Ye Giant Nokia E72 Review

Every fan of the E71 (and who wasnt one, really?) couldnt wait to see what Nokia had whipped up to succeed it. Then Nokia announced the Nokia E72, and it really seemed to fix the few faults that it’s predecessor had.

But is it all that great ? Is it THAT much better than the E71 ? Should you even consider buying this one ?

Well, you’ll have to read the review to find out.

As we begin this review, we feel its worth mentioning that our format is a bit different this around. We’ve highlighted various features of the E72 in separate articles, and hence, in some cases we’ll have to link back to an article, rather than explain it again here.

Note: The E72 in this review is on Firmware version 22.007 which is the latest at the time of this post. Some features might change in later firmware versions.

To have a better look at how our opinion of the E72 has changed from when we first got it, to now (if it has) do remember to check out our Nokia E72 First Impressions post.

The E72 is positioned as the next Eseries Flagship device, with it’s formfactor stated to replace the E71 (and E71x) Series. The device comes fully loaded with features such as the 5 MegaPixels Camera (a first on an Eseries device), Full Qwerty Keyboard, A-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 E72 boasts :

• 320 x 240 pixels 16M colors TFT 2.36 inches screen
• Symbian OS 3.2 (S60 V3 Feature Pack 2)
• ARM 11 600 MHz processor
• 250 MB storage, 128 MB RAM (with around 45MB on startup)
• Quad-band GSM with Dual-band 3G with HSDPA (10.2 Mbps) and HSUPA (2 Mbps) support
• Wifi and A-GPS (with Digital Compass) built in
• microSD card expandable upto 16GB, includes 4GB in package (might vary according to region)
• FM and Bluetooth (v2.0 with A2DP)
• Micro USB v2.0, suppports USB-Charging
• Standard 3.5mm Audio Jack
• 5 MP autofocus camera (2592 x 1944 pixels) with Single LED flash and VGA recording at 15fps
• Built-in Nokia Messaging support for Email and IM
• Full QWERTY keyboard
• Five-way scroll key with Optical trackpad
• Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation and motion-based features
• Symbian Web Browser with Full Flash support (for Youtube, Flash videos, etc)

Phew. That’s not bad is it ? And that’s just a few. You can read the full list of features on the Nokia E72 Product Page.

The E72 measures 114 x 58.3 x 10.1 mm, and weighs in at 128 g. It’s pretty darn compact in my books, and the weight really makes it ‘feel’ like an expensive device.

Not too light, not too heavy, and just the right size. It might appear a bit too wide at first, but it’s something you’ll get over very soon.

For more on the size of the E72, do check our size comparisons of the E72 with the Original N97, N97 Mini, Nokia E75 and Nokia E63. You can also check our Nokia E72 vs Nokia E71 post to know more of the differences in the two devices.

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 strange sounds whatsoever, except for a tiny creak in the lower “bar” below the spacebar.

Otherwise, we were way impressed. The thing is built like a tank. Seriously you could throw this thing at someone and cause some real damage. Not to the phone, but to the person lol.

On with the pictures !

Front View :

The Front of the Nokia E72, admittedly looks very much like the E71. Of course there’s differences in design. The One-Touch keys are surrounded by a steel line to distinguish them from the rest of the keys. The Calling keys are plain white instead of the usual Green and Red colors. This is mildy annoying, esspecially when you first use the device.

The Keys are slightly smaller than the E71 but more “raised up” for better typing. You’ll also notice that the spacebar is smaller, with more keys in the lower row.

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 2.36? screen. The screen is pretty large by non-touch device standards, but pales in comparison to most touch-devices today.

The E72’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, atleast not as bad as the N97 and N86. Pretty much on par with previous Eseries devices like the E75 and E71.

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 (or “One-Touch”) keys along with your selection keys, call keys and the Full Qwerty Keyboard at the bottom.

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

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

The One-touch keys work fine and as you’d expect them too. You can configure each key to two functions (one shortpress, one longpress) to open applications, etc.

They have a default function, but you can change them to whatever you would want.

The Dpad has a backlight to it that gently “pulsates” to indicate that the device is switched on.

It pulses twice every minute to let you know if you’ve gotten a new message, new email or missed call.

And ofcourse, you can turn this feature off if it bugs you.

The Dpad on the E72 isnt just any Dpad though. It’s also an Optical Navigation Key. In our opinion, this is one feature that you’ll either love or hate. I couldnt for the life of me, get used to the Opti Navi-key and switched it off in my settings after a week of usage. The S60v3 UI on the E72 is simply not “made” to be used with the Opti Navi-key. Maybe a future firmware might fix that though.

For more information on this topic, you can check out our “The Opti-Navi Key on the E72″ post.

To give you a better idea, here’s a video on the Opti-Navi key on the Nokia E72 :

The Keyboard itself may appear cramped at first, but you’ll be typing away fine on it withing a day of usage. Each individual key is raised so that you can “feel” them better while typing.

The keys have great feedback to them, and a re-assuring (but silent) ‘click’ when you type.

Some of the keys on the bottom row also have special functions. Like, a longpress on the Spacebar turns the touch on (using the LED Flash light at the back). A longpress on the “Sym” key toggles your Bluetooth on or off. Likewise, a longpress on “Ctrl” switches between your current profile and the silent profile.

The keys are white-on-black and have a white backlight to them, which means they’re always easily distinguishable.

To know more about the Full Qwerty keyboard, do check out our Typing and Messaging on the Nokia E72 post.

Back View :

The back of the Nokia E72 carries over it’s Metallic Stainless Steel look, along with it’s Matt Black.

On the upper side we have the 5 Megapixel camera, with it’s single LED Flash. 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 previous Eseries Devices, in terms of pictures. Video-wise the quality is marginally better but stuck at a paltry 15 Frames per second at VGA resolution.

We’ve discussed more about the E72′s Camera later in this post.

Next to the Camera, is it’s Single Loudspeaker in a Steel Mesh Grille. The device isnt anywhere as loud as Nseries devices today, but isnt too bad. The problem is the fact that the loudspeaker is situation on the back of the device, unlike on the top in the E71. Because of this, the loudspeaker rests (almost) flat, when you keep the E72 on a surface, or in your pant pocket, etc which muffles the sound by quite a bit.

It’s also worth pointing out that Vibration on the E72 isnt very strong. You’ll probably not notice the device vibrating in your pocket, on more than a couple occasions.

At the bottom of the device, is the same release-latch system for the Back panel that was used on the E75 before. In our experience this isnt very strong and tends to loosen up after a year of usage.

The Stainless steel cover has a metallic dotted design on it to lessen the fingerprints that (still) do appear on it. Like all Eseries devices, it also has a nice “Nokia Eseries” branding at the top.

Top View :

The top of the device houses the 3.5mm Audio Jack, which makes its third appearance on an Eseries device, on the E72 (It was first seen on the E63, then the E75). A welcome addition, I must say.

There’s also a silver power button at the top, which (apart from switching it off) can also be used to lock the device, or change profiles.

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.

Interesting Fact: The E72 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.

The microUSB port can also be used to charge the device (via the supplied cable or a Nokia USB charger if you happen to have one). Our device came with a 4GB microSD but that might vary according to region.

Right View :

From left to right, we see the 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.

These keys also light up in low-light situations, along with the keyboard.

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

Normally you’d expect a dedicated Camera button on this side of a device, but due to the E72′s form factor and orientation, you’d probably want to hold it upright (instead of sideways) when taking a picture. And the Opti-navi key is used to auto-focus anyway, which eliminates the need for a dedicated camera key.

The Battery :

The Battery of the E72 is the BP-4L 1500 mAh battery (the same one used in the E71). Under our tests, it could easily last more than a day and a half (which is saying a lot). On average usage it’d probably sail through 2 days of usuage. Definitely on par, if not better than the battery life on the E71.

The Box :

The Usual Eseries type retail box. This is the Asian variant.

What was slightly different, was that this is probably the first Eseries devices with Ovi branding and icons on the side of the box.

The E72 ships with the usual Eseries packaging like a leather pouch (cover) and lanyard cable. There’s no TV-out cable because the device doesnt have this feature.

You can check out our Nokia E72 Unboxing Video post, for a more detailed look at the retail package contents.

The S60 V3 UI, Menu and Home Screen:

The E72 uses the S60 V3 OS that’s seen on newer devices like the E75 and N86. 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, all thanks to its 600 Mhz Cpu.

The E72’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.

And like we said, thanks to the 600 Mhz Cpu and 128 Mb of ram, you can open up quite a bunch of programs and keep them running in the background.

We had about 15 programs running before we started to see mild slowdowns in transitions.

Point to note, even though the E72 is said to have 128Mb of ram, we only saw 40-45Mb of free ram at startup. When you compare this to the 90-odd Mb of free ram on the E71 at startup, it’s not hard to realise that the E72 might not be as great at multitasking as it’s predecessor. This number might improve in future firmware updates though, but as of right now the E72 certainly isnt ‘Bad’ at multitasking. It’s a heck of a lot better than newer Nseries devices.

The Homescreen of the E72 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.

Indicators for Wifi, Bluetooth, PC Connections, etc are shown at the bottom of the screen unlike on the top as in other Symbian Devices. One thing I noticed on the E72 though, is that its missing a GPS indicator. Newer Symbian devices usually have a tiny satellite icon appear to let you know GPS is switched on, but that doesnt seem to happen on the E72. Might be a bug that will later be fixed in a newer firmware ?

You can also 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.

You can also setup shortcuts for the left and right selection keys.

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.

This can be really useful if you prefer to use a different theme, homescreen, profile, etc in your business and personal modes.

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 E72 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 E72.

Which brings us to..

Contacts on the E72 :

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.

To give you a better idea, here’s a short video about Contacts on the Nokia E72 :

Calendar :

The E72 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.

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.

(Note: screenshots in this segment are from an E75, but the UI is exactly the same in the E72)

Messaging and Text Input on the E72 :

The messaging application on the E72 is your usual S60 standard affair. However, the advantage that the E72 has, is that sweet full qwerty keyboard. We’ve covered this subject in detail already, so check out our Messaging and Typing on the Nokia E72 post for more info.

Internet and Web Browsing :

You cant have a device today, in this age, without expecting some sort of Internet capabilities out of it. Luckily, the E72 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.

We’ve covered this in detail before, so do check out our Web Browsing on the Nokia E72 post for more info.

Here’s a short video about Web Browsing on the Nokia E72 :

Email and IM:

One thing that the E72 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 E72 post.

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

There’s also “Nokia Messaging for IM” included in the E72 under the app name “Chat”. Although you’ll have to hunt around for it. I couldnt find it untill I went to the “Setup Chat” icon on my homescreen.

This allows you to use IM services like Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

Here’s a short video about Email on the Nokia E72 :

The Camera :

The 5 Megapixel Standard Lens camera on the E72 comes pretty close to quality the Carl Zeiss Lens equipped Nseries products have, and it is way better than the horrible camera on the E71. Unfortunately the E72′s Camera app doesnt allow Geo-Tagging of pictures yet. Hopefully that will come soon in a firmware update.

Sadly though, Video recording is still stuck at just 15 FPS Vga.

We’ve already covered this in detail previously, so do check out our Camera On the Nokia E72 post for more info about this section. You could also check out some of our Camera Samples on our Nokia E72 Camera Samples Flickr Album.

Here’s a short video about the Camera on the Nokia E72 :

Gallery :

The Eseries finally has the same Gallery as Nseries devices now, on the E72.

When you startup the Gallery you’ll see different sections for Pictures, Video, Songs, Sound Clips, Streaming Links and Presentations.

Videos takes you to the Videos app, Songs to the Music Player, etc.

But thankfully, the E72′s Image gallery is just like the newer Nseries non-touch devices. Pictures are sorted by All, Captured, Months, Albums, Tags, etc.

Images are sorted in a carousel form and you can move through them using the direction keys.

Whereas a center-press of the Dpad will bring the image into focus with a few options on the sidebar (like rotate, send, upload, edit, etc).

Ofcourse there are more options under the “options” tab over the left selection button.

You can play a slideshow, assign the image to a contact, 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 and Sound Recorder if anyone was wondering.

Strangely missing though, is the Internet Radio and Podcasting applications. I cant for the life of me, figure out why Nokia left these two apps out of the E72 when they’ve been a regular on past Eseries devices. Podcasting apps especially can be really useful to listen to podcasts on your journey to and from work.

There’s also ready access to the Nokia Music Store, incase you’d want to buy tracks from there.

And lastly, there’s also a “Music Search” app that lets you say the name of an artist or track to play it. Nokia obviously focused on the Multimedia bit with this Eseries device.

The big improvement though, is that the E72 has a standard 3.5mm audio jack so you can listen to music on your device via standard headphones if you wish.

Audio Quality was pretty decent. Close to Nseries devices, but still lacking that particular punch.

Here’s a short video about Music on the Nokia E72 :

GPS :

The E72 has built in A-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 Ovi Maps onboard with a 3 month free Navigation license. And ofcourse, the E72 supports all S60 Applications that use the inbuilt GPS, such as Google Maps, etc.

There’s also a built-in Digital Compass that can be REALLY useful. Unfortunately the only on-board application that seems to use it, is Ovi Maps. There is no seperate Compass App. Another annoyance is that you have to calibrate the compass every single time you use an application that uses it.

We’ve covered this in detail before, so do check out our GPS on the Nokia E72 post for more details.

Here’s a short video about GPS and the Compass on the Nokia E72 :

Connectivity :

The E72 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 E72 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.

We’ve covered this in detail before, so do check out our Office on the Nokia E72 post for more info.

Here’s a video about Office and various features on the Nokia E72 :

Apart from the Above :

The E72 has a lot under it’s hood. Many things have been improved, some things added in.

There are two games onboard: “Block Cascade” and “Solitare” to keep you entertained when you arnt working. Y’know cause since you bought an Eseries device you’re obviously a Business man

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.

Timed Profiles are still in, just like the E75.

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 E72 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, E75 and E66.

The Theme Application on the E72 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 E72 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 E72 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:

How can I put this.

The E72 is one heck of a great device. Sure it isnt all fancy and touchy like the new Touchscreen devices nowadays. But what it is, is a sleek sexy little device that’s fast, (very) stable and a great all-rounder that can really last for quite a while considering everything it can do.

The UI is very quick and fast, even with Theme Transitions on, and it has all the nice little Eseries extras that we’ve come to know and love without compromising on other features too much.

Nokia’s built on the monoblock Formfactor of the E71 and definitely improved it with the E72 (whereas I still think the E71 looked sexier though).

The Full Qwerty Keyboard is great, easy to pick up and use, and the formfactor allows you to use the device one-handed if needed.

Build Quality is pretty great (apart from that one creaky lower bar), but again not as great at the E71 though.

Battery life isnt even a problem. It lasts just as long (if not longer) than the E71.

The screen is nice and bright, and although some people might consider it small in this day and age, we never really had any problems with it. Ofcourse, while viewing websites, you’ll probably feel otherwise, but that’s a limitation of the non-touch form factor really.

To add to the list, this Eseries device actually isnt that bad at multimedia (which was a major problem with the E71). The 5 Megapixel camera is more than enough to keep anyone happy. It’s results arnt superb but good enough for average day photos of friends, or random things. The 3.5 mm Audio Jack means listening to Music isnt a problem, since you can plug any standard pair of headphones in there or use a Bluetooth Headset since it supports A2DP.

So what didnt we like about the E72 ? Well the loudspeaker could have been in a better position (ie: at the top of the device like on the E71) because it really does get muffled on the back. Vibration could have been stronger, and the Camera video quality really should not have been stuck at just 15fps at this point in time. I’m also perplexed by why Geo-Tagging isnt supported by the E72′s camera app. But then again, 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 probably wont think of this as a worthy upgrade to their device. Sure it has slightly better battery life, a better camera, an Optical Navi-key and newer software but is that enough ?

That being said, if anyone asks me which Eseries device to purchase right now, I’d definitely recommend the Nokia E72. If you’re looking for an S60 Business device with decent Multimedia features, there’s simply nothing that can beat it right now.

Here’s a video on Our Final Verdict on the Nokia E72 :

Highly Recommended y’all !

Remember if you’d like we also have a Full Nokia E72 Review Playlist on our YouTube Channel, and various pictures from our Review on our Flickr Album.