Review of the Nokia E72 Design
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Introduction

Nokia E72

The Nokia E72 was announced in mid 2009 and later made available in October 2009 as a successor to the Nokia E71.

What does that mean? It means that the Nokia E72 has inherited the best features of the Nokia E71 and enhanced them for better performance. The phone has a great design, feels remarkably easy to handle and maintains an arguably simple and all too familiar interface to a complicated operating system.

This phone is ideal for business communication as well as for personal use because it is packed with even more business features than the other E-Series phones that came before it.

Design (5 out of 5)

At first glance you have to admit that the overall design is stunning. Dressed with the now E-series signature steel casing, the Nokia E72 comes in four shades of color which are Zodium Black, Metal Grey, Topaz Brown and Amethyst Purple.

The phone weighs in at 128g with dimensions of 114 x 58 x 10 mm. That makes the Nokia E72 quite a compact phone to handle with a good weight in relation to the size. One noticeable design feature on the phone is the chrome pin stripe lining that runs the entire perimeter of the phone which is a significant difference from the Nokia E71.

Nokia E72 Design

The Nokia E72 features a TFT VGA screen measuring 2.36 inches with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Though this might seem small, you may be surprised to see how great the contrast is and how vivid the graphics are.

The phone also boasts a full QWERTY keyboard that maintains the cramped nature of the keys positioning. This does not in any way hinder the ability for one to use any of the keys.

Right in between the full QWERTY keyboard and the screen is the set of soft keys for accessing the menus. There are also four keys dedicated to accessing the Home Screen, Calendar, Contacts and Messaging Applications respectively.

The Nokia E72 retains the common five-way scroll keys that most Nokia phones have but this one has a twist to it. The middle key, also called the Navi Key works as an optical track pad as well. Due to the limited size of the track pad, this may seem more cumbersome than useful for some users.

The right side of the Nokia E72 has two volume buttons. One for increasing volume and another for decreasing volume. The left side of the phone comes with a microUSB port which now also supports battery recharging. Finally there is a microSD card slot. This phone does not come with the infra red port.

The back side of the Nokia E72 is reserved for the SIM card slot, the battery unit, a 5 Megapixel Camera which comes with an LED flash. The top comes equipped with the headphones slot and the power button.

In general the Nokia E72 takes style to the next level with its streamlined solid steel chassis, flattened call key panel with the optical track pad and chrome lining.

User Interface (3 out of 5)

Nokia E72 User Interface

Another classic Symbian OS 9.3, Series 60 v3.2 User Interface based phone, the Nokia E72 brings nothing new as far as interface goes other than the optical track pad which makes switching between the icon a different experience but not necessarily a pleasant one.

The Nokia E72 includes a built-in voice recognition system for voice activated commands. The soft keys and one touch short cut keys that appear between the QWERTY keyboard and the screen are all user configurable.

Like the rest of the Nokia E-Series smartphones, the Nokia E72 maintains a simple Navigation System which starts out in one of the two Home screens available. With the left soft key giving the user direct access into the menu which has classified sections such as Media and Applications. Other common applications such as Internet, Messaging and Email are directly accessible at the touch of a key.

The user interface shows maturity. It is built upon many years of experience from Nokia and that makes the Nokia E72 a smartphone that does not need any complicated manuals to figure out how to use it.

Features (4 out of 5)

As far as features go the Nokia E72 has really delivered more than expected. To begin with, keeping in mind that this is a phone for the business minded user, this phone comes with a security feature known as Remote Lock. If your Nokia E72 gets stolen or lost, you can simply send a coded SMS message to the phone and it will remotely lock the phone. If the thief unsuccessfully tries to unlock it after three attempts, it wipes itself clean of all sensitive information that was on the phone thereby protecting your business.

The phone comes with the ability to read and edit MS Office documents such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. That includes Office 2007 document formats. In addition to reading PDF documents, the phone comes pre-installed with Nokia Ovi Maps 3.0 for GPS voice guided navigation and it is absolutely free for life. The phone also has a digital compass and an accelerometer sensor for auto rotate and tap-for-time.

The phone features two cameras. One of which can be used for video conferencing. With the Nokia E72, a user is able to record voice memos as well as take advantage of the Organizer applications. It has a WMV/RV/MP4/3GP video player and a MP3/WMA/WAV/RA/AAC/M4A music player

The phone comes with an ARM 11 600 MHz processor, 250MB in built memory and is capable of addressing a 16GB microSD memory card.This is much more than any of the predecessors could boast.

As far as connectivity goes the Nokia E72 is capable of GPRS Class 32, 100 kbps; EDGE Class 32, 296 kbps; 3G HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps; WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Nokia VoIP 3.0. Also included is Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP and USB v2.0 as microUSB. With all these it is no surprise that this phone can be used as a modem that can be used to connect your PC to the Internet through your mobile network.

Another improvement in the Nokia E72 is the inclusion of a 5 Megapixel VGA camera a stereo FM radio with speaker phone and the phone also comes pre-loaded with Flash Lite v3.0, even though the browser itself could do with a feature make over. This is not a problem to worry about too much as one can easily download Opera Mobile among other applications to get the most out of this phone.

All in all the Nokia E72 is a feature loaded phone that every business man or professional needs to have.

Performance (4 out of 5)

With double the phone memory and processor speeds of the Nokia E71, the Nokia E72 phone packs a punch. There is a significant difference from previous Nokia E-Series phones when it comes to launching applications, browser load speeds and video performance. It has probably the best response times for launching any apps as far as other Nokia E-series phones go.

The Nokia E72 comes with the ability to multitask and does it without showing any signs of stress as you run more and more applications simultaneously. This includes running graphics and audio intensive programs.

There has been a significant improvement as far as battery life goes over the Nokia E71, not to say that the Nokia E71 was bad in the first place, actually they both use the same battery. With Nokia E72’s superior hardware, it is able to use energy more efficiently therefore allowing the Nokia E72 to keep performing more efficiently for a couple of days more without worrying about getting a recharge. Now that the phone can be charged when connected through the USB port things are even better.

As far as graphics quality goes, even though the picture is vivid and the contrast is great, I would think it is high time Nokia increased the resolution for the next line of E-Series phones but I guess being a business phone the resolution is fit for purpose.

As for GPS, the Nokia E72’s chip sensitivity is relatively good, with maps preloaded into the phone, the GPS navigation is as responsive and accurate as it can possibly be. Loading maps and voices it takes just a few minutes to get everything ready.

The call quality on the Nokia E72 happens to be great, this comes in with additional help from the noise cancellation feature that’s built into the phone. Unfortunately recording videos on the Nokia E72 is still stuck on VGA@15fps.

The Nokia E72 in general is a high performance phone that certainly does not disappoint and there is not much more that a user would demand in addition to what it already comes with.

The Verdict (4 out of 5)

The Nokia E72 happens to be another beautifully designed phone. The hardware is great, packed with memory and speed as well as being highly efficient on battery power.

The phone has great voice quality and easily fits in your pocket. The phone could do with added features within the operating system as far as user interface and the default browser goes. For a price of $360 or less depending on where you look for it, I would say this is yet another Nokia phone that totally gives you your money’s worth.