Typing & Messaging on the Nokia E72

One thing you gotta love about the Nokia E72, is its Full-Qwerty Keyboard.

Well here’s a little about Typing on the E72 , all about the Keyboard, showing you a bit about the Messaging application on the device along the way too.

The Keyboard :

The Keyboard (aka Keypad) on the E72 is fully Qwerty, with a couple extra function keys.

At the top of the Qwerty Keypad is the Dpad, along with 4 One-Touch keys (3 being customisable), the left & right selection keys and the Calling Keys.

The Dpad has a neat little “breathing” light that surrounds it.

The light pulsates slowly, to let you know the Device is switched on. It quickly flashes two pulses every minute or two (depending on your setting) to inform you of new Email, Text Messages or Missed Calls.

Of course, you can turn off this feature if you choose to.

The One Touch Keys default to Menu, Calendar, Contacts and Messages (or Email).

You can also change any of these keys (except the Menu key) to launch any other application instead, for both short press and long press functions.

The calling keys, as you might have noticed, are not Green and Red color coded as they usually are on Mobile devices. This is a very minor annoyance and takes some getting used to at first. If you hand the E72 to a person, they might be a little confused trying to find the calling keys. However, it does make the device look a lot ‘neater’, staying with the Black and White color scheme.

Getting back to the Qwerty Keyboard itself, if you’ve used an E71, E75, E63 or any of the communicator devices before, you’ll be very used to this keyboard.

You type on the keys (duh) to get the lower-white marked symbols and alphabets on the screen. To get the upper-white marked you press the function key and then the symbol key itself. Tap the function key twice, and you switch to Symbol-only mode. Tap it twice again, and you go back to Alphabet-mode.

The “up arrow” key switches between Upper-case and lower-case modes (like the CAPS-LOCK key on your Computer).

There’s also Cut, Copy and Paste features (as is standard with the Symbian S60 OS for years now), using the Ctrl key and the appropriate function key (like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, etc)

There are also a few shortcut keys to certain functions, on longpress at the Homescreen. The ‘Sym’ key is a shortcut to turn Bluetooth on/off. The Spacebar switches the Torch (LED Flash) on/off and the ‘Ctrl’ key switches between the General and Silent Profiles.

Coming to the keys itself, they have great feedback to them while typing. The keypad does appear a tiny bit cramped at first though.

Each key presses with a satisfying (but silent) ‘click’ feel. Each key is also raised to provide a better feel while typing.

This is the main reason that the keypad doesnt feel cramped, after a couple initial uses. You’ll get used to fast enough though, and typing out as many words per minute as the next guy.

Keypad back-lighting is pretty good. Each key is well lit, with low (or not much) light leakage.

Even the volume keys are well lit.

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The Messaging App :

The Messaging App on the Nokia E72 is your basic Symbian S60v3 Feature Pack 2 Messaging application. It’s very similar to the Eseries devices before it, and there are a few minor improvements here and there, but its basically the same.

Messages are arranged by date, in one line (although you can change it to the standard 2-line display like in Nseries devices).

The Messaging App also displays your Email Clients along with options like New Message, Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, etc.

Like we said, the app is basically identical to the previous Eseries Devices, like the Nokia E75.

There’s also predictive text available which can really help with typing faster.

In my opinion, I typed faster without it switched on though. You can turn it on or off according to your liking.

Also, if text on the E72 looks too small for you, you can increase or decrease the Text Size :

To get a better understanding of the Messaging app and how it works, you can check out our previous review of the Messaging App on the Nokia E75. The E72 is mostly identical to this, in terms of software, since they’re both on S60v3 FP2.

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As I mentioned earlier, the Qwerty Keyboard on the Nokia E72 is great. It has great tactile feedback, and the keys are raised well enough to let you ‘feel’ each individual key while typing.

While the keyboard might appear cramped at first usage (especially if your fingers are too big), I managed to get used to it in a couple minutes, just like with the ol’ Nokia E71.

What do you think of the Nokia E72 and its keyboard, so far ? Have any questions ? Something we forgot to mention ? Do let us know in the comments y’all !