Ye Giant Nokia E75 Review

When the Nokia E75 was announced, I was ecstatic to see Nokia finally adopt the formfactor. The device is the first Eseries side-slider with a full QWERTY keypad.

We were lucky enough to get the device to check out for a few weeks before it’s release. Is it better than the E71 ? Should you even consider buying this one ?

Read on for our review of the Nokia E75.

First of all, we want to Thank the crew from Nokia WomWorld for sending us a device to review. Major props y’all !

As we begin this review, we feel its worth mentioning that our format is a bit different this around. Because the E75 has this unique new formfactor, and is the first Eseries with S60 V3 Feature Pack 2, it bought along with it, a number of firsts and improvements which we’ve posted about in separate articles. Hence, in some cases we’ll have to link back to an article, rather than explain it again here.

The E75 is positioned as the next Eseries Flagship device, with it’s formfactor stated to replace the E90 Communicator Series. The device however, comes fully loaded with features such as the 3.2 MegaPixels Camera, Slide-Out Qwerty Keyboard in addition to the AlphaNumeric Keypad. There’s GPS and Wifi built-in, and the mostly stainless steel finishing gives it a nice classy expensive feel and weight to the device.

Here are a couple of the features that the E75 boasts :

• 240 x 320 pixels 16M colors TFT Screen at 2.4 inches
• Symbian OS 3.2 (S60 V3 Feature Pack 2)
• ARM 11 369 MHz processor
• 3.2 MegaPixel Camera with autofocus and LED flash, VGA Video Recording at 30fps
• Quad-band GSM with Dual-band 3G with HSDPA support
• Wifi and GPS built in
• microSD card expandable, includes 4GB in package
• FM and Bluetooth
• Micro USB v2.0, suppports USB-Charging
• Standard 3.5mm Audio Jack
• Slide-out Full Qwerty Keyboard
• Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation and motion-based features

Phew. That’s not bad is it ? And that’s just a few. You can read the full list of features on the Nokia E75 Product Page.

The E75 measures 111.8mm x 50mm x 14.4mm, and weighs in at 139 g. It’s pretty darn compact in my books, and the weight makes it ‘feel’ like an expensive device.

What this means is, you’ve got a phone that feels great in your hands. Not too big, not too wide.

The build quality is great, which isnt hard to believe since it’s an Eseries Device, which usually always has great quality. Our unit had no creaks or strange sounds whatsoever, and the slider had no wobble at all. We were way impressed. The thing is built like a tank.

On with the pictures !

Front View :

Slider Closed :

The Front of the Nokia E75, admittedly looks very much like an average Nokia Eseries Device.

This is where we mention that we like the steel finishing around the front of the device. That area is a bit of a Fingerprint magnet though, but it’s nothing too bad.

(Though we admit, we had to clean the screen and keypad for fingerprints several times during the photoshoot for this review.)

At the center you have your 2.4″ screen. We’ve heard concerns from many people worrying that the screen might be too small, but we can honestly say, we faced so such problem with the device. The E75′s screen is very crisp and bright and a pleasure to use. The screen doesnt get as washed in direct sunlight as most Nseries devices we’ve seen, and certainly not as bad as the N85′s OLED screen gets in that situation.

At the top of the device, you have a light sensor, the earpiece speaker, and the Vga Front-Facing camera for video calls.

The Light sensor seems to be a little overly sensitive at times, sometimes shutting off the keypad lights when there wasnt actually enough light around. Still not too bad though, it’s a rare occurrence, yet a bit annoying.

The Earpiece speaker works great, calls come in loud and clear. No issues with it at all.

The Front-Facing camera is set at Vga resolution and is more for video-calls than anything else. Camera quality is standard Nokia Vga, nothing changed there at all. Not at it needs to be.

At the bottom of the screen you have the Dpad, Shortcut keys along with your selection keys, call keys and Alphanumeric keys.

On the left of the Dpad you have your Left Selection Key, Menu (Home) key, Green Call Button and Calender Shortcut key.

On the Right of the Dpad you have your Right Selection Key, Delete Key, Red Call-End (and Exit) key, and your Messaging/Email Shortcut key.

One thing, I must say is that I really did not like the fact that the Red Call End Key is now also the Power Button. I hated this ‘feature’ in S40 devices, and I hate seeing it appear on an S60 device. This is especially annoying as the Red Key is also the “Exit application or Menu” key for S60, and you’ll find yourself pressing it a couple times out of habit to exit an application or menu, and then suddenly end up looking at the “Power Off” menu listing. Thankfully another press of the Red key closes this menu, so you wont turn your device off by mistake (much), but still this is a tad annoying. Let’s have our power buttons back at the top of the device, like we’re used to, eh Nokia ?

Moving on, the shortcut keys (Officially called the “One Touch” keys) provide you a shortcut to any application of your choice, since it is configurable.

By default, they’re set to Calender and Messaging apps, but you can change it. You have options for Short press and Long press of the respective key.

Since the Shortcut keys and Menu & delete keys are basically on the same plastic ‘button’ as the call keys and selection keys respectively, they can be a bit of a problem to use. For example, we often found ourselves pressing the Menu button instead of the Left selection key, or the Green Call key instead of the Calender shortcut key. It takes a little getting used to, I guess. Still worth mentioning though.

The Dpad actually works fine and is probably one of the finest we’ve used. The Dpad also has a “breathing light” feature, that pulses a white light around the Dpad every so often to indicate that your device is on in standby mode, or to indicate missed calls, new emails/messages or such notifications.

Of course, this is configurable, so you can turn this ‘feature’ off if you would like to, or specify for which event you’d like to be notified of, and for how long.

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Coming to the Alphanumeric keypad, each key is easily distinguishable, and is on it’s own seperate level. We did not have a problem with it at all.

To know more about typing on the Alphanumeric Keypad, and it’s keypad lighting, check out our post on Typing and Messaging on the Nokia E75.

Slider Open :

Slide out the full Qwerty Keyboard of the E75, and that’s when it looks like it means business. The Slider got a lot of “Wow!”s from people we showed the Nokia E75 too. This device makes an even greater impression in places like here in India, where this formfactor is not yet mainstream or seen in any successful phone here.

The Qwerty Keyboard consists of basically flat buttons, all in a rectangular layout. The Black Keys with the White Alphabets and Blue Special Characters, stand out well from the matte grey of the surrounding, and has great keypad lighting to support it in low light situations. There is a vertical chrome strip along the middle of the keyboard, that doesnt seem to have any purpose at all, apart from maybe helping the slider mechanism (?).

There is no separate row for numerical digits, so you’ll have to use the function key for this, which isnt a real problem at all. There are seperate character and control keys, along with two shift keys on either side near the corners.

The tactile feedback of the E75′s Qwerty keyboard is good, and there is a reassuring click from every button. That being said, the flat rubbery surface can make it difficult to speed touch type, since each individual key isnt raised at one point to meet your finger tip. I found myself taking a couple of days before I was typing away at averagely fast speeds on the keyboard. I suppose it just takes a while to get used to the keyboard though, longer than the review period we had the device for.

The more I used the E75, the more I found myself sliding out the keyboard for everything from texting, to emails, etc. I barely used the AlphaNumeric keypad for anything outside of entering in numbers once in a while.

To know more about the E75′s Qwerty Keyboard and lighting, check out our post on Typing and Messaging on the Nokia E75.

It’s worth mentioning that once you slide out the keyboard, the entire screen of the E75 changes to landscape to suit the orientation of the device, likewise for the Dpad controls.

Once nice feature that I really liked about the E75, (and one that I’d really like to see in more Slider Phones) was that it let you customise what to do when you open and close the slider. All these options can be found under “Slide Handling” under the settings in the Control Panel Folder.

You can set it to autolock the keypad when you close it, ask you what to do, or just switch auto-lock off.

You can also set a Tone to be played when you open or close the slider.

But best of all, you can also set an application to launch when you open or close the slider, which can be very useful at times.

Back View :

The back of the Nokia E75 carries over it’s Metallic Stainless Steel look, along with it’s Matt Gray.

On the upper right side we have the 3.2 Megapixel camera, with it’s single LED Flash and a small reflective Mirror. Of course, we would have liked to see a better camera and a better flash, but since Nokia says this is a business-first device, we wont make much of a deal out of it. The Camera quality is way better than the E71, both in terms of pictures and (especially) video and is pretty decent by our tests. To check out more on the Camera check out our post on Camera Samples from the Nokia E75.

Also on the Right Side of the back, is the E75′s Small Steel Mesh Loudspeaker Grille. The Sound quality from it is pretty much the same as the E71, but has a tendency to be muffled when placed on a flat surface. This gets worse when it’s in your pocket, or other situations where the loudspeaker gets covered, and might be a bit of a problem to hear incoming calls or such if you’re in a averagely-noisy environment. The averagely-powerful vibration of the E75 helps in these situations.

The left side has the release switch for the Stainless Steel Back Panel, and a small lanyard cable inlet at the top of the left side. We liked that the Back Panel has a nice proud “Nokia Eseries” branded on it. The panel though, is a bit of a fingerprint magnet.

Top View :

The top of the device is pretty minimalistic, housing only the 3.5mm Audio Jack, which makes its second appearance on an Eseries device, on the E75 (It was first seen on the E63). A welcome addition, I must say.

We’ll talk more about the sweet additon of the 3.5mm jack later in this review.

Bottom View :

Here, the minimilistic look carries on from the top of the device, housing only the charging port and the tiny Microphone hole.

Interesting Fact: The E75 charges through a standard Nokia Charger, but can also charge by USB using the connector cable that comes with the retail package.

Left View :

The Left of the E75 houses the Micro Usb Port, and the MicroSD card port. Both are covered with hard rubber/plastic flaps.

Something worth mentioning though, was that we found the MicroSD port cover flap really really hard to open, and finally gave up trying, in fear that we might break it open. A point to note, if you’re a frequent card-swapper.

Right View :

From left to right, we see the lanyard cable (extreme left), silver Dedicated Camera button, Volume increase and decrease keys (which double as Zoom in and out keys in camera mode), with a mute call button right in the center of them.

The keys all work fine and do what they’re supposed to.

The dedicated camera key though, has good feedback to it, but had to be kept pressed for about 8 seconds before the Camera application would launch. Definitely something that needs improving in a future firmware update, but no real biggy. We’re just happy to see a dedicated Camera key on an Eseries.

The Battery :

The Battery of the E75 is the BL-4U 1000 mAh battery. Under our tests, it could easily last a day and a half (which is saying a lot), but I dont think it’d reach the same battery backup time as the E71 did.

On light usage, it can definitely go longer depending on how you use it. To know more about how long the battery lasted under our test, check out our Nokia E75 first impressions post.

The Box :

The Usual Eseries type retail box. This is the EURO variant. I like the picture they’ve used, that lets you see the E75 with it’s Slide-out Qwerty Keyboard.

Included in the Retail Package :

The E75 ships with the usual Eseries packaging. There’s no TV-out cable because the device doesnt have this feature. I was also suprised to find out that the E75 retail package doesnt include any leather lanyard cable or leather case like most Eseries come with. Would have been nice to have these, as they gave the Eseries their own fun “extras”.

You can check out our Nokia E75 Unboxing Video post, for a more detailed look at the retail package contents.

The S60 V3 UI, Menu and Home Screen:

The E75 uses the S60 V3 OS that’s seen on newer Nokia Nseries devices like the N85, N96, etc. But as always, since it’s an Eseries device, the OS has been tuned to be a lot faster, and has its own unique Eseries extra features in addition to standard S60 Features like Multitasking, Copy-Paste, etc. I can honestly say, this is the fastest S60 V3 FP2 device I’ve used, the UI having absolutely no slowdowns, even with Theme Transition effects enabled.

The E75′s menu uses the new Nokia ‘Ovi’ icons, which were first seen on the Nokia 5800, and is a huge improvement over the dull Eseries Icons seen on the ol’ E71 and E66 before.

That being said, on your first use of the device, it might be hard to distinguish which icon is a folder and not an application. You’ll get the hang of it eventually though, so it’s just mildly annoying at best.

The Homescreen of the E75 receives the usual Eseries treatment, having ‘Active Standby’ Plugins for upto 2 Email inboxes, Calendar, Wlan Scanning, etc, along with six configurable application shortcuts at the top. You can also setup shortcuts for the left and right selection keys.

As you can see above, you can configure which Active Standby Plugins you’d want to see on the Home Screen, and configure which application shortcuts will be at the top, too.

There are also neat little small pop-up notifications for voice mail, missed calls, or received text that align themselves to the bottom of the screen.

One feature, that has remained unique to Eseries devices, is the “Switch Mode” feature that lets you switch between Homescreens. Both Homescreens are configurable, and Nokia assumes you’ll need them to switch between (for example) Business and Personal Mode.

Personally, I didnt use this much, but I can see situations where this might come in handy.

Of course you also have three options for the Homescreen.

You have Basic, which doesnt display any Active Standby Plugins at all, or App Shortcuts, leaving just the wallpaper and Time, Operator, etc on screen.

Active is the mode seen in the above screenshots, with active standby plugins and shortcuts enabled.

Talking Theme is a new addition (atleast it’s the first time I’ve seen it on a Nokia Device), where the phone reads out everything on screen to you. A fun new feature, but I’m not really sure how useful this would be.

Moving on, one ‘feature’ I really liked about the newer Eseries lineup, and the E75 this time around, is that you can just type up a contact’s name on the Homescreen to get quick and easy access to his/her details.

You have options to all the Details that’s in the Contacts application. If you’ve said more details for the contact such as website, or PIM, you’ll have options appear for that too.

This might not seem like much, but it quicken up things a lot. You dont have to go to the contacts application and scroll for a contact’s name, etc to get in touch with him/her. Just type up the name, and that’s it. Because of this fun little feature, I barely even used the Contacts application at all on the E75.

Which brings us to..

Contacts on the E75 :

If you’ve used an S60 device before, you’d be right at home here. Contacts are arranged by Name in list pattern. You can have a practically unlimited amount of Contacts really, so that is definitely not a problem at all. You can have a variety of details listed under a Contact, anything from basic phone numbers to birthdays to websites to your own little notes. Anything really.

And of course, depending on the detail you’ve entered in for the contact, you’ll have certain different options (like “Go to Web Address” if you’ve entered in an address for the contact, etc).

In addition to all of this, you can also add an Image for the contact (which will appear full screen when you call or get called by him/her), a ringtone, voice tags, etc.

Calender :

The E75 has the usual Eseries calender. You can set it to display Week view, Month View, Agenda View or To-Do view.

In month view, for example, any meetings you have on a particular day are neatly listed at the side (or at the bottom in portrait mode).

Of course, this changes on the view mode. In Day Mode, you’ll see all entries listed according to the time you’ve set for them.

Once you highlight the event, more information about it pops up.

And selecting the event, in any view mode, takes you to a panel with all the Information you’ve entered in for the event.

Creating an event is an easy task. You can create a Meeting,Anniversary, Memo or To-Do event.

And depending on the type of event, you’ll have a variety of options that you can fill in.

Messaging and Text Input on the E75 :

The messaging application on the E75 is your usual S60 standard affair. However, the advantage that the E75 has, is that sweet slide out keyboard. We’ve covered this subject in detail already, so check out our Messaging and Typing on the Nokia E75 post for more info.

Internet Browsing :

You cant have a device today, in this age, without expecting some sort of Internet capabilities out of it. Luckily, the E75 does this pretty well. There’s Flash support built-in, so you can play YouTube Videos, or Flash games right on the browser, as you would on your PC.

One small annoyance I had with the E75 was that it’s browser did not have a ‘fullscreen view’ mode. Hence you’re stuck with those annoying bars around, which makes the E75′s screen look even smaller while web browsing. Still, this is a software annoyance, so there’s a chance it might be fixed in a future firmware (hopefully).

Email :

One thing that the E75 does extremely well, is Email. Mostly thanks to the built in Nokia Messaging Push-Enabled Client. To know more about this section, check out our Email on the Nokia E75 post.

Worth mentioning again, is that you can have upto two of your inboxes displayed on your HomeScreen.

The Camera :

The 3.2 Megapixel Standard Lens camera on the E75 might not be anywhere close to quality the Carl Zeiss Lens equipped Nseries products, but it is way better than the horrible camera on the E71. Video recording is also present at 30 FPS Vga, which sweetens the deal.

We’ve already covered this in detail previously, so do check out our Camera On the Nokia E75 post for more info about this section.

Gallery :

The Gallery on the E75 has been greatly improved over the old shabby Eseries Gallery app. Now all your images and videos are arranged in a grid like pattern, with thumbnails. All the thumbnails load really fast, meaning even the gallery app in the E75 retains its “no-slowdown” philosophy.

Selecting an image brings it up, where you can see more details on it, edit it, etc. While it doesnt have as many editing options as the Nseries counterparts, the app isnt shabby by any means. There’s even a new Eseries toolbar on the left side. Pressing the left or right direction key, moves you onto the adjacient image.

Everything else in the Gallery App remains the same as in other S60 V3 variants. You have separate sections for Sound Clips, Music Files, Other Files (such as Flash files, etc).

Music :

The Music Player application on the E75 is your standard Nokia S60 affair. Nothing new in the software aspect. There’s even an FM radio, Podcasting Client and Sound Recorder if anyone was wondering.

The big improvement though, is that the E75 has a standard 3.5mm audio jack so you can listen to music on your device via standard headphones if you wish. It’s also the first Eseries-branded handset to utilize the AIC33 dedicated audio chip. Audio Quality was great, I dare say equal to some Nseries Devices. Definitely a good move on Nokia’s part.

N-Gage Gaming :

The E75 is also the first Eseries device to support Nokia’s gaming platform. Not much else to say here that we havent already said in our N-Gage on the E75 post. The fact that N-Gage is supported is a nice addition.

GPS :

The E75 has built in GPS to help you navigate around. It’s software solutions are the same as in recent Nokia S60 devices, nothing new to speak of. There’s Maps v2 onboard with a 3 month free Navigation license. And ofcourse, the E75 supports all S60 Applications that use the inbuilt GPS, such as Google Maps, etc.

Connectivity :

The E75 has a range of Connectivity options from Wifi or Bluetooth or USB. Infra-red is absent, but isnt really a major factor in this day and age.

Office :

The E75 has a bunch of Office-related applications on board. These are pretty much good enough solutions for a person on the move.

The QuickOffice application onboard is fully licensed and allows you to create, edit and view various Office files like Word Documents, PPTS, Excel SpreadSheets, etc.

Apart from the Above :

The E75 has a lot under it’s hood. Many things have been improved, some things added in.

There’s a Files on Ovi subscription available, but since they dont offer that service in my part of the world, it flat out refused to let me try it.

The Search application has been improved ever so slightly.

Apart from searching for files and other things in your device, or on the internet, it now searches your Email Inboxes too, which can be really helpful in some cases.

Because the E75 has a built in motion-sensing accelerator, it has a couple nice functions like the Automatic screen rotation or “Turn device over to silence calls and alarms” feature or the “Tap to silence” features. Of course you can turn these on or off and configure them as you please.

Timed Profiles make a return. Something a lot of people wanted to see as a standard feature on Eseries.

Push to Talk (PTT) is still in there.

Themes are pretty much the same as on other newer S60 devices. You can now have a slideshow as a wallpaper, and you now have more options for the power saver mode.

Worth mentioning here, is that the E75 still has the same “Keep Dpad center held down to see time and notifications in power mode” feature that we first saw in the E71 and E66.

The Theme Application on the E75 also has a new “Audio Themes” section which basically controls and allows you to change all the audio throughout your device including notifications, alerts, etc. You can also download and install Audio Themes that change your device’s audio.

The Usual Access Point list is still there under the new “Destinations” name in S60 V3 FP2.

This sorts out all your access points according to priorty, etc. Thus enabling you to easily switch between them.

Moving on, the E75 also has the same Data-Encryption Security protocols that were first seen on the E71. You can choose to encrypt all your data incase you’re worried about your device and data being stolen.

And ofcouse, since the E75 runs S60, you can install and uninstall almost any application from the vast library of games and applications available for it.

Apart from all this, is your usual variety of configurable settings and options that are standard with most new Nokia S60 devices.

Conclusion :
Rating:

Okay here’s the thing. We loved using the Nokia E75. The thing is built like a tank. The UI is quick and fast, and it has all the nice little Eseries extras that we’ve come to know and love without compromising on other features too much.

We loved that Nokia’s finally using this Formfactor. I personally, have always wanted Nokia to try this formfactor out, and was really glad when I heard about it. You have access to both the Traditional AlphaNumeric Keypad, as well as the Full Qwerty Keyboard. The Slider is quick and snappy, and has a really huge ‘Wow!” factor to it. Our unit had no wobble issues with the Slider, but it isnt a huge suprise considering past Eseries Devices and their great build Quality.

Battery Life isnt an issue really. It’s better than most Nseries devices, and I’d say it’s close to the E71′s battery life (but not very close). Whatever they’ve done to conserve battery life, it seems to be working despite the 1000 mAh battery.

The screen is nice and bright, and we never really felt like it was ‘too small’ at all. The only time we did, was during web browsing, but it’s not too bad.

So what didnt we like about the E75 ? Well the camera could have been better (It’s still leagues better than previous Eseries devices though), and the ringtone volume could have been a bit louder. But these arnt deal breakers by any means, just mild annoyances from an Nseries Device owner.

But here’s the thing. Anyone who already owns a Nokia E71 wont think of this as a worthy upgrade to their device.

But if anyone asks me which Eseries device to purchase right now, I’ll definitely recommend the Nokia E75. If you’re looking for an S60 Business device, there’s simply nothing that can beat it right now.

Highly Recommended y’all !