Nokia E75 Review

by Satish on June 15, 2009

The new E-series doesn’t really promise anything great but it does promise to increase the population of Nokia’s E series, if nothing. Read on.

Looks/Form Factor:

Before you even a hold a Nokia E75 in your hands you’d assume that it weighs much more than it actually is. That’s because you’ve seen the ads and know that this thing is endowed with a slide out QWERTY keyboard in addition to the alpha numeric keypad on the front. The design has a simple equation.

HTC S743 + E series curves = Et Viola!

: See what I mean?

The keypad on front is cramped and it’s easy to press more than one key at a time. Most keys like call receive/calendar and message/reject/switch off are clubbed into a single key which is bound to get your goat. Why didn’t they just give a big screen upfront? Because then, the E75 would be accused of being a serious N97, that’s why.

The shiny cover at the back gives the phone a very rich look but its also delicate enough to fall on merely shaking it, along with the battery, the sink and the kitchen. I’m not ruling out the fact that could be an individual fault with this particular unit. And whats with the gold colour scheme? I doubt any self respecting entrepreneur/CEO types will want it, unless of course they are a hip-hop record label manager or something.

Display:

The 2.4 inch QVGA screen has impressive brightness levels and is fairly readable in sunlight. Nokia have scrimped on the screen to make way for a keypad on the front. A larger screen would have been very welcome.

Camera:

The 3.2 MP AF unit is good enough for a business phone. Though there’s no improvement in the camera application, the pictures look decent and should be good enough for the odd shot. It also comes with geo tagging which should come in handy if you don’t exactly remember what happened where, like most CEO’s and dictators.

There is also a secondary VGA camera on the front which should be usable once the 3G auctions are done and over with.

Software/ PIM Functions

The E75 is the first E-series decide to come with a revised OS in the form of the S60 V3 FP2. The E75 comes with an excellent Calendar app which should come as a boon if you can no longer afford a homo sapien secretary in these recessionary times.

The E75 also supports an array of document formats. It easily chewed up a 7MB Excel sheet without any problem. Though the PDF reader is a disappointment, you should get alternatives on the web. The E75 also comes with a default ZIP file manager which, although slow, can come in very handy.

Connectivity

The E75 comes with a load of 3-4 letter mumbo jumbo sounding words (Class 32 GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP) which should keep you connected everywhere unless you have a thing for heading off to Antarctica every now and then. No infrared though, lest you actually go to Antarctica and melt some glaciers off.

The E75 also comes with a built-in GPS receiver which is mighty useful for the inbuilt maps software. It has more then enough features for normal usage.

Music:

There is a 3.5mm jack which is totally unexpected, but by Joe, its there. You could thank BlackBerry for this trend of adding 3.5mm jacks to business phones. Apart from that there aren no changes in the music/video player. And I must add, the speaker sounds rather tinny.

Performance:

The call experience from E75 is nothing short of being superb. Smart dialing with both the keypads is very convenient and so is the search. Just type a few letters or numbers and the phone shows up contacts with letters/numbers containing it. And it also dials in support for VoIP calls.

The 1000 mAh Li-Ion battery doesn’t exactly impress me though, considering the fact that its younger brother, the E71 is equipped with a 1500mAH unit. The battery is going to have trouble lasting the whole day under heavy usage.

Messaging & Email:

The phone features all the necessary trappings to make this phone a messengers delight. You have audio messaging (its just audio MMS packaged differently) in addition to SMS, MMS and EMail. Nokia released an updated version of its email software at MWC 2009 which essentially makes life easier whilst handling emails. It supports almost every type of email under the sun including VPN emails for intranets. On the flipside, it doesnt feature support for BlackBerry Connect.

Verdict:

The Nokia E75 isn’t exactly a path breaking cell phone and doesn’t have too many things novel for it to stand out from the rest of the E Series pack. The slide out QWERTY keypad happens to be its only distinguishing feature. That apart, I would definitely recommend this over the mother of all brick phones, and ironically its brother, the E90 Communicator.

Though a larger screen would have been welcome, business men, Nokia would like to assume, should keep an eye on their business and not on their screens. Yes, that was the design brief; case closed. Or was it the HTC S743? Subscribe to feeds and watch the mystery unfold.

Price: 24,499INR

The Good