Nokia E75 – Excellent Messaging Phone

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Great messaging phone, comfortable QWERTY keyboard.

Thumbs Down:

E75 is unlocked so expensive, call quality is below average, numeric keypad is cramped.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Push-to-talk mode, Bluetooth, camera, music player.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

E75 has a 2.4 inch (diagonal) display which gives a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, 16.7 million colors. Supported audio formats are WAV, MP3 and AAC.
The phone has a 3.2 mega pixel camera with flash which gives a resolution of 2048 x 1536, images are stored in JPEG formats, minimum focal length is 3.7 cm, 8x digital zoom, video recorder resolutions are 320 x 240 (QVGA), 176 x 144 (QCIF) and 640 x 480 (VGA).  Videos are stored in formats of H.263 video and AMR audio, MPEG-4 or 3GP.

The phone comes with a 4 GB microSD card for storing photos, videos and music. Connectors on the phone include headset jack – mini-phone 3.5 mm, Micro-USB. Included accessories are USB cable and headset. The 1000 mAH lithium ion battery gives a talk time of 320 minutes and standby time of 280 hours.

Razzle Dazzle:

E75 looks like a standard candy bar type phone but there is a full QWERTY keyboard put in to it and we were amazed that Nokia managed to keep the phone thin even with the slider design. The phone is 4.4 inches high, 0.5 inches thick, 1.9 inches wide and weighs about 4.9 ounces which is a bit heavy. However, it is slim which means you can comfortably put it in your pocket. You get color options of red and black for the phone.

Inside Dope:

E series class phones are made for businessmen just like the N series phones that are music centric and hence cater to the youth. Nokia has put quite a lot of features in to the E series to phone to lure people other than businessmen in to buying the phone but the slightly geeky design with the full QWERTY keyboard may make youth coy over purchasing such phones. We were disappointed with the average call quality and the cost of the phone (it is unlocked, here in US) however the phone is excellent for messaging.

The QVGA display of the E75 is 2.4 inches big, diagonally and gives 16 million color output. It has light sensing technology which adjusts the light of the display based on the environment. This has been done to save the battery juice.

You get two options for home screen, personal and business. The latter mode gives you quick access to the applications that you might need when you are in the office. The personal mode contains games, media player and other such recreational applications that you might want to spend time with at the end of the day. You can also switch off this option.

We thought the navigation bar below the display was a bit cramped because it had too much buttons on it. There are 2 soft keys, navigation key, back button, messages, calendar, shortcuts to home page, talk and end buttons. The end button is also the power key for the handset. Even though the keys are too close to each other it is easy to press and there won’t be many mis hits. However the problem starts with the numeric keypad.
The layout is same with N79 and there is not much space between the keys and since you use these keys a lot on the phone there will be a lot of mishits.

Nokia gives a really spacious QWERTY keyboard underneath the phone and its really far better from the crowded keys on the top. The slider is smooth and you get a click when it fully stretches out of the device. The keys are spaced out adequately from each other and they are not slippery however Nokia could have elevated the keys a bit from the surface so that typing could have been more comfortable.

On the sides of the handset, there is a card slot and a microUSB port and they have a cover attached to them. We were glad that Nokia gave us a card slot on the sides so that we don’t have to go digging inside the phone to change cards. Other than that there are buttons of volume rocker, camera key and push-to-talk/mute button on the sides. We loved the inclusion of 3.5 mm phone jack which lets us plug any standard headphones without the fuss of adapters.

Accessories with the phone include USB cord, power adapter, four GB microSD memory card, carrying case, reference manual and wired headset.

Nokia E75 runs on S60 platform and it has new Nokia messaging application which supports a e-mail clients like IBM Lotus notes, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Windows Live and Yahoo. The set up is very intuitive, you just enter the password and e-mail address, the wizard does the rest. When you get an e-mail you will see a notification on the home screen. You can’t open the message directly from here instead you will have to go to e-mail app and check it out which is a lengthy affair.

The handset comes with Quickoffice suite which lets you edit and view PowerPoint, Word and Excel documents. The web browser also has Flash Lite so you can watch videos from sites like YouTube on the phone.

E75 has organization management and PIM tools like currency converter, voice recorder, clock, calculator, notes, calendar, ZIP manager, Adobe Reader, etc. Nokia has its own Ovi store which lets you download applications, utilities, games, etc on to your phone. The phone has a built in internal memory of 50 MB which can be further expanded to 16 GB through microSD cards. The phone has integrated GPS/A-GPS and the built in Nokia Maps has plenty of tools for navigation like hybrid and satellite maps and bicycle and pedestrian modes. Nokia gives you a three month free trial period after which you will have to pay $125.77 per year or $13.96 for a one month license.

Other features on the phone include multimedia and text messaging, VoIP calls, voice commands, speed dial, conference calling and speaker phone. There is no limit for storing contacts on the phone as long as you don’t run out of internal memory. The SIM card can store 250 contacts. A single entry can take an email address, multiple numbers, web URL, work and home address, etc. Photo caller ID and custom ring tone is supported.
The music player of the phone recognizes eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, WMA and MP3 formats for tracks. The songs are neatly organized by composers, genres, artists and albums. The video player (RealPlayer) can play MPEG-4 and 3GPP files. Inclusion of 3.5 mm phone jack lets you plug in your own set of headphones. We tried Bose headphones and the quality was quite good however videos looked choppy on the display.

There is a 3.2 MP camera at the back and it includes flash and video recording. There are plenty of tools for camera but not so much for video. Photo quality is a bit disappointing because they have a slight bluish tint to them. Videos looked grainy on the phone.

One of the lows of the phone has to be the mediocre call quality. We heard a slight buzz when talking with friends, quality on the whole was a bit inferior and our friends said they could hear an echo while talking. On the speaker phone sound distorted when we pushed it to the limit. We tried using a Bluetooth headset with the phone, pairing was quick and sound was clear.

The 1000 mAH lithium ion battery of the phone has a rated talk time of 5.2 hours and stand by time is 11 days.

Nitty Gritty:

E75 is a great messaging phone and with features like music player and 3.2 MP camera it makes a great multi media handset. However make sure you check out the call quality before you buy the device.