Business phone that does the business (Nokia E75)

Member Name: icetsunami

Product:	Nokia E75
Date:	06/11/09 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nokia ease of use, WLAN, A-GPS, slide out QWERTY

Disadvantages: A bit familiar

Nokia's E75 is a continuation of the popular E-series and yet another addition to the smartphone market which is fast becoming swamped. At least big name branding and a proven track record propped up the phone pre-release. Smartphones tend to be aimed at business users so it's no surprise the E75 weighs in with some big features.

First Impressions:

The E75 is a nice looking handset but wouldn't be complimented on being classically beautiful like some of the uber priced models. It comes in a choice of three colours though I'm reviewing the black one. It is a fairly standard size for a smartphone and packs an alpha-numeric kepad with a navi button and some quick access hotkeys for features such as email. The functionality is augmented by the presence of a slide out QWERTY keyboard though this doesn't make the phone overly large.

Technical Data:

Series 60 3.1, Symbian 9.3 SmartPhone 3.2mp camera w autofocus, LED flash and 8x zoom
Video capture (640 x 480 pixels / up to 30 fps)
Front camera for video calls (176 x 144 pixels / up to 15 fps)
TFT, 16 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2.4 inches)
Audio (MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ formats)
FM radio
MP3 ringtones / video ringtones
Speakerphone
SMS, MMS, email (IMAP4, Mail for Exchange, POP3 and SMTP protocols), Instant messaging with Presence-enhanced contacts
Viewer for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel
Symbian and Java� MIDP 2.0 applications
Integrated A-GPS with Nokia Maps application
Internet: XHTML web browser, WAP, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
WLAN 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, USB 2.0,
3.5 mm headphone jack
50 Mb plus support for microSD cards (up to 16 Gbytes)
Vibration alert
Quad-band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 900/1900/2100
112 x 50 x 14 mm
Weight: 139g
Talktime: 4.3 hours (3G) - 5.3 hours (2G)
Battery standby: 270 hours (130 hours using WLAN)

In The Hand:

Nokia have carried on their long tradition of using the Symbian operating system having acquired the company in 2008. To be fair it has always been preferential to the various stable releases of Windows mobile, though the word stable was sometimes in question.
Typically its a fairly standard user interface at which Nokia seem to excel at making intuitive throughout their range of phones. There is an office suite which is Microsoft compliant though time will tell if there are any conflicts when crossing platforms or formats. File management is easy to use and also supports ZIP files which is nice. PDF support is an absolute given on a smartphone. The inclusion of secure encryption for the phone and the removable storage is an excellent feature.

Web connectivity is handled by the usual protocols though you really want to use the wi-fi for a fuller experience. HSDPA will suffice but I often find network signal strength to be too unpredictable despite their claims of 99% coverage. HTML and XHTML are both supported to feature rich and dynamic web content and it is nicely presented on the display which has depth of colour and clarity. The size of the screen is more than usable though some may question the lack of touch feedback. Backed up by support for a 16gb memory card there is a lot of potential for media and office data storage.

There is A-GPS and the excellent Nokia maps is included though you don't get turn by turn direction with Nokia's software. This could be addressed at a later date though I suspect it will be hacked before then.

The camera is a fairly bog standard affair at 3.2mp but it does have nice flash and a digital zoom. It is capable of taking a good picture with good ambient light. The video capture is of a good quality, certainly for swapping over the net or uploading to social networking sites.

Audio wise the sound of digital music is pretty good on the standard Nokia headset. Obviously this is all down to formats and compressions ratios but the inclusion of a 3.5mm jack means you can plug in some high end buds for top notch clarity and rich tones.

Summary:

Typical quality smartphone in what is an intensely competitve market. It holds it's own very well but can't quite hang with some of the HTC models and the like. Still, it is undoubtedly an excellent phone which deserves a least a second look before you invest.

Summary: Excellent and reliable

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