Review of the Nokia E75 Design
Introduction
The Nokia E75 was made available and released in April 2009. This was a time when the Nokia E71 was still generating a lot of excitement and therefore nothing less than success was expected out of the Nokia E75.
Being another member of the Nokia E-Series of phones, means that the Nokia E75 is expected to work well as a business phone and at the same time it is expected to clean up and improve on the areas which the predecessors overlooked.
In general, from first glance this phone does not appear to be anything special; however taking a closer look at the phone and actually handling it reveals that the Nokia E75 has dared tread into new territory as far as Nokia E-Series’ design goes.
Design (4 out of 5)
The most prominent feature that the Nokia E75 brings to the table is the design which is unmistakable. Nokia took a bold step on this one with the introduction of the Side Slider full QWERTY keyboard form factor. This is the first of the E-Series phones to incorporate this feature.
The Nokia E75 comes in three shades of color namely Silver/Black, Red and Copper Yellow. It weighs in at 139g with 111.8 x 50 x 14.4 mm as the dimensions. That makes it a pretty compact phone as far as width and height go but quite bulky on the depth. This however still fits well in the pocket and is quite comfortable to handle.
Featuring a TFT VGA screen measuring 2.4 inches with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels on the front face, I would have hoped for a slightly larger screen since the keyboard is tucked away underneath. Not to say that this is a bad thing, the screen remains functional, with great contrast and vivid images.
Another feature found on the front face of the Nokia E75 is the number pad as well as the additional Softkeys, the Navi pad and the dedicated shortcut keys.
Depending on how you look at it, the left side or the bottom side with the side slider opened is fitted with the slots for the microUSB cable and a slot for the microSD card while the top side has the 3.5mm standard audio jack inlet. The right side of the phone comes with the dedicated volume buttons while the bottom holds the power plug inlet.
Out of the left side the Nokia E75 boasts a side sliding full QWERTY keyboard that fills the entire perimeter of the slide out panel. The buttons are reasonably spaced out and therefore cater for users with slightly larger thumbs. Just like the other Nokia E-Series phones, this keyboard is intended to be interacted with using thumbs. The Nokia E75 has an accelerometer which automatically changes the screen orientation when using the full QWERTY keyboard.
One thing I do not fancy about the full QWERTY keyboard on the Nokia E75 is the landscape of the keys. They seem too flat for my liking. Raised keys would be better as far as increasing the accuracy and feel of the entire keyboard.
As far as the design goes on the Nokia E75, I would give it a pass. It would be perfect though if it came with a larger screen and the keys on the QWERTY keyboard as well as the number pad were slightly raised.
User Interface (3 out of 5)
The Nokia E75 comes with Symbian OS 9.3, Series 60 v3.2. There is nothing new as far OS features that the Nokia E75 phone brings to the table as compared with other Nokia E-Series phones (such as the Nokia E63) running the same OS. That doesn’t mean the user interface is not worth mentioning.
The Nokia E75 includes a built-in voice recognition system for voice activated commands. The Softkeys can be customized for the user’s liking. Holding down a Softkey reveals additional functions that the Softkeys perform and of course all of them are user configurable.
With the luxury of two Home Screens you have more control over the organization of your data on the phone. Ideally one Home Screen should be used for business purposes while the other can be used for personal or leisure activities.
The left Softkey gives one access to the Menu which again has the classic Symbian Interface. That has the advantage of giving the user a maximum two-click access to applications such as Internet, Messaging and Email.
The full QWERTY keyboard allows you to comfortably handle large amounts of text editing such as composing emails, text messaging, editing office documents and other text intensive tasks.
Features (3 out of 5)
When it comes to features, the Nokia E75 maintains a respectable standing. I will start off by mentioning that the Nokia E75 comes with remote lock. This feature helps protect the user’s data in the event that the phone is lost or stolen. It works by allowing the user to send a coded text Message through SMS and it will remotely lock the smartphone. Now if the thief attempts to unlock the phone and fails after three attempts, the Nokia E75 will automatically wipe itself clean of all sensitive data that was saved on the phone. This feature is also called remote wipe functionality.
As with other Nokia E-Series phones, the Nokia E75 comes able to read and edit office documents including MS Word, MS Excel and Powerpoint. It will also read PDF documents.
The Noka E75 comes with a built in A-GPS receiver and that means Ovi Maps comes preinstalled on the phone and with the Ovi Maps upgrade to version .3.03 the users are able to access the GPS enabled turn-by-turn navigation features all over the world for free. With the A-GPS receiver on board this means that there is a digital compass that can be used while navigating.
The phone features two cameras. One for video conferencing and the other is the primary camera that comes with an LED flash and self portrait mirror.
This phone is able to record voice memos with great quality sound. With a WMV/RV/MP4/3GP video player, a MP3/WMA/WAV/RA/AAC/M4A music player and a stereo FM radio, it is so easy to keep entertained with this phone. Still on entertainment, the Nokia E75 comes with the N-gage handheld game system installed. This includes the privilege of enjoying downloaded games.
The phone comes with an ARM 11 369 MHz processor, 85MB in built memory and is capable of addressing a 16GB microSD memory card. The internal memory doesn’t make sense to me, for there is no reason as to why they would actually cut down on internal memory. Despite that drawback, the phone comes with a 4GB memory card right out of the box and with that you soon forget about the reduced internal memory.
As far as connectivity goes the Nokia E75 is capable of GPRS Class 32, 100 kbps; EDGE Class 32, 296 kbps; 3G HSDPA, 3.6 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.
Another great feature of this phone is the the 3.5mm standard audio jack. What does this mean? Well you get great sound quality out of it because you can plug in high quality headphones such as those provided by Bose.
With a 3.2MP autofocus camera under the hood, the Nokia E75’s camera is not anything to write home about, just the same way the native web browser is okay but not all that great. As for the browser, it really is not a problem to worry about too much as one can easily download Opera Mobile, a more feature rich web browser. It is also note worthy that one can download and install a host of free apps for Nokia phones.
This is a great phone to use in terms of features, with the larger full QWERTY keyboard, slightly larger screen and great set of default applications. This is a phone that is worth getting.
Performance (4 out of 5)
In terms of the general performance the Nokia E75 does quite well. In between running applications back and forth I did not find any noticeable lags in performance or any lags that where ridiculously out of the ordinary.
Again like other Nokia E-Series business phones, this phone is great when it comes to multi-tasking. I particularly enjoyed listening to the radio as I was being voice guided during my afternoon walk. I was able to sit down for a break and go to the internet to make a few posts on Facebook and the phone handled it all quite well. I wasn’t particularly happy with the built in web browser so I took the liberty of downloading and installing Opera mobile.
The Nokia E75 phone is quite responsive to user commands and boots up at a pretty decent speed. The phone also works great on the gaming side and I must give it a plus in that area.
The battery life on this phone is great, I was able to keep it going for 3 days after using it to download a few emails, browse the web, use the voice guided navigation while taking my afternoon stroll, and receiving and making a few calls. With that said, it is good to note that compared to the Nokia E71, the battery performance is slightly poorer.
The graphics quality on this phone is lovely but would have been better with a larger screen. Watch out for the camera, it will serve up grainy pictures.
The GPS on this phone, especially in online mode, is quite acceptable. Even though I would say there is always room for improvement as far as the time it takes to zero in on the satelites. Generally the GPS responsiveness has been great.
I did not find anything wrong with the voice calls quality and that is obviously a plus.
The Verdict (4 out of 5)
As far as phones go, the Nokia E75 is an okay phone. It doesn’t quite tip the scales when compared with other Nokia E-Series phones. As far as design I think it is a slight step down. It would have made greater sense to improve the texture on the keyboard and tweak the screen size of the phone. With N-game under the hood, I was hoping for a better processor power to enhance the game experience.
As far as business operations on offer this is still a great phone and I believe Nokia achieved what they intended with this phone. So with a price tag of about $265 It may be a bit steep for me but I would say the phone is still worth getting.
