The only hardware design point that impinges on multimedia capability is the small size of the screen – everything else is quite good enough for the majority. The fact that the E75’s camera is much better than that in the E71 points more towards below-par software in the latter, but it’s nice to see a S60 3rd Edition FP2 Eseries that has this area not only covered but mastered (within the limits of the camera unit fitted).

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E75-Part_2_Camera_and_Multimedia.php 

Nokia E75 (2)

If we can think of one reason to take being told “to mind your own business” with a smile it would be the Nokia Eseries. A household name for enterprise users, it’s hardly a surprise that each E-series update is greeted with plenty of excitement. The Nokia E75 is no exception, even if it doesn’t really put anything new on the table.

Nokia E75 official photos

The side-sliding QWERTY form factor lands on Symbian turf following a reasonably successful spell on the WinMo side of the yard.

The major novelty of the Nokia E75 is the form factor and we’re about to see if this is enough for it to carve a niche out for itself in a crowded market.

Nokia E75 lifestyle photos

There’s no denying that if a side-sliding QWERTY is good enough for a teenage-targeted music phone (the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic), it must be more than at home in a full-featured business phone. Welcome to the Nokia E75.
Key features
2.4″ 16M-color TFT display of QVGA resolution
Four-row side-slide QWERTY keyboard
Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G (with HSDPA) support
Symbian OS with S60 3.2 UI
369 MHz ARM11 CPU
3.5mm standard audio jack
microSD card slot, 4GB microSD card prebundled
3.2 megapixel auto focus camera with a dedicated shutter key, geotagging and VGA@30fps video recording
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with UPnP technology
Built-in GPS receiver and Nokia Maps with 3 months of free voice-assisted navigation
USB and stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) connectivity
Steel battery cover
FM radio with RDS
Remote Wipe functionality
Carrier-independent VoIP support
Office document editor
User-friendly Mode Switch for toggling two homescreen setups
Smart dialing
Main disadvantages:
Rather expensive at this point (more than 350 euro)
Controls around the D-pad are too tiny
Mediocre camera performance
Fingerprint-prone cheap-looking front
Wiggling cheapo camera key
Limited battery life (in comparison to the E71)

Even if we leave aside the scores of competing business handsets, the Nokia E75 still faces quite stiff competition from within the E-series range itself. It’s unreasonably close to the E90 as far as pricing is concerned and is quite uncomfortably cloning most of Nokia E71 functionality. The side-sliding QWERTY keyboard and FP2 are pretty much all the E75 has over the E71.

The Nokia E75 in the comfort of our office

It’s more like an alternative we’re talking here rather than a substantial upgrade. Truth be told, we were pretty impressed with the Nokia E71 and if the E75 matches its performance then there will be no reason to grumble.

Nokia E75 side by side to Nokia E63

So, if the Nokia E75 is sitting on a fence, then so are we until we’ve taken it down for a test ride and seen what it can do. Let the unboxing begin after the jump.

Retail package is decently stuffed

The Nokia E75 is pretty decently equipped and that was probably to be expected considering the price tag. The phone comes with a 4GB microSD card, a USB cable and of course a DC charger.

Unfortunately we didn’t find a leather carrying case in the box like the one for the E71. Quite a nice accessory, this is probably the thing we miss most from the retail package.

The retail package is moderately well equipped

The supplied handsfree is one piece, which means you cannot use the remote with another headset. Finally, there is a whole load of paperwork including manuals, quick start guides, a few leaflets plus the required sync software on CD.
Nokia E75 360-degree spin

A slide-out QWERTY keyboard suggests the E75 might be a bit chunky. Not a bit of it though – at 111.8 x 50 x 14.4 mm and a volume of only 69 cc, it turned out to be more compact than we expected.

Sure it’s thicker than the E71 but not as wide and so is not much more difficult to squeeze into a pocket. It is 12 grams heavier than the E71, but we doubt that will be a noticeable difference in daily use.

Design and construction

Design-wise the Nokia E75 is a phone of two faces. Its steel back is a joy to look at, even more so than the E71 because of its slender shape. However the front panel is not nearly as attractive. The number pad is made of cheap looking plastic and doesn’t really ooze the style and solidity that the E-series is famous for.

The design has its ups and downs

We certainly don’t want to rekindle the debate that our conclusions on the glossy plastic used on the Nokia N96 provoked, but we are not particularly fond of the fact that an E-series device gets this kind of treatment.

Based on the tacky keypad, we were expecting to be disappointed by the slide-sliding QWERTY – but the quality took a turn for the better with a very solid looking, chrome-framed keyboard. To add to the positive impression, the phone keeps quite a compact shape even with the keyboard out, and the handling is comfortable and secure.

The ambient light sensor and the video-call camera are at the top of the front panel of the Nokia E75, either side of the earpiece. Below them is the 2.4″ display, followed by the D-pad, which is quite comfortable to use. It has a programmable LED in the center that can be set to indicate missed events or simply serve as a standby breathing light.

We don’t mean to sound to pretentious, but we would have liked it quite much if the E-series had finally been updated with a larger display – say, something like a 2.8-incher would have been great. Instead, here we see the same diagonal as on Nokia E66.

The ambient light sensor and the video-call camera

There are eight system keys, level with the D-pad, including the usual Nokia foursome – Call and End keys and two soft-keys. The end key doubles as a power switch, unlike the E71, which has a dedicated button for the purpose. Given the garish red power button they inexplicably added to the E71, this key combo might actually be something to be thankful for! On the other hand if you have a habit of hitting the End key repeatedly for going to the homescreen you might end up turning your E75 off by accident now and then.

The other four keys around the D-pad are menu, backspace and the typical E-series one-touch keys for calendar and messaging. However, these last two can be programmed to serve whatever purpose you like, two commands assignable to each of them. The first will respond to a short press, the second to a press-and-hold.

The problem with all those eight keys around the D-pad is that they are rather small and cramped. In addition, each pair of them shares a plastic knob with a rocker-like action, which can occasionally lead to mispresses.

The buttons on the inside (bordering on the D-pad) have a rather flimsy press too. To be honest, it’s nothing critical and you will get used to the control pad but the form factor has inevitably led to some compromises. In short, the layout and handling of the controls on the E75 are inferior to the E71, though that’s before we’ve passed judgment on the QWERTY keyboard.

The eight keys around the display are way too tiny

The left side of the Nokia E75 is where the microUSB port and the microSD card slot are. They’re both covered with plastic lids to avoid getting filled with dust and dirt. Those fit firmly in place and can be somewhat tricky to use as they are a little stiff.

The Nokia E75 from the left

The bottom is where the standard charger port is. Next to it is the mic right at the very edge.

The charging port is at the bottom right next to the microphone pinhole

The right side of the E75 comprises four keys and the lanyard eyelet. The keys include two volume controls, a voice command shortcut and a camera key. While it has full functionality, including autofocus half-press and camera launch, it is quite poorly designed.

The camera key clicks unpleasantly every time you press it and a tangible wobble makes it less than a joy to use. But these are just minor complaints compared to the amount of time it takes for the camera to actually start.

Yes, it’s a good idea they have made it resistant to accidental presses, but needing to press it for good 4-5 seconds before the camera starts is hardly ideal when you want to capture a ‘moment’.

No less than four keys are to be found on the right

On the other hand, if you consider the camera handling on the E71, a dedicated shutter key is still a blessing and you might be willing to forgive some of the other issues.

Design and construction (continued)

The only functional element at the top is the 3.5mm standard audio jack and that’s another point in favor over the E71. It’s not sealed for protection but it is comfortably placed.

The 3.5mm standard audio jack is at the top

As we mentioned, the back of the handset has a soft spot in our hearts. We do appreciate the steel battery cover and the opaque plastic around it. Certainly one of the best looking backs in the industry, it makes the plain plastic front all the more inconsistent.

The E75 looks much better from the back

As far as functional elements are concerned, we find the loudspeaker grill and the 3 megapixel camera lens here. Next to the lens are the LED flash and a small self-portrait mirror.

Releasing the battery cover is sweet and easy: it pops up upon sliding the latch at the bottom. Underneath lies a 1000 mAh Li-Ion BL-4U unit.

The 1000 mAh battery is a downgrade from the 1500 mAh unit on the E71

We do find that to be one of the handset’s shortcomings as the E71 was equipped with a way more powerful 1500 mAh battery. There was just no stopping the E71, and its battery life extends way beyond its side-sliding sibling.

With the 1000 mAh extensive use of features like Wi-Fi and GPS on top of a few calls a day and you will need to recharge in the evening.

In terms of design, the Nokia E75 is defined by the stark contrast between the fingerprint-prone glossy front and the state of the art rear panel. Still we have to admit that the handset handles pretty nicely, save for the tiny controls clustered around the D-pad. The build is rock solid.

The E75 held in hand
Display is pretty good

The Nokia E75 display has the company’s trademark high image quality. The days when Nokia was way ahead of the pack in terms of screen quality are now gone but that’s due to the competition finally turning their attention to the matter, and not because Nokia have started falling behind. Anyways, even if that’s true now, you can always trust a Nokia handset to have a vibrant display and great sunlight legibility.

The display has very decent picture quality

Brightness levels are good and contrast is pretty decent, but admittedly not as good as the iPhone 3G or the recently reviewed BlackBerry handsets. In terms of size, the 2.4″ screen of the E75 is acceptable given the compact dimensions of the handset while QVGA is still the rule outside the touchscreen realm. As we already said however, a larger display (at least a 2.6-incher) would have been much appreciated.

Sunlight legibility is not an issue on the E75. Even if the colors get washed out, the display remains perfectly visible even on the brightest of days.
QWERTY keyboard is splendid, numberpad not so much

The alphanumeric keypad of the Nokia E75 certainly has its issues with the keys being a bit too thin for our liking. What you have on the E75 is actually four thin plastic plates rather than distinct buttons. Tactility is certainly compromised and press feedback is inadequate. The bottom row of keys is particularly adversely affected by these issues and the narrowness means your fingers will often slide off.

The keypad has room for improvement

However, with a QWERTY keyboard as good as this, you are unlikely to be using the alphanumeric keypad too often. The keys on the four-row QWERTY are large and provide much better feedback. The layout is also well thought out, with the stop, the comma and the @ symbol each having a dedicated key.

The QWERTY keyboard is almost as comfortable as it gets

The important thing is that once you slide the phone open, you are in for a very comfortable texting experience on the QWERTY keyboard and there are very few handsets to rival it. The E75 is in pretty much the same league as the Nokia E90 and the HTC Touch Pro – at least “textually” speaking.

A really nice touch to the E75 is the vast number of customizable options that the handset has for the slider action. You can pick an application to launch upon sliding the keyboard out and you can set it return to homescreen upon closing.

Symbian S60 UI now comes with Feature Pack 2

Nokia E75 runs on Symbian 9.3 OS with the Series60 3rd Edition user interface. It has Feature Pack 2, unlike the Nokia E71 which only had the major features of Feature Pack 2 ported for the FP1. Frankly speaking, in normal use you won’t find much difference between the two.

The Nokia E75 is powered by a 369 MHz CPU. In Symbian smartphone terms this means that navigating the menus is pretty fast with instant response to key presses and no delays whatsoever.

Nokia E75 runs on Symbian S60 3.2

The E75 comes with the new S60 icons, similar to the one found on the 5th edition and brings some new accelerometer-based functionality. This includes automatic rotation of the display plus silencing calls and snoozing the alarm by flipping your phone over or tapping the display. The extended number of settings for the slider is also a nice addition but that almost completes the list.

The accelerometer sensor has a number of settings

The phone’s main menu has two view modes: a 4 x 3 grid of icons and a list. However with the E75 you cannot opt for having animated icons as with some other Nokia phones. This is probably just another way of reiterating the specific business focus of the phone. At least the font size is configurable depending on your preferences.

The main menu has two view modes

You can also switch between portrait and landscape orientation for every menu by either opening and closing the slider or by using the accelerometer. Please bear in mind that the accelerometer is disabled by default so you will have to turn it on from the setting menu in order to use it.

Almost every part of the interface has a landscape mode too

The circle next to the icon of a running application is a well known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications that are still running in the background.

The active stand-by mode goes without saying on the Nokia E75. This is a convenient way to add shortcuts to all your favorite applications on the home screen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access. In addition you can bring up to 14 different kinds of notifications starting from email boxes and voice mail through calendar and to-dos to Music player and FM radio currently running track. How many of those 14 get displayed is completely up to you.

Basic, active or talking stand-by theme

Both of the one-touch keys (messaging and calendar) can be customized to access any feature (actually two per key) of choice. The two soft keys functions can also vary.

If for some reason the active stand-by mode isn’t your cup of tea you can revert to the basic theme or switch to the new talking theme. The basic theme allows you to assign shortcuts to the directions of the D-pad while the talking theme…well, it talks. It brings four shortcuts to your homescreen and tells you what the currently selected one is. Once you enter any of the menus, it tells you which menu you have opened and sometimes gives you some extra useful information about it. For example, when you enter the clock application, it tells you the current time.

The talking theme has its own clock application

This talking theme is pretty comfortable for working with without looking at the phone. It might be a good idea to activate it when using the phone while driving for example and save yourself some needless distraction.

Another cool feature of ther recent E-series handsets allows you to toggle between two different phone setups. Each of them can be customized with its own theme and homescreen applications for maximum usability. In this way you can have both a leisure and a business profile and alternate between them with a single click.

The built-in memory is 85MB, which is a decent amount. The included 4GB microSD memory card comes in very handy for extending it, but even higher capacity cards are supported.

As we managed to confirm, Nokia E75 has no problem handling a 16GB microSD card, which is the largest currently available on the market. Accessing applications or any other files on the memory card is quick and you probably won’t notice any difference compared to accessing ones in the phone memory.

As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It is launched by the dedicated key on the side of the E75 and it does a good job, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a very high percentage of the user commands.

And finally, there’s a nice security feature from the E71 and E66 known as Remote Lock. It’s not a new feature per se, but up until now it was usually reserved for corporate scenarios. Now it’s available to everyone.

If your Nokia E75 gets stolen or lost, you simply send a coded SMS message to remotely lock the phone. After three unsuccessful attempts of to unlock it, it wipes itself clean of all personal or sensitive info. You might not get your Nokia E75 back, but at least nobody will get your personal data either.

The customization options for the user interface of the Nokia E75 are mainly restricted to its functionality out of the box. In stark contrast to the huge amount of customizable notifications, there are only two different visual themes preinstalled on the handset. So if you are into changing those icons and colors you will have to download new ones from the internet….but don’t worry, there’s plenty to choose from out there.

No changes in the phonebook

The phonebook of the Nokia E75 hasn’t evolved too much from the E71. It still does a tremendous job though, offering storage space for a virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields and all the available memory potentially usable for that purpose. We can’t imagine anyone managing to fill that up. You are also treated to as many fields for each contact as you like and some other nice extras, so there’s very little reason to complain.

Welcome to the phonebook

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name, and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any name. You can pick whether you want the SIM contacts, the service numbers or the phone memory contacts to be displayed or alternatively show them all at the same time.

Some of the available settings

Predictive search, contact database back-up as well as grouping are also available. The final nice extra is the setting to search for contacts on a remote server (Mail for Exchange or Intellisync).

Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you are able to think of any. Personal ringtones and video can also be assigned. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give a specific ringtone to each group.

Good luck trying to find a field that Nokia missed when editing a contact

The Call log application can hold up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key in standby.

Detailed info of your past communications is to be found in the call log

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. You can even filter the entries (by contact or by type), a useful feature if you’re looking for a specific call.
Telephony has to be good

With Nokia E75 you are extremely unlikely to experience any reception issues. Sound during calls is very clear and free of any interferences.

Nokia E75 features the really nice Smart dialing feature, which helps you quickly find a contact straight from the standby screen. All you need to do is type a few letters and all contacts with names (first or last) containing them get displayed. Working with both the keypad and the keyboard it is certainly the best way to access your contacts without even opening the phonebook.

The smart dial works with both the numberpad and the keyboard

Nokia E75 doesn’t feature the advanced Communication Manager out of the box like E71 but you can download it for free from the Nokia download center. With this quite useful application you can opt for various settings – accepting only calls from your contacts, from all non-private numbers or from anyone.

In addition you can set up different ringing profiles that can be scheduled to activate at a certain time (hour and day). Finally, you can also set the behavior of the phone when rejecting a call – busy tone, reject with SMS or answering machine on are some of the options.

The advanced communication manager isn’t preinstalled but you can download it for free

The Nokia E71 also has support for VoIP calls – you just enter your account details and you are all set.

We conducted our traditional speakerphone test with Nokia E75. It performed rather poorly ranking well below average. Here is how it compares to same of the other handsets we have tested. You can find information on the actual testing process, along with the full list of tested devices here.
Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overal score
Nokia E75 64.8 60.7 65.9 Below Average
Nokia E63 64.6 62.1 69.0 Below Average
Nokia E51 67.0 65.7 71.2 Average
Nokia E71 68.0 66.5 76.2 Good
Sony Ericsson W960 72.3 73.5 76.7 Very Good
Samsung i8510 INNOV8 78.9 75.7 77.5 Excellent

Messaging got even better

The E-series devices are mostly about messaging and connectivity so we are not surprised that they got this part right. What actually did surprise us is that they somehow managed to outdo the already excellent E71 email client. The full-fledged keyboard and the software support make for a great messenger. From a nice and intuitive editor to advanced predictive input and error correction – it’s all there.

There are three message editors aboard: SMS and MMS share the first one, audio and e-mail. The SMS editor is the familiar application for all Symbian S60 smartphones. It has a counter of the characters left from the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

An SMS automatically turns into an MMS when you add some multimedia content

It goes without saying that a delivery report can be activated. The reports pop up on screen, once the message reaches the addressee and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts you to either save it to the Drafts folder or discard it.

The audio message, albeit technically a type of MMS, was obviously deemed worthy of a dedicated editor.It allows you to either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.

Recording an audio message for sending

Email is the highlight in the Nokia E75 and at the MWC 2009 Nokia showcased their updated email client for the first time. It’s a downloadable application so you can probably upgrade your Nokia E71 as well.

The new email client has better looks and better messaging organization. Each of the folders of your mailbox can now be ordered by whatever criteria you might like and can then be searched if necessary.

Composing an email on the E75 is as easy as it gets

You can also select what the folders preview should look like i.e. how many lines should be given to each entry and whether the title dividers should be applied etc.

You can sort your email much like on a desktop computer email client

The email client supports a wide range of personal and corporate email standards such as IBM Lotus Notes Traveller Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail etc.

Encryption is also on board, as well as mobile VPN support for connecting to secure corporate Intranets.

It seems Nokia has got everything covered except for Blackberry Connect support. The company has announced that since they are offering a push email service similar to that of Blackberry Connect, they are now direct competitors and as such, they do not offer Blackberry Connect support since the Nokia E71 and E66.

It’s a really odd decision and it clearly shows that selling their email service to end customers is more important to Nokia than selling their handsets. While this may sound perfectly reasonable to Nokia’s marketing department, it might turn out to be a deal breaker for some potential E75 buyers.

Quite naturally the Nokia E75 supports the ultra easy email setup we’ve been treated to recently. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start enjoying email-on-the-go. The Nokia E75 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.

On the whole, much like Nokia E75, the Nokia E75 is a dream texting device and certainly ranks among the best messengers we have ever seen. Nothing beats the large keys and screen of the Nokia E90 for example, but the E75 has some other tricks up its sleeve. And besides, the E90 pays the price for all that real estate with its huge size and weight.
All quiet on the music front

Full-featured music ability is not supposed to make or break a business device but the music player of the Nokia E75 is still pretty decent. That’s hardly surprising considering how mature the Symbian S60 music player is, and it didn’t cost Nokia anything to just put it in the E75.

The lack of dedicated music keys is easily overcome by the smooth D-pad control. There is a huge number of audio formats supported including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. M3U playlists are also managed seamlessly and transferred files are added to the music library trouble-free by choosing the refresh option.

The music player is pretty straightforward

Filtering tracks by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available. Tracks are uploaded to Nokia E75 via Bluetooth, USB or by simple download. You can also use a card reader for that purpose and transfer them directly to your memory card. Upon completing a USB transfer, the phone automatically prompts scanning for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new ones to the music library.

The player comes with five equalizer presets, bass booster and stereo widening effect. You can also create new equalizer presets if the preloaded ones won’t do.

The available equalizer presets

Finally, being one of Nokia’s best equipped phones, the Nokia E75 naturally also includes support for the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which allows listening to music on a Bluetooth stereo headset.
Video player

The Nokia E75 features Real player for playing your video clips. The video player works in portrait or fullscreen landscape mode. The softkey functions are hidden in full screen so they don’t get in the way, and they only pop up when a key is pressed.

Watching a video on the E75

The relatively big screen and the MP4 video clips support add up to a passable video watching experience but you will probably resort to another player anyway. The reason for this is quite simple – the E75 lacks DivX and XviD support out of the box. Luckily, finding applications for the S60 3.2 that support those codecs is a fairly easy task.

FM radio is also available

The Nokia E75 sports stereo FM radio with RDS. Controlled with the same application as in other FP2 phones, it has several new settings over the E71 but, as you might have guessed, hardly anything revolutionary.

Upon starting, the app asks you where you are located in order to set up the proper frequencies for your area.

The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. Scanning for alternative frequencies when traveling can also be set to automatic.

The FM radio app

If internet connection is available you can also enjoy internet radio through the shortcut available in the radio application home screen.
Audio quality

The Nokia E75 has much better audio quality than the E71. It has improved in almost every aspect with the noise level and dynamic range particularly impressive.

The frequency response is also pretty decent, being a good match for the Apple’s 2nd generation iPod Touch for almost the whole range. The weak spots in the audio performance of the E75 are the stereo crosstalk and the intermodulation distortion. Here are the results so you can see for yourselves.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Nokia E75 +0.11, -0.91 -91.6 91.4 0.012 0.462 -73.3
Nokia E63 +2.63, -2.38 -75.0 75.3 0.018 0.102 -74.9
Nokia E71 +0.74, -1.26 -74.5 74.7 0.016 0.097 -75.8
Nokia E66 +0.74, -0.84 -72.3 72.5 0.021 0.102 -72.9
Nokia N78 +0.30, -1.59 -76.1 76.1 0.014 0.548 -72.7
Nokia N81 +0.39, -1.13 -86.6 95.8 0.041 0.040 -69.9
Samsung i550 +0.74, -0.76 -90.8 86.9 0.0024 0.033 -89.1
Sony Ericsson W980 +0.31, -1.25 -86.0 89.4 0.037 0.828 -86.3

Nokia E75 vs Apple iPod Touch 2G frequency response graphs

You can find more info about the testing process here.
Image gallery – nice and simple

The gallery of the Nokia E75 doesn’t have the rotating 3D view we are used to seeing in the Nseries but it’s still fairly decent.

The image gallery on Nokia E75

There are no changes between the gallery here and the one on the E71 – you can easily browse images and zoom in up to 8x. Overall, picture browsing and zooming is fast and even comparably large files are unlikely to bother you too much.

Looking at a single picture

We have seen a couple of Nokia handsets do even better but the E75 does just fine, and it’s important to remember that it’s not really meant to be a multimedia powerhouse.

The gallery file-management features are pretty extensive too, and even includes sending multiple files at a time.

Scandalously poor camera

Having seen how bad the Nokia E71 camera was, we were hoping the E75 might have been in line for some kind of upgrade. However we were in for a major disappointment as the performance of the device was nothing short of disastrous (and this is a retail unit we’re talking about).

It may sound decent on paper – 3 megapixel sensor with auto focus and LED flash – but the reality is completely different. In fact the LED flash is not much of an addition, as its effective reach is quite limited…yet that’s the least of the issues with the camera.

First off, the lack of lens protection means that the glass above the camera lens will get scratched in no time. And, as we mentioned before, while the dedicated camera key seems like a welcome addition, its poor ergonomics and slow launch leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

The camera user interface is probably the only good part about the E75 snapper. Using our favorite tabbed interface, the camera offers extensive settings: from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects which are labeled color tones.

The camera user interface is pretty familiar

A gridline can also be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing you photos using the photographic rule-of-thirds. Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic. The sequence mode and self-timer are nothing new. The flash can be set to four positions: automatic, always on, red-eye reduction and always off.

Small font tooltips are displayed to help you understand what the phone is doing at each specific moment (processing image, for example). You can also customize the toolbar deciding on shortcuts to display for which settings and in what order.

The main issue of the Nokia E75 camera is its extremely poor picture quality. Pictures have remarkably low levels of resolved detail, poor contrast and inadequate dynamic range. The colors are also far from being precise (although they might be the thing that’s least off target) and as a whole there is hardly anything good we can say about image quality.

Well, you’ve been warned. You can now check out the sample photos taken with the E75 camera.

Nokia E75 camera sample photos

The video recording is certainly one of the better things about the E75 camera. The business-minded handset manages VGA videos at 30 fps, which sounds quite nice actually but in reality is not something to write a blog about.

While the quality of the still photos is yelling “I’m a business phone, don’t blame me”, the videos are pretty decent. The framerate is okay and the contrast seems a lot better than on the regular photos. There is also a decent amount of detail captured so on most occasions videos turn out to be usable.

Here is a sample video for you to check out.
Connectivity is the E75 element

Putting the abysmal camera performance behind us, it’s time to check out the connectivity options. This is a great chance for the messenger to repair its damaged reputation and it was certainly up to the challenge.

It is truly on fire where data transfer is in question, having it all: from the outdated Infrared through Bluetooth v2.0 and USB v2.0 to Wi-Fi and 3G. Furthermore, the 3G comes with HSDPA support for the fastest network data transfers.

A hot-swappable card slot is also on board. It might just be the quickest and most convenient way of transferring data.

We give an excellent mark to Nokia E75 on connectivity, just because we know no better.
Web browser is fine

Browsing the internet on a Nokia smartphone is definitely a positive experience. The E75 is no exception with its excellent page rendering making most web pages look like they do on a desktop computer. We have to admit that a higher resolution would have allowed more content to fit on the screen, but maybe next time.

The virtual mouse cursor is easy to control and generally works great. The D-pad control is not as comfortable as Samsung’s optical joystick or BlackBerry’s trackball but still does the job.

Browsing GSMArena.com on the E75

A mini-map can be activated to help you navigate your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also easily adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses. The web browser also offers fullscreen view mode.

The final touches to the Nokia E75 browser are the built-in full Java and Flash support . We didn’t manage to stumble upon any flash content the E75 was unable to handle.

Flash video handled seamlessly

Flash video is also not a problem for the E75 web browser – you can watch video on the full-featured versions of YouTube and the like. This certainly is one of the strongest selling points of the Nokia browser when compared to BlackBerry and the other Flash-free alternatives. After all, if you cannot see the content it’s not much consolation that the interface and controls are perfect.

Excellent time-management

Time-management is another business phone virtue. Little wonder then that the Nokia E75 has one of the most elaborate organizer packages we’ve seen. There are a lot of nice applications, all very user-friendly and functional.

The trip starts with the calendar. It has four different types of view – to-do, weekly, daily and agenda as well as five types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Meeting request, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. The agenda view modes is new to Nokia handsets and is really nice – it allows the dates of the month and the events for the selected day to appear simultaneously on the screen.

Setting up an event

Every event has its own unique fields, some of which allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder. You can also set the synchronization type as private or public.

Mobile office is also duly covered, with seamless handling of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Furthermore, unlike most other Nokia handsets out there, editing documents is supported right out of the box. With the Nokia E75 you won’t need to pay extra for editing your office documents.

The E75 also supports document editing and creating out of the box

There are still a number of updates for QuickOffice that come at additional cost but most users can do just fine without them. The ones that use MS Office 2007 documents however won’t be so lucky as the support for those doesn’t come included and they will have to purchase the latest version of the application.

A PDF reader is also part of the Nokia E75 preinstalled content and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.

A PDF reader is also available

The other pre-bundled organizing and time-management applications are: a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough. The ActiveNotes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes.

Some of the other organizer apps: unit converter, calculator and ActiveNotes

The Nokia E75 alarm clock application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name, start time. You can also customize the snooze period from the settings menu.

The E75 allows dozens of alarms to be set simultanelously

The useful “Search” application is also present on the Nokia E75. Its reserved space in the active stand-by menu no longer comes as a surprise. After all, an application this useful really deserves to be conveniently placed. The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia based on a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and results are then listed.

If it’s on the phone the Search app will find it

Finally, the Nokia E75 features a dictionary with a really rich database. English comes pre-installed but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website.

The dictionary has a rich database
GPS navigation is pretty good

The Nokia E75 comes complete with a built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS and Nokia Maps navigation preinstalled. You also get 3 months of free voice-guided navigation with the phone.

The preinstalled version of the Nokia Maps is 2.0 which seems pretty nice to work with. It has really detailed map coverage of a huge number of countries and a lot of extras such as traffic information, city guides and so on. Sadly, the extra features need to be purchased separately, as must the voice-guidance after the trial period has expired.

Nokia maps has four different view modes

The app also has very decent looks and easily customizable route planning algorithms. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Route selection can be set to either fastest or shortest. Nokia Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and simply use the phone as an electronic map.

Some of the settings available for the route-planning algorithm

If you don’t want to use Nokia Maps, you can opt for any of the numerous third-party applications available on the market.

The overall impression of the Nokia E75 GPS functionality is positive, with the GPS sensitivity pretty acceptable. It is good enough for most users’ needs and won’t make too many people look for alternatives.
Final Words

Adding value to an already impressive fleet of business handsets is by no means an easy task. And since there’s no doubt that the E75 is up to the E-series standard – there’s nothing too big to complain about. Though, well, there’s nothing too big altogether. Nokia E75 is just an alternative: it’s the usual Eseries skill with a different approach to QWERTY and compact design.

But before we dig deeper in the E-series ecosystem, let’s look for a meaningful competition to help us better define the Nokia E75. The form factor and the smart platform pretty much narrow the list down to a single nominee outside the touchscreen world. HTC S740 sports an almost identical spec sheet and it costs the same, so it’s purely a matter of OS preference here, isn’t it?

HTC S740

The side-slide QWERTY form factor is a Symbian debut and the fact that it packs in a pleasantly compact and nice handling piece of gear is only in favor of the E75. Its only problem is it’s launched after the stunning E71 and thus risks being burdened with the wrong expectations.

Nokia E71

Form factor aside, the only things Nokia E75 has over the E71 are the FP2 and the VGA@30fps video recording but that doesn’t give it much of a multimedia edge. Nor does the 3.5 mm jack (that’s another novelty) make such a big difference to us.

But anyway, even if the E75 has nothing groundbreaking to offer it still can’t be ignored as a viable Eseries option. After all, a handset that sits between E90 and E71 just can’t go wrong. There maybe nothing to write home about but write you sure will.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e75-review-342p9.php

Nokia E75

Introduction

The Nokia E75, announced at MWC earlier this year, is the latest addition to the Eseries range. It has a full sized QWERTY keyboard, the fully array of connectivity options, a reasonable 3.2 megapixel camera coupled with decent multimedia features (including a 3.5mm audio jack), and runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 with a comprehensive suite of software (incorporating improved messaging, as well as the improved Eseries versions of Calendar and Contacts).

Eseries devices have traditionally primarily appealed to business users, but in recent times their appeal has been broadened and this has been reflected in the sales figures. It’s an impressive achievement given that the enterprise smartphone space is one of the most fiercely competitive. With QWERTY keyboards a popular trend for 2009, and with a number of consumer-friendly hardware tweaks, the E75 seems set to continue this trend. Part of this is improved Eseries sales to consumers; a trend that was first apparent with the E65, but is also, at least in part, attributable to an effort by Nokia to promote dual usage of its enterprise phones.

The E66 and E71 saw the introduction of the ingenious ‘Switch’ software, which allowed users to switch between two different home screens – one for personal use and one for business. With the E75, this dual nature, has, in a sense, been extended into the hardware. Its unusual form factor, a horizontal slider, suggests a device with a dual nature; it is one part standard 12-key phone (recalling Nokia’s voice centric smartphones), and one part QWERTY messenger (recalling Nokia’s communicator series). Incidentally, some of the consumer appeal of the E75 will be blunted by the presence in Nokia’s portfolio of the Nokia 5730. The 5730 is effectively a sister device to the E75 and underlines the strength of the current trend towards QWERTY devices in the consumer space. It is significantly cheaper than the E75, but lacks the hallmark high quality materials and build quality of the Eseries, plus it has a more consumer-orientated software bundle.

In this review we’re going to look at the E75 from a variety of user standpoints. In the first part of the review, we’ll cover the general design and hardware features. Future parts of this review will look at the multimedia capabilities and (messaging) appeal from both a consumer and enterprise standpoint.

Hardware and design

With dimensions of 111.8 x 50 x 14.4mm (69cc), the E75 is impressively compact, given its form factor attributes. It is bigger than the E51 (114.8 x 46 x 12mm), but compares favourably to the HTC S740 (116.3 x 43.4 x 16.6mm), which has a similar form factor. A quick glance at the device suggests that the E75 is a littler taller and wider than the average device. However, the extent of this is deceptive; it is, in fact, just a little smaller than the N78 (113 x 49 x 15.1 mm and 76cc). Effectively this means that the addition of the keyboard is not adding significantly to the overall size of the device; crucially, this means that the E75 in slide closed mode looks and feels like a regular candy-bar phone. As a result, there are some compromises in the keyboard, but there is a trade off between size and utility and the balance is going to be different for everyone; overall, the E75 steers a good middle line.

As with other Eseries devices, the metal materials have increased the weight a little and this is extended further by the characteristics of the form factor. At 139g, it is on the heavy end of the mobile phone scale (N78 is 101.8g, HTC S740 is 140g), but the extra weight isn’t really noticeable when carrying it around and does give the device a pleasingly solid feel.

The overall design of the E75 follows the same design language as the E71 and E66. It is clear that the desire to present a serious image of an efficient business tool remains central to the thinking of the E75’s design. However, the introductions of further colour variants, notable the bronze and red colours, also recognise that some users desire a device with a bit more character. The prominent use of metallic materials on the side and the back of the device (stainless steel) echo the E71, as do the sensible layouts for connectivity ports and side buttons.

From the front, the E75 looks slightly unbalanced – the 2.4″ screen feels like it has been squashed down into the keypad. This is an artefact of the dual design, but of course this is not immediately apparent when you first look at the device. The 240 x 320 pixel resolution screen is transflective, which gives good performance both indoors and outdoors. There is the usual auto-brightness adjustment, thanks to an ambient light sensor. While the E75’s screen does not measure up to the AM-OLED screen of the N85, it is still a very decent QVGA TFT screen. The lowish resolution is sure to attract some complaints, but for the majority of users it’s perfectly adequate and, in any case, a higher resolution does not make much sense given the physical size of the screen. An alternative arrangement would be having a touchscreen stretching all the way across the front of the device, but this would move the device away from the dual phone/messaging area. However, an altogether separate device, with this configuration, is a distinct possibility for the future.

The E75’s D-pad is raised above the surrounding control keys – there should be no accidental key presses here. Inside it is the increasingly common breathing and notification light. The breathing light can, optionally, be set to fade in and out (when the screen is blanked), indicating the device is still on. The same light is used as the notification light which will, optionally, blink, for a user-selectable length of time, when there is a missed call, new message or new email. In the device’s settings, each of these notifications can be selected individually, so it’s possible, for example, to be only notified of missed calls.

Around the D-pad are the usual one-touch keys for quick access to the home screen, Calendar and Messaging. One of the one-touch keys has been used for the delete/cancel/backspace key, replacing the Contacts shortcut. Its absence isn’t really noticeable as one of the default softkeys on the homescreen is for Contacts and the smart dial functionality of the homescreen is, in any case, a faster way to access a specific contact. Below the one touch keys is the usual 12 key T9 keypad for text entry and number dialing.

Both the one-touch keys and numeric keys are a little cramped in the vertical direction, which may be an issue for those with larger hands, but this has been offset by the key shaping. The numeric keys are not flat; they are angled downwards (from the bottom to the top), this means every key is slightly angled. This gives the same effect as having a ridge between each row of keys, thus giving the impression of better key spacing that would be the case with a purely flat keyboard. In practice, this means fewer mis-hits and gives a keypad that is eminently usable in T9 mode.

It is a similar story with the one touch keys, although these are angled towards each other – the effect is the same though – improved key accuracy. This attention to detailed design is one of the hallmarks of Nokia Eseries devices and is all the more impressive given the presence of a full sized QWERTY keyboard just a slide away. A similar technique is used on the Nokia E55 to even more impressive effect, but we’ll cover that in more detail in our E55 review.

The bottom of the E75 houses a standard 2mm Nokia power port. The left hand side of the device has the microSD card slot and the microUSB port. Unusually, the E75 can charge via either the power port or the microUSB port. This is the best of both worlds, but sadly it is probably a one-off; USB charging was not part of the specifications of the hardware platform used by the E75 and was probably specifically added due to consumer demand. Going forward (e.g. E55), USB charging will be the only method available. There is a standard 3.5mm audio on the top of the device, which is definitely preferable to the 2.5mm jack used on the E71. The right hand side of the device houses the volume keys, which surround the voice command key (which doubles as the mute key during calls) and the camera capture key. The camera capture key is awkwardly positioned next to the volume keys, rather than on the end of the device, which makes it impossible to use when the slide is open.

On the back of the device, the stainless steel patterned battery cover draws the eye, but you’ll also find the phone’s loudspeaker and 3.2 megapixel camera, with its accompanying flash and self-portrait mirror. Inside, there’s a 1000 mAh BL-4U battery; it’s not as big as the E71 or E55’s 1500 mAh battery, but certainly does enough to maintain Eseries reputation for decent battery life. Heavy users will find themselves recharging at the end of every day, but for others two, or even three, days usage is not unrealistic depending on the circumstances.

The main event of the E75 is the side slider. On opening the slide, you’re presented with a QWERTY keyboard and the screen orientation is rotated (with very little delay). The slide is well built and has a pleasing ‘thunk’ when you open or close it. In both modes, each piece is locked into position – you’re certainly not going to have any problems with accidental openings or closings. Inevitably with such a form factor, there is a noticeable gap between the top and bottom elements, but in action this has much less of an impact than the picture might suggest. In closed mode, there’s a very small amount of downward give, but next to no side-to-side give. We did notice some variations in these elements ourselves (notably with an early prototype model), but shipping devices seem to be getting good reviews for build quality. However, this is being fussy; the E75 has excellent industrial design in this department and we’ve every expectation that this should last through the device’s lifetime.

It is good to see that the E75 has extensive ‘slide handling’ settings. Options include the ability to open a specific application when you open the slider, and to go back to the homescreen when you close it. There’s also the ability to automatically activate the speaker phone functionality when you open the slide, as well as key locking options. For those that like personalisation, you can also customise the audio sounds that are played when you open and close the slide.

The keyboard itself consists of a four line keyboard. The top three lines are made up of the standard QWERTY letter layout with a delete key on the second row and comma, full stop and return keys on the third line. The bottom line has a function key and control key on either end, then matching shift keys, a character key and @ key on the left side, and an ‘open brackets’ and apostrophe key on right, separated by the space key in the middle. The function key acts as a modifier to give access to other punctuation, numbers and a limited set of symbols. Further symbols can be accessed using the character key. The Ctrl key is used in shortcuts which are found in some of the E75’s applications.

The keys are made of a matte plastic (similar to the E63’s keys), which prevent your finger slipping. The keyboard’s backlit when needed, which means you can type even in total darkness. The backlight is controlled by the same ambient light sensor as the screen. This means it is only turned on in low light conditions, thus optimising battery usage – a nice touch. The individual keys are flat; this is a natural consequence of the slider mechanism. The central metal stripe is part of the slider mechanism; it is designed to stop the mechanism getting stuck on keys (a common problem on similar phones). Nokia could have sunk the keyboard into the device to achieve a better key shape, but this solution has its own problems.

The keyboard is best used as a two-hand thumb-board; realistically, you’re not going to be able to touch type on it – the keyboard is too simply too small and the device weighting is wrong. On the plus side, the keys are generously sized and are less of a strain over long text entry sessions than E71 style keyboards. As with any phone keyboard, you become more accustomed to it over time, but it is fair to say that the E75 has less of a learning curve than many of its competitors.

The E75 has optional predictive text input for both the keypad (T9) and the keyboard. With a fully QWERTY keyboard, there’s obviously no T9 implementation – instead, the benefits come from the optional auto-completion and auto-correction components; the second of which includes an adjustable ‘strength’ component. When entering text, the most likely auto-complete (predicted) word is shown in light gray text as you are typing – hitting the space bar ‘accepts’ the suggested word, thus speeding up text entry. Other word suggestions are shown via a pop-up menu, which is accessed by pressing up on the D-pad. Auto-correction works in a similar way; if you mis-spell a word then it is automatically corrected, with the original spelling shown above (which you can switch back to by pressing up on the D-pad). In use the auto-completion and auto-correction make a significant difference to the speed of input. They do require you to look at the phone’s screen and make a conscious decision to use them, so their utility is a matter of training and familiarity.

The phone’s language settings enable you to switch the various text input features on and off individually, giving fine control over how, exactly, the text input software works. It is good to see this level of customisation, as different settings will suit different people. For example, most people will want to use predictive text entry on the keypad, but some may want it off on the keyboard. Similarly, if you rarely make spelling mistakes and have a good degree of accuracy on the E75’s keyboard, then you may want to switch off auto-correction or tweak its strength, as it can interfere with real names.

Our experience suggests that basic text entry speed does not vary as much as you might expect between different types of QWERTY keyboard. We have also noted that the on board software can have as much, or even a bigger, impact as the keyboard’s design. With low quality keyboards there’s a definite drop off in performance (some of iMate’s atrocious keyboards spring to mind), but this generally is not an issue for Nokia; both the E71 and E75 are among the best of their type. In testing, the E75 just edged out the E71 for us, but there wasn’t a great deal of difference. Both do a lot better than 12 key keypads, but such results will vary from user to user. As a general guide, with practice, you should be able to achieve somewhere between 25 and 30 words per minute with the E75.

Worth noting, especially for ex-Communicator users, is the absence of a D-pad and shortcut keys on the keyboard. When using the device in landscape mode (slide down) you will frequently need to reach up to the D-pad to navigate through the UI or move through text. This isn’t really an issue for most people as it is within easy reaching distance, but those used to doing everything from one keyboard or who are left handed may find it awkward. In an ideal world, you would have the D-pad replicated on the lower keyboard, but realistically there just isn’t enough space.
Conclusion

At MWC, Nokia explained how the E75 design brief included an element of recreating the Nokia Communicator in a new line. The starting point was the Nokia 9300, which was popular because of its smaller size (and was the best liked communicator by female users). The basic user needs have not changed – they still want a phone first, but also require extra functionality and, for Nokia, the challenge was how to do this in a small package. The E75, according to Valtteri Eroma, head of Eseries Design, uses the ‘side slider’ to ‘bring the benefits of a communicator with the attributes of a phone’. Its ‘primary use is as a clever smartphone, and its secondary use is as a messaging communicator’. Of course, ultimately, the E75 is part of a portfolio of products and should be understood in that context.

Top end Communicator fans may fume at the comparison, but for many it is still valid. After all, a significant number of Communicator users will get all the functionality the need in the E75. Whether we’ll ever see another true ‘Nokia Communicator’ is open to debate. It has been recently suggested that the next Communicator has been cancelled as part of Nokia’s rationalisation of devices under development. This isn’t really surprising because, in some senses, the general market has moved closer to the communicator view of the world than ever before. Devices like the E75, the forthcoming N97 and other future devices all share some of the DNA of the Communicator family. Consequently they also leave less room for a dedicated high end business device. Perhaps then the E75 should be considered as offspring of, and a successor to, both the gull-wing E70 and the Communicator family.

It is also important to set the E75 in the context of the current Eseries portfolio. It is positioned as a mid to high end Eseries device and its initial price of 375 Euro (before taxes and subsidies) is at the more expensive end of Nokia’s portfolio (especially as it translates into £379 for the UK market). It doesn’t offer the value of some of Nokia’s S60 products, but it is featured packed and feels more professional, thanks to its excellent materials and industrial design.

The E75 shares space with the similarly specified, and lowered priced, Nokia E71, but adopts a completely different form factor to accommodate the QWERTY keyboard. HTC have demonstrated there’s a reasonable market for devices with this form factor (S710, S730, S740) and the Nokia E75 should be able to carve out a similar niche. It will not enjoy the sales success of the E71, with its more standard form factor, but it will provide an attractive complimentary offering. For the technical audience, the E75 offers several significant improvements over the E71. Most notable are the improved multimedia support and an upgraded version of S60, which gives better overall performance. However, these factors will be offset by the appearance of future Eseries offerings – it is safe to assume that an upgraded E71 will appear before too long, while the E51 upgrade has just been announced in the shape of the E52. The real appeal of the E75 is thus in its dual nature – it is both a phone (E51) and messaging (E71) optimised device at the same time.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E75-Part_1_General_Design_and_Hardware.php