Introduction

Is it worth it sometimes to take fashion over business or pleasure? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll be thinking once giving this device a test drive. We’ve had here for a while the Nokia E72 in our labs for a while now and we’ve been diving into it for about a month to finally give you this review. At first when you notice the E72, you automatically think it’s the younger sibling Nokia came out with last year, the E71. In fact, the phone looks pretty much identical to its younger brother/sister (however you want to call it) and to be honest I would take either if I was a business man. This device pretty much follows everything in its younger sibling’s footsteps, except for the minor changes under the hood. Slim, sleek and stylish was their aim once again and they hit this out of the park. Is it enough to get Nokia out of the dark, hit the jump for this review of the Nokia E72.

Hardware/Design

Let’s face it, this phone looks just like a BlackBerry Bold 9700 right? No? Oh, I knew that. As I mentioned before, this phone looks exactly like it’s younger sibling the E71 (which in my opinion is the sexiest device ever made in white, sorry iPhone) and continues its stride as one sexy handset. The form factor might have someone mistake this for a BlackBerry real quick, but the stainless steel battery cover would give it away in an instant. With smooth rounded edges, this device slides very easily into your pocket (skateboard skinny jeans too) and the leather case that is included is not necessary. Holding the phone to text and place calls feels very comfortable with little to no struggle to hold it since its very thin. This device is almost like a tool of art. You can really tell that Nokia wanted to separate themselves from the regular consumer devices they create, hi-end, mid-ranged and basic, to have their business portfolio looking extravagant. This phone was not meant to be purchased by a regular person, not even a gadget-freak, it was made for business and maybe even formal wear. If a BlackBerry ties hand in hand with a business suit, then the E72 might go with a tuxedo, it looks that good. When you want to talk about hi-end business, this is what you look at. Sorry RIM, your BOLD series isn’t cutting it when it is put next to one of these. The only setback I have for this design is the camera. It has a bit of a bump in the back for its placement. Hey Nokia, if RIM can make a device with a smooth backside, so can you.

When you’re looking at the phone, you notice the front is just flushed with the screen, d-pad with shortcut keys and a QWERTY keyboard. The keys under the screen have a nice brushed metal feel to them and it makes the menu, send, end and back keys on a BlackBerry look extremely outdated. The optical trackpad is a little awkward at first. It isn’t as smooth as the trackpad RIM implanted on their newer BlackBerry models, but it does its job. I’d prefer the D-Pad that is surrounding it for everyday use, much more acceptable. There are four shortcut keys placed there as well. You have home, calendar, contacts and the one touch mailbox key which makes getting to your messages even easier. On the left side of the phone you have the charging/usb port covered in a nice plastic material that camouflages nicely with the device, covering the port so dust wouldn’t get trapped. You also have the hot swappable microSD slot as well directly under the charging port covered with that plastic as well. On the right side you have the volume up and down buttons as well as a convenience key in the center of them both that is set to PTT as default. Unfortunately you cannot use the PTT the E72 offers because there isn’t another GSM company in the States that offers the one they use. AT&T uses PTT but on a different technology. Sorry NextelSprint turned GSM clients. The good thing is you can change the option to whatever your desire is for that key. I used it for locking the device when I was done with it for that moment. I’m very prone to making phone calls on mistake so I use that option a lot when given the option no matter what device. The back of the device houses the 5.0 MPX camera and that glossy, stainless steel finished door. If it wasn’t for the etch-a-sketch lines, you can use the backdoor as a mirror. Last but not least, the infamous 3.5 mm headset jack that people secretly want on every device.

Keyboard

After using this as my everyday phone for almost a month, I’m still not used to the new layout of this keyboard. The E71 was a little more easier to type on. The noticeable difference here is the reduced spacebar key. It’s almost half the size as my E71’s keyboard. Look below:

Now you could tell for yourself why I would have trouble typing on this. Nokia tried to cram too much into that little but already perfect space from its previous model. It’s not perfect like the BOLD 9000 or 9700 (whichever you prefer), but its one of the better keyboards out there compared to the other competition. Other than that, as usual it is usually up to the user on how they type and manage the keyboard. Myself for instance, I was banging out only 45 WPM on this device, that is a huge difference from the 75 I put up on my Tour 9630 when I decide to use it. But hey, we all have weaknesses right? Tactile feedback is there as well. The buttons are shaped very nicely and well rounded. The slight bump in the keys makes a big difference as well because it makes you get a feel for the keys a bit more. Bumps are always good right? Overall the keyboard is one of the best out there on the market right now so you shouldn’t have any issues typing on this.

Screen

There’s a 320×240 screen on the E72 and it looks very sharp. It’s not as bright as a BOLD 9700, but it’s very clear and easy on the eyes. Screen real estate isn’t a problem at all as we find it more pleasurable to use than the previous E71. Pictures and video look very detailed and clean. There’s a decent amount of contrast when looking at media, and you’ll especially appreciate the screen during some heavy web browsing. Viewing in the dark is also a pleasure and there is no need for squinting while viewing images or documents on the phone.

OS

Oh Symbian, Symbian, Symbian, when will it ever change? With Symbian’s latest OS, Symbian 9.3 OS with the Series60 3rd Edition FP2 user interface, there’s little to no change at all. Here is a complete rundown of what Symbian 9.3 has to offer:

Symbian OS v9.3 includes:
Improved phone performance
•    Shorter start-up times for phones and key applications
•    Improved memory management resulting in more responsive applications and phone features ensuring smartphones work as quickly with better quality features as mid-range phones
Reduced development and ownership cost, and time to market
•    New development tools
◦    Symbian OS awareness for the Eclipse/CDT IDE framework and Nokia’s Carbide.c++ Development Tools for Symbian OS v9.3 phones
◦    Configuration tools to easily create and customize Symbian OS variants
◦    The Symbian Verification Suite to support compatibility and phone integration for creating Symbian OS variants, reducing time taken to customize phones for operators targeting different market segments
◦    A fully searchable on-line edition of the Symbian OS Library including a significant amount of new content
•    Backwards compatibility from v9.1, easy migration for phone vendors, technology and third party software providers
•    Reference design for Symbian OS v9.3 with Freescale and Nokia S60
•    Hindi and Vietnamese language support for improved market coverage
Support for new hardware
•    Native support for WiFi
•    USB 2.0 on-the-go, allowing faster device connectivity
Support for key operator services and requirements
•    Firmware over the air (FOTA) provisioning, FOTA allows network operators to provide OTA software upgrades or fixes lowering cost of ownership
•    HSDPA support
•    Introduction of IPSec for UMA service (Voice over IP)
•    Improved 3GPP R5 support
•    Native support for Push To Talk
•    Java JSR 248 support

To sum it all up, it features improved memory management, faster boot up time, native support for wifi, native support for USB on-the-go, a reference design for Freescale with S60, HSDPA support and a whole lot of other things. Navigating the OS is really not for the average consumer. It takes getting some used to. Now Nokia fanatics will actually be used to this because they’re already used to the Symbian platform, so they shouldn’t have any issues making the transition whether it’d be from S40 or prior S60 devices. There is no need to fear though, Nokia did the best they can to make the OS as simple as they could for someone who has never owned such a device, and by the looks of it, they pretty much hit it out of the ballpark. The menus are quite easy to navigate through and getting to applications is just two clicks away. You also have the option of setting shortcuts to the programs you use the most on your home-screen, which is six; and then you also have shortcuts to any text messages, voicemails, or e-mails as well to the bottom of the shortcuts. You can change the shortcuts as much as you want, Nokia didn’t want you to think that they were locked there forever (no pun intended iOS 1). Besides all the technical stuff posted above, the OS pretty sleek and quick. Symbian doesn’t require a lot of RAM to move through the menus, so 128MB of RAM is just enough to breeze through. Don’t get confused of the 256MB that’s in there as well, that is just the on board storage space. One great benefit to Symbian that has yet to be seen in other OSes besides Windows Mobile Phone, is the method of storing apps to the memory card (which has yet to be seen on an Android device but that should change with the release of Gingerbread 3.0 and of course the iPhone, well because, the lack of a slot in general) which is great because you don’t have to use up all of the tiny memory the phone already has. The phone ships with a 4GB microSD card but it is upgradable to 16GB, so choose which card you’d like in it. Overall, the OS is snappy in its own kind of way, but it isn’t as easy as using an iPhone or a BlackBerry, and that might drive consumers away other than the outdated look this has. Hmmmmm sounds familiar, right?

e-Mail/Messaging

Nokia takes pride in it’s business devices, let alone their flagship line for them, the E-Series itself. Business is all about connectivity and how are you going to get something over to the next person. The E72 takes that into consideration and offers right off the back the pre-installed Nokia Messaging application. What this does is connect you to which ever e-mails you currently have such as Ovi Mail, IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail etc. Nokia’s Mail for Exchange service is also included in the handset for those who are on an Enterprise server. Using the Nokia Messaging application is just a breeze. To use it, first you have to register a name with Nokia’s server to get the free service and from there you choose which service you want to setup. All it takes is plugging your user name and password and voila! You’re email is setup with no hassles. Now those of you using custom servers, IMAP, POP3 servers would have to plug in your settings manually via the instructions of your provider. Mail for Exchange is almost the same, but have your IT guy at the office set it up for you. Now for those of you using GMail’s exchange server like I am, it does not sync your emails to the device because it is currently not supported. You can sync your calenders and contacts though so that saves you some hassle. I’ll update this when a fix has come out for the email syncing on the device. e-Mail coming into the phone is ‘pushed’ to your device in real-time and notifications are given to you right on the homescreen. From there you can either view it that instant or choose to view later. It doesn’t get easier than that. e-Mail + E72 = Easy Life.

Phone

If it is one thing Nokia knows how to do, that is making great antennas. Phone calls on this device was more than crystal clear. Places where my DROID and 9630 didn’t receive service or had fringe bars, the E72 picked up signal like a champ. I didn’t have any “deathgrip” issues, I was able to hold my phone however I wanted in all types of places. Whatever Apple is doing, they’re doing it wrong and shouting out Nokia by probably using a defective N97 mini is completely uncalled for. Apple should try looking up to these guys for inventing the way a radio should be installed/made on a cell phone. Anyway, phone calls = crystal clear like the guys in red were behind me the whole time (Verizon).. Get it. Verizon. Haha. Forget it lol.

Camera

The Nokia E72 means business even when it comes to imaging. While 5 megapixels are no longer high-end, it’s more than enough for casual use, even for prints. The camera captures photos up to 2592 x 1944 pixels resolution and sports autofocus and an LED flash, which can be used as a video light too. The image quality of the Nokia E72 is among the best 5MP snappers on a business handset I’ve seen (I’ll have to wait for the Torch 9800 to see how that one shoots). Now this isn’t going to replace say a Nikon DSLR type camera or even a Sony Ericsson Cyber-Shot branded cell phone with xenon flash (C902), but it’ll get the job done for quick to shoot photos. The quality is well worth printing for those damn-I-wish-I-had-my-digital-camera-moments people beat themselves for. Look at the examples below.

Battery Life

If you thought the battery life on the E71 was outstanding, then you won’t be disappointed with the E72’s either. The E72 ships with a standard Li-Po 1500 mAh (BP-4L) battery, the same exact battery as the E71. Nokia managed to squeeze an extra 2 more hours of talk time on this device, making it from 10.5 hours of 2G talk time to 12.5. This is most likely due to the upgrade from v9.1 to v9.3, since v9.3 has the better memory management, it handles more usage time. Here’s the official comparison between the two siblings for battery life:

While testing the phone for actual calling, I managed to get 13.1 hours on 2G and 7 even on 3G, bypassing the official specs that Nokia has given us. Standby time is well, just amazing. I managed to get 22 days of battery life without using the phone for anything. No exchange. No personal Gmail. No data. NOTHING. This phone is just too good on battery, it’s way better than the BOLD 9700 when it comes to this. Battery life is just outstanding.

Conclusion

Now its time to decide which phone to get if you are a business user. If it was me, I’d put my money on the E72 hands down just because of the battery life and the extra multimedia functions it has. BlackBerry users have had to wait almost forever to get a 5 MPX camera on their handsets. More positives are the slim and sleek style factor as well as amazing quality build. Just the looks alone might make you want to think twice on a BlackBerry as no one in the industry right now is doing anything to match this powerhouse of a business phone. Great reception, amazing battery life, make-you-look-back-three-times-because-this-phone-is-sexy style, and did I mention it’s pocketable? Yeah, I think my decision is made. This is a sure winner and a great alternative to a BlackBerry. The only reason it isn’t my phone of choice is because the area where I was reviewing the unit from I moved and where I’m located at now there isn’t really good reception for both AT&T and T-Mobile. So how many of you are going to Amazon right now to purchase one unlocked? I would.

Nokia is well-known for its widely popular phones such as the Nokia E71, N95, and N97. Nokia recently released the N900 smartphone that brings along tons of features and impressive specifications. We’ve been following all the news and rumors on this phone and, needless to say, we are excited about getting one. The phone was introduced into the United States on November 11, 2009 and is not yet available to purchase directly from any major carriers here. The N900 used the Maemo 5 Linux operating system, unlike its predecessors which ran Symbian. This was a unique review for us because we haven’t had much experience with Maemo, so we had to learn the OS from scratch. Typically when we review a device, we have at least played around with the OS. Therefore, we are excited to bring you the Nokia N900 review.

Hardware

We were really excited when DHL (shoutout to @boygenius) dropped off the package. Coming from a BlackBerry 9700 and iPhone, we were definitely excited to try something new. Upon unboxing the phone the first thing we noticed is the size and weight. The N900 is noticeably thicker and heavier than both 9700 and iPhone. The first phone that comes to mind when comparing in size and weight would be the HTC Tilt. This does not necessarily bother us since this phone crams a lot into one phone, but when comparing devices it is really noticeable.

There are no physical buttons on the front of the phone when closed. The screen is all touch and everything can be controlled with a finger or using the included stylus. When looking at the sides of the phone you will see a volume button, power button, camera key, and a screen sleep trigger. On the bottom side of the phone there is a 3.5mm headphone jack, speaker, and a stylus that can be pulled out. There is no physical call and hangup button, meaning the user needs to go through the menus to make a call or use the slide-out keyboard to dial a number. We would have personally liked a dedicated key to call since it can be a hassle to go through the menus.

The Nokia N900 has some impressive specifications that make the phone really shine. The N900 has a ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz processor and 1GB of application memory (256 MB RAM and 768 MB virtual memory). These internal parts really make the phone run fast and allows users to multitask without the phone slowing down. We were often multitasking with three or four applications open at the same time and noticed no system slowdown. We liked how we could easily listen to music, surf the internet, and check Maps. The N900 also has 32GB of internal storage meaning it will hold about 7000 MP3 songs, you can also add 16GB of additional storage using a microSD card.

As we said before, the N900 has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard has three rows of keys and most keys have a second feature that can be accessed by holding the blue arrow then pressing the key. We found the keyboard pretty cramped and to often be hard to use because of how it is set up. For example, the space bar is positioned more right on the N900 than on a normal keyboard or other phones are used to. We also found ourselves clicking the wrong key or clicking two, even when we got used to the keyboard.

The screen quality on the N900 was very impressive. The display is touch-sensative and has transflective technology that allows for easy use while out in the sun. It has a 800 x 480 pixel resolution and it really looks pretty awesome and sharp. When pressing things on the display with your finger, it seems to be accurate most of the time. For those with fat fingers, the phone also comes with a stylus that works fine.

The N900 comes with a 5 megapixel camera that takes some nice looking photos. Check out some samples below.

Software:

The Nokia N900 uses the Maemo 5 operating system which is based off Linux. Maemo is definitely different than the Symbian operating system  Nokia fanatics may be used to. Maemo in the past has been used on Nokia tablets and the company seems to be wanting to expand the operating system onto smartphones as well. This was the first time we’ve tried Maemo 5 so it took some getting used to. We found that it took a while to get used to because it was so different from other smartphone OS leaders like iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS, and Android.

When you first turn on the phone you see the homescreen. The homescreen can be customized with widgets that either come with the phone or can be downloaded through the Ovi Store, which we will touch on later. There are four different pages on the homescreen that can be accessed by sliding your finger across the screen. If you don’t like having all those different views, Maemo allows you to remove the extra ones.

Another very important task on a smartphone is multitasking. We all know that the iPhone is lacking at this and that is one main complaint of the phone. However, the Nokia N900 does a great job multitasking a lot of apps at once. Once there is an app running, the user can click the top left icon that looks like windows and the phone will go back to the screen shown above. From there, users can click the icon on the top left, which looks like six small boxes, and will brought to the menu. To get back to the current running apps, just click the side of the screen and the user will be brought back to that screen again. With such powerful hardware, the N900 can easily run a lot of applications without the device slowing down much.

To many of us, one of the most important features on a smartphone is the web browser. Having used a lot of different mobile web browsers, we can say that the N900′s browser is one of the best we have ever tried. Most of the web pages we loaded up were rendered the same way as they would be shown on our computer’s browser. Scrolling up and down was as easy as sliding our finger up and down the screen. Zooming into text works perfectly by either double clicking the area you want to read or using your fingers to pinch and pull to zoom in and out. The real deal breaker on this browser is the fact that it has Adobe Flash built into it and that really makes the browser shine. When loading up sites like the New York Times, you can click on videos embedded into the page and they will play right in the browser. This is something that most other phones are missing at this point and it really makes the N900 browser different.

Nokia recently announced the beta of the Ovi Store, which allows users to download apps directly from Nokia. A application store is one of the most important features of a phone today with almost every phone manufacturer having one including Apple, Palm, and Google. Keeping in mind that Nokia’s Ovi Store is still in beta, it still needs some work in our opinion. Nokia chose to have the Ovi Store icon open up a browser that leads to a web-based store optimized for the N900 browser. This is different from Apple’s app store which is a physical application on the phone. The Ovi Store has a few different categories including Recommended, Apps, Games, Audio & Video, Personalization, and My Stuff. Clicking on one these tabs will bring you to the top applications in those categories. When browsing the store you can see the name of the app, the price, and how it is rated (out of 3 stars). We still think that this store could use a some work because it is pretty limited in the apps that can be downloaded and doesn’t really seem to flow as nice as other app stores on other phones.

The most important feature on a smartphone is still the phone feature. When you click the Phone icon in the N900 menu it brings you to your most recent calls. It will show your most recent places calls, received calls, missed calls, and voicemails. If you already know the number you want to call you can just click the Dialing Pad and dial right from there. A great feature on the N900 is the built-in Skype support. If you have a Skype account, you can choose your Call Type by either using cellular or your Skype account. This is great for people using the phone internationally or regular Skype users. The sound quality when making a call was up to par with other phones we used. The people we called always said the microphone seemed to sound like any other phone.

Conclusion:

The Nokia N900 is a powerful phone with really impressive specifications. In our opinion Maemo 5 looks a lot better than Symbian and has a lot more potential to become a great OS. It takes a little while to get used to, but it does really shine when in use. We think that the web browser on this device is one of the best in the game especially since it has integrated Flash. There is room for improvement with the Ovi Store but it is usable at this point and allows for easy downloading of some apps. We really recommend this phone for people who want a tablet PC, but don’t want to have to lug it around with them all the time. We feel that the N900 is a tablet disguised as a phone and it feels that way when using the device.

It’s finally here. The moment that will change the computer industry forever. Apple’s iPad. This bad boy has been in speculations, talks, rumors, you name it, for almost half a decade. The first ever  “iPad” was announced in May 1992 and it was called the Newton. Now back then that was godly, for today’s standards, not even close to what Apple just created. The “new” iPad, consists of:

• Half-Inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds
• 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display
• Custom 1GHz Apple “A4″ processor chip developed by the P.A. Semi Team
• 10-hour battery life and a month of standby!
• Comes in 16, 32 and 64GB Flash Memory sizes
• 30-pin dock connector for charging and connecting with a keyboard
• Microphone (Skype anybody?)
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11n Wi-Fi (free at AT&T Hotspots) and optional 3G on-board (AT&T)
• Accelerometer
• Compass
• World “Pad”

That’s a lot of stuff right? There’s more. Here is where the fun comes in. Every application that is in the App Store that works on your iPhone/iTouch, works on your iPad! Amazing! Now for the AT&T part. I know, I know. You were hoping that this would become availabe on Verizon Wireless or another carrier, shame on you Apple. Apple and AT&T have teamed up once again to deliver a monstrous package deal for the wireless and 3G data pricing. Packages start at $14.99 for 250MB of data and $29.99 for Unlimited data per month. You’re asking yourself what’s the catch? Is there a two year commitment? The answer to those two questions are simply NO. There is no catch and there is no two year agreement. Hmmm, World”Pad”, what does that mean? It means exactly what you see. You can take the iPad abroad and insert any sim card from all over the world because the iPad is unlocked! The gates of heaven have finally opened. Now God Steve Jobs said that prices for international data will come “this summer” with further informaton. Prices for the iPad are as follows, $499 for the 16GB, $599 for the 32GB and $699 for the 64GB. Adding 3G to either model is a whopping $130 extra for it to run on broadband speeds when not in a Wi-Fi environment. Sales for the iPad start for the Wi-Fi version in 30 days and the Wi-Fi/3G version in 90 days. So who’s ready to get online for this one? I will. Now if only AT&T could fix there network even more now….

Update: The iPad is running iPhone OS 3.2 and has no camera. Also has no multi-tasking so I guess we’ll have to wait for iPhone OS 4.0 to come out. There is also no Flash support as well, should’ve known that already.

The Google Nexus One phone is no secret to bloggers. Unlike Apple, Google did not seem to be very strict with its employees leaking information and pictures of the phone. However, today Google made the phone official with a press conference at its headquarters in California. The Nexus One will be running Android 2.1 as its operating system meaning it will have the latest version of Android. The phone is manufactured by HTC, however it is going to be sold through Google. The Nexus One has a 5 megapixel camera, a trackball, and a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen. The phone has GPS, Wi-Fi, a compass, and accelerometer.

The phone is available to customers today for $549 unlocked to T-Mobile’s bands (meaning no AT&T 3G). It is also available on T-Mobile with a two-year contract for $179. Google didn’t forget about the Verizon customers though, the Nexus ONe will be available on Verizon this Spring. It will also be available on Vodaphone in the future.

Read

Nokia has confirmed that it has starting delivering the N900. The N900 is the first Nokia phone that will be running the Maemo operating system. The deliveries started today so lucky customers who ordered this device should be getting a nice package in the next few days.

Read

Business people have become dependent on their smartphones to do all of their basic business needs. Whether these needs are email, calendar, web browsing, or any other feature that will increase productivity on the go.

Nokia’s E-series phones are aimed at business users who need to stay organized and keep in touch with a team. The Nokia E75 is not an exception, this phone was meant to for these reasons, but we could definitely see the regular consumer with one. The phone is not currently carried on any carrier in the US, but it is available unlocked for around $440. With many features that non-business users would use, the E75 is not just for business users. The E75 has some impressive features, check them out below:

• Slide out QWERTY keyboard
• 2.4″ 320 x 240 pixel screen
• Quad-band EGSM 850/900/1900/1900, WCDMA 900/1900/2100 HSDPA
• Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi
• Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP2
• Phone Dimensions: 4.4″ x 1.97″ x 0.57″

Design:

The Nokia E75 is a small, nice looking phone that was designed with the customer in mind. Weighing 4.9 oz, the E75 is a little bit heavier than its cousin, the E71, which weighs 4.44 oz. This by no means mean that it is a heavy phone, we don’t have a problem carrying this phone around with us. The phone is 4.4 inches long and 1.97 inches wide when closed so it is going to be smaller than your typical BlackBerry or iPhone. The phones front looks like a typical candybar style phone, but with a slide out QWERY keyboard.

The phone itself is very solid and well put together. The battery cover is made of metal which gives the phone a solid feeling. The sliding mechanism seemed to be secure and we feel that it will stay that way even with a lot of use. All keys on the phone seem to of relatively high quality to stay working for the life of the phone.

When closed, the front of the phone shows a normal phone keypad, some shortcut keys, and a trackpad. The shortcut keys give the option of easily going to an application without having to go through the menus. Customers who use their calendar or email a lot will find this useful because with one click of button they can get right to the application they need. When the phone is opened, it will reveal a QWERTY keyboard that is spread out perfect for using two thumbs to type. Typing with the QWERTY keyboard was a pleasure and very easy to type without error.

On the sides of the E75 there are some buttons that serve different functions. On the right side you have the volume up and down keys, voice command, and the camera key. We liked how you have to hold down these buttons to do anything. On some phones if you press the camera key once it starts taking pictures of your pocket, that is not the case with the E75. On the left side there is a MicroSD slot that supports up a 16GB card, the phone itself comes with a 4GB one. There is so the micro-USB plug on the left side that will allow customers to sync to their computer. On the top of the phone there is a 3.5mm headphone jack for listening to music or using a handsfree headset. On the bottom there is the charging port which uses the standard Nokia charger and the microphone.

Usage:

We are going to start with the keyboard on the E75. There are two different options to type on this device, using the numeric keypad or the slide out QWERTY keyboard. We found ourselves using the numberic keypad to dial numbers, not really ever to type though. The shortcut keys on the numeric keypad were useful, but people with big thumbs may find them hard to master. Each shortcut key has two different options and sometime would be difficult to press. Having used smartphones with QWERTY keyboards for years, we couldn’t even imagine typing on a numeric keypad again. For that reason, Nokia included a full QWERY keyboard that slides out and rotates the screen. This was much easier for us to type words and write messages. Since Nokia did not have to attempt to fit the QWERTY keyboard below the screen, it had more room to fit a comfortable keyboard that would make the user happy. This keyboard really required both hands to be used since it is so large and spread out. In the middle of the keyboard there is a silver piece that helped us figure out which thumb to use for each key. When typing on the full keyboard the keys would usually give good feedback and were easy to press.

The Nokia E75 has a 2.4 inch, 320 x 240 pixel screen. The display on the phone is clear and crisp and we had no complaints there. However, we found that this screen was a little small for our liking. Having used mainly smartphones with larger screens, we were not used to having to use such a small display. This really came into play when browsing the web on a non-mobile site. Users have to move their curser to move around the webpage.

With a 3.2 megapixel camera and autofocus, the Nokia E75 takes decent pictures for a phone. Since this a E-series phone, it has a lower quality camera when compared to a N-series phone like the N97. When taking a picture users press the camera side key to focus then take the picture. When the phone was open, we sometimes found it difficult to press this button as the camera key is right behind the screen. We compared our pictures to those taken with the BlackBerry Bold and saw a world of difference in quality. Some of the pictures taken with the E75 can be seen below.

The Nokia E75 a GSM phone that runs on the EGSM 850/900/1900/1900, WCDMA 900/1900/2100 HSDPA bands. So how is the voice and data quality? Making calls on the E75 sounded good on our end, the volume was loud and the sound was crisp. On the other side of the phone, listeners said we sounded clean and clear. Since we tested this phone on the AT&T network, we were able to try the 3G network on the phone. The data loaded fast and there wasn’t really a lag when loading pages like there is with the BlackBerry Bold. The data speeds are largely carrier dependent, so the speeds are not important.

Email and web browsing is often very important to business customers. The E75 is similar to any other E-series smartphone in it runs Symbian and the email and web browser is really the same. Like we mentioned earlier in the review, the screen size sometimes affected the quality of our web browsing but otherwise it loaded the pages nicely. We would recommend giving SkyFire browser a try if you end up getting a Symbian try. In terms of email, it is not push like BlackBerry users will be used to. You can set it to sync every 5 minutes at the soonest and it just goes up from there, but setting it too low can affect the battery life.

We mentioned in the Design part of the review that the Nokia E75 has a voice command button on the right side. Holding the button will bring up the voice command where you can say what you want to open. The great part of this feature is that you can open any application by just saying the name. For example, users can just say “Calendar” and it will give you to option to open the calendar. Voice command also works for calling and texting. If users want to call or text someone they can say “name message” or “call name”.

Conclusion:

The Nokia E75 is advertised as a business phone, but we feel that it is not just a phone for business users. There is tons of multimedia features in the E75 that will appeal to consumers of all types. Users who do a lot of texting will find this keyboard luxurious for talking to their friends. Users will also be pleased with the camera and web browser if they choose to use data. The one multimedia feature that is missing is a larger screen, but with a larger screen comes a larger phone. Overall we would recommend this phone to people who are looking for a phone with a QWERTY keyboard and data functions. Consumers looking for a small phone will be pleased by the size and form factor of this one.

We got our hands on a Nokia E75 smartphone and figured we would tease you guys with an unboxing. When we received the box in the mail, we were amazed with the packaging. The phone came enclosed in a locked briefcase that had some Nokia graphics on it. In another envelope came a key that allowed us to peak inside and explore the contents. The E75 weighs only 4.9 oz, and is 4.4″ x 1.97″ x 0.57″. Check back in a week or two for our full in-depth review. Hit the jump for the unboxing video and gallery.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_vA9b-s-DI

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