Email on the Nokia E75
The Eseries range of Nokia devices have always proudly touted their Email handling capabilities. The Nokia E75 though, takes this one step further with a new version of Nokia Messaging (formerly known as Nokia Email) onboard.
Configuring email on your E75 couldnt be easier. There are however, a couple niggles here and there though.
Here’s how Nokia’s newest Eseries device handles Email.
Introduction :
The Email client is one of the first icons you’ll see on the Main menu. This is of course considering you didnt already see the “Set up Email” icon on the Main Home Screen, when you first use your device.
Even though Nokia themselves have stated that this is a newer version of Nokia Messaging, the email client still quaintly (and thankfully) calls itself “Email. If you go to the About menu, it makes no mention of Nokia Messaging, and any Email services you add here in this Client, are not added to your Nokia Messaging Account Online (atleast if you previously already had an account there, like we did). This is a slight niggle for people who already use Nokia Messaging previously (only because you’ll have to re-add your inboxes here), but if you’re starting new with the E75, it shouldnt make any difference to you at all. Of course, this might still change by the time the E75 is released later this month, but it really isnt a big deal to be honest. This is still an improved version of Nokia Messaging though, no matter what name they decided to call it.
To add your email-service-of-choice to the Email Client, all you have to do is start it up and Select “New“.
This will take you to the “Add Email” Wizard. Alternately, if you clicked the “Setup Email” link on the homescreen, you’ll be taken here directly.
This is where things gets really easy. Once you select “Start”, you’ll have to enter in your Email address. The Nokia Email application automaticallyconfigures itself according to the email address you’ve entered in, and adds your Email service as an Icon in the Email Client’s Main menu.
If it doesnt recognise your Email Service though, it’ll ask you to input more settings so that it can work with it. We’ll explain this in more detail later in this post.
From the Main Menu of the Email Client you have a couple options to play around with. You can open an Email Service to check your inbox for that service, Synchronise all your different Email Services, or Connect/Disconnect all services.
There’s also a Help Menu present, but we doubt you’d need to use it. Ever.
Viewing your Inbox and Emails :
Coming to Email Services, When you click on a service’s Icon you’re taken to the Inbox view by default. Let’s take Gmail into consideration here.
From the Inbox, you can go to any other folder, depending on the service, or just switch to another email service directly.
And that’s not all. By default, your Email is arranged according to date. But if you would want to arrange it by other methods, you have a couple options for that too.
Not too bad.
Now once you’re at your Email Service Inbox, you have the usual Options. You can compose a new email, mark and delete emails, etc.
Another thing to note is that, by default your emails are all expanded according to their mini-catergories. Under date view for example, each email is listed under the date it was received on, and this view is expanded by default. You can choose to collapse these mini-catergories, thankfully, which makes scrolling through your emails a little less tedious, if you have a large amount of them like we did.
Now when you actually do open up an email to view it, you’re not shown the HTML version of it by default (if it is an html email). You’re shown a standard view with a link that says “Show HTML version”. You’ll either love to hate this ‘feature’ but it would have been nice if Nokia had let us set it to always show html version or not.
Point to note, when you open up an email from someone, you have the option of adding that email address to your address book via a tiny icon on the right side.
The Standard view :
The HTML view :
Composing Emails :
Writing or Composing an email is pretty much what you’d expect. All the options you’d need are there.
A nice touch in the recipient field is, as you type an email address or name, the client searches your phone contacts for a match, and if that person has an email address listed under his entry, it’s automatically added.
Everything else works like you’d expect it to. You can add attachments, set priority, add more recipients, save to drafts, insert a template, etc.
There are also a couple settings pertaining to Input, but we’ll cover that in more detail in an upcoming post.
And of course, there’s Copy-Paste. A standard feature on S60 devices.
Settings :
We cant talk about an Email Service, without talking about the settings that it has to work with.
There are two main types of settings in the Email Client. One is Global Settings, pertaining to all services, and the other is service specific settings, which depends on the email service.
These are also accesible though your Inbox.
Global Settings has a few options that you can play around with.
The more detailed settings though, are in the Email service Specific settings. We’ll be taking our Gmail Inbox into account here. You have Mailbox Settings, What to Sync and When to Sync.
The titles speak for themselves really.
Mailbox settings are options that pertain to your mailbox. You can set your Display Name, Signature, etc.
Under advanced mailbox settings though, is a lot more to tinker with, pertaining with your incoming and outgoing mail settings.
You can set which access point each setting uses (by default it asks you before checking), along with port and security settings. This is really useful, as you can set it to use only one set of access points (via Fp2’s Destinations feature) instead of asking you each time, or to only check for new mail when you’re in your Home Network.
Coming back to the “What to Sync” option, this is where you can define…. what to sync. You can set your retrieval amount, Emails to retrieve, etc.
The “When To Sync” option comes in really useful. Here is where you can tell the Client, when to carry out it’s auto-sync feature.
This can come in useful if you’re a bit paranoid about battery and dont want the E75 constantly checking for new Email. The update Interval can be anything from 5 Minutes, to once a Day.
Homescreen Integration :
Now this is where things got a little weird. I love that you can directly see the status of your inboxes on your Homescreen, that’s something that has been standard on Eseries devices for a while now, and we wish would be seen on more upcoming Nseries devices too.
However, this is the part of the Email Client that goes a little crazy. If you get new email, you’re alerted (via the sound you’ve set for that event in your profiles) and you’ll see that little notification on your Homescreen. The problem is though, once you view your new Email, you can only exit the email. You cant directly go to your Inbox from there, or anything else, which seems like something most people would do. Definitely something the developers didnt thing about, and definitely something they should fix. It’s slightly annoying but not a deal breaker.
Another thing that’s annoying, is that even if you’ve read an email, it’ll still be listed as a new email in the Homescreen plugin (not in the Email Client though). This remains the case, until your next sync. Very very annoying. I’ve found myself constantly being fooled into checking for a new email, only to find it’s an old email that is being shown as new on the Homescreen.
Both these ‘problems’ can be easily fixed with a software update, or application update for the Email Client.
Conclusion :
Email on the E75 is a pretty pleasant experience, baring the fixable homescreen annoyances we faced. Emails were pulled in properly, according to the set time interval, and we didnt face any syncing problems at all. It could have been a bit easier to find the “When and What to Sync” settings though, because right now you have to manual search through each Email service to change them.
Nokia have definitely worked hard on the Email Client and it shows. It just adds to the great business device package that the Nokia E75 is.
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