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.
