First Impressions of the E75

I recently bought a Nokia E75 and got a very good deal thanks to a special notice posted by IntoMobile.com. I only paid $265 because I purchased the phone on the Saturday before Father’s day between 9:00 PM and Midnight.

The E75 is a very nice phone and feels great in the hand. It has the very solid feel that is standard for E-series phones. I like the screen and it works well in both the portrait and landscape mode. In addition to a very good screen, the numeric (front) keypad is also very good. The keys are a little small but they are sloped towards each other, which increases the accuracy of the key presses. The inner keyboard is a little more difficult to use because the keys are all perfectly flat. Despite this, it works very well for thumb typing. You can comfortably compose and reply to email using the inner QWERTY keyboard but would not want to type out a novel on it. The E75 has a standard 3.5 mm headphone port. While the 2.5 mm ports on earlier E-series phones were never a big deal for me, it was the cause of many complaints by others. Finally, the materials and construction of the E75 are all first class. In addition to all this, the E75 incorporates an accelerometer and has turn and/or tap to silence calls and alarms. The physical design of the E75 is near perfect and the only thing its missing is TV Out.

I have read other reviews that said that the E75's call quality was not as good as other E-series phones but I have not found that to be true. In fact, I found just the opposite to be true. The E75's call quality is outstanding on both cellular and Internet calls. In addition, the cellular signal strength is better than any other E-series phone I've used, except for possibly the E90 Communicator. Even in very low signal strength areas, the E75 had a usable signal. If you read my review of the E71 last year you'll know that my one complaint on this outstanding phone was the placement of the antenna and the pronounced signal degradation when holding the phone from the bottom. Nokia has completely resolved this issue with the E75 and has even gone one better.

The firmware on the E75 is s60 3rd edition feature pack 2. This version of s60 brings several features that s60 3rd edition has been missing since it was first introduced. One feature, although seemingly minor, is the addition of an adjustable snooze duration in the alarm clock. This feature enables the snooze duration to be adjustable from 1 minute to 60 minutes in 1 minute increments. I know this sounds trivial but I like a 10 minute snooze duration and all previous s60 3rd edition phones had a fixed 5 minute snooze duration. The two other major new features of the FP2 firmware are the new Nokia Email application, which incorporates Mail for Exchange and (finally) HTML, and VoIP version 3. The new Email application, in addition to adding Mail for Exchange to the firmware, also provides access to email folders (other than Inbox). These are both features that have been missing for a long time and make the E75 a messaging powerhouse. As for VoIP, version 3 offers much greater customization by including in the firmware options previously only available by downloading and installing the VoIP Settings application. This version of VoIP has also eliminated the Internet Telephone application by incorporating this functionality into Contacts. After setting up your SIP profile(s), you select your default profile (the profile used to make outgoing calls) from within Contacts. Once activated, all of your contacts are then copied into a mirror directory. This allows you to make normal cellular calls by selecting a contact in the default Contacts directory or Internet calls by selecting a contact in the active Internet Call directory. In previous version of s60 3rd edition, you had to specify the default call type, either cellular or Internet. To place a call using the non-default call type required extra steps to select the call type.

Up until this point there has been a lot to like about the FP2 firmware. Unfortunately, that was the good; now for the bad. First, the initial firmware is very buggy, even more so than usual for an early release of a new feature pack. You'll notice that there are no included screen shots in this post. The reason is that after installing a very few 3rd party applications, the E75 became too unstable to use. Specifically, after installing Handy Shell and setting up Email, the phone went into an infinite loop cycling between the active standby screen, the Handy Shell screen, and the new Email application. I could not find a way to break this loop and had to hard reset the phone. Next, the Mail for Exchange feature of the new Email application has a very serious memory leak. Within a few hours of setting up Email using the Mail for Exchange option, the phone's memory was filled up, making the phone unusable. Specifically, the Other directory in the phone memory became filled with 82 MEG of files. Changing the default email location from the phone memory to the memory card made no difference; the phones memory was still filled up within a couple of hours. Lastly, the VoIP application, in spite of the above noted improvements, is unusable out of the box. In order to actually use VoIP, it is first necessary to download an application from Forum Nokia. Furthermore, I only discovered this necessary additional application by searching the Internet for a solution.

To conclude, the E75 design and materials are both great. However, while the FP2 firmware has great promise, it is so unstable in its initial release that the E75 is essentially unusable. Finally, two of the major features of this Enterprise phone, Email (Mail for Exchange) and VoIP are either unusable and seriously degraded. While I'm confident that these problems will be fixed in a firmware upgrade, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed in Nokia for releasing a phone with firmware that is this buggy.

E71 Detailed Review Part 2: Business Functions

I have been using the E71 as my primary phone for over a week now and have found it to be a very capable device. First let me talk about the basic business applications: Calendar and Contacts (the PIM functions). Both of these applications have been updated from what is available on other S60 FP1 devices such as the Nokia E90 and both are significant improvements. First, the new calendar views are very functional:

The Calendar application does not include Categories, which will not please the die-hard business email folks, however, I never use Categories and find that the E71 Calendar application does everything I need in a very functional way.

The contacts also incorporates improvements that allow you to quickly select the most common tasks with only a couple of clicks:

I especially like the new contact Groups. This feature incorporates the old "Team Suite" application into Contacts. I use this feature extensively as part of my daily business, to place conference calls. I have not used a conventional land line telephone in nearly four years but making conference calls using VoIP or Mobile phones used to be difficult and cumbersome. Team Suite was a major help and, with this function being incorporated into Contacts, making conference calls is now both easy and slick.

The next business critical function is email. It is this function that most dramatically changed the way I was able to manage my business when I first started using a Nokia E-series phone two years ago. I use Mail for Exchange (M4E) in conjunction with a Business Exchange account from Mail2Web.com and it works great. Mail2Web.com offers a GREAT service whether you're using their free Exchange product, their personal Exchange product (for a few $/month) or their Professional Exchange account. I have used M4E since it first became available almost two years ago and the Nokia M4E team has done a great job on this free application. It is updated frequently and, in conjunction with Mail2Web's free Exchange account, provides push email for free. Currently M4E supports Email, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks and works flawlessly. The only thing it's missing is support for folders (other than the default Inbox). This has, however, not proven to be an issue for me.

I have also used emoze in the past to get business email pushed to my phone from email accounts setup for me my various clients. emoze has always worked fine for me in the past but I have not had the opportunity to test this application on the E71 as I do not have any client email accounts at the present. I have also been testing the new Nokia Email service with my personal Gmail account. This application, even though it is still an early beta version, works very well and I expect it will eventually replace the native S60 email application.

While this application does not currently support folders either, I expect that it will eventually. It does however provide a very good interface for any Pop/IMAP account and does provide push functionality.

Unfortunately, neither of Nokia's newest E-series phones supports Blackberry (BB) Connect. While this does not affect me, as I have never used BB Connect, RIM has a major following, especially in the US. It's absence from the new E-series phones will have a significant impact on the uptake of the E66 and E71 in the US. Two of my colleagues participating in the Collective Seeding test were both surprised (they had both previously used Nokia E62s with BB Connect) and upset this this support was missing from the E71. As a result, I do not expect either of these two colleagues to move to the E71. This in unfortunate as I believe the E71 is superior in every other way and has received very positive comments in the areas of design, styling, and Web interface (the S60 browser) from everyone participating in the Collective Seeding test, including these two BB Connect users.

The E71 also includes the editing version of QuickOffice and this very mature product has functioned flawlessly. I have used it to edit Word & Excel documents and have had no issues in "round tripping" the modified files. While the screen "real estate" is not a generous as on my E90, the E71s screen is large enough to make creating and editing Office documents very comfortably.

Finally, I have been testing Nokia Maps 2.0. This application has come a long way since its initial introduction. When first introduced Maps was almost unusable. Commands were not organized logically, functions that should have been included were missing, etc. However, Maps 2.0 is a pretty complete navigation solution. After the initial GPS lock, which took several minutes, subsequent GPS locks took only 10 to 15 seconds. There are three possible views: one giving just the directions (turn arrows, etc.), a 2D Map, and a 3D Map. There is a screen that allows you to adjust the volume of the voice directions, you can save favorites, etc. The navigation display is clear, showing the Map and your position, as well as the next turn and its distance. The voice commands were also very clear and timely.

One of the nicest features of the Maps application is the flexibility of Nokia licensing. You can but a 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year license. The 1 day and I month license are only a few dollars and makes it perfect for use on day trips and vacations. The yearly license is also reasonably priced and comparable with TomTom, Wayfinder, and Garmin.

While very usable, there is some room for improvement in the Maps application. The Map colors are a little dark. Specifically, the road is a dark red and your route is a dark blue. The use of all dark colors makes it a little difficult to quickly identify your route. While not a fatal flaw, use of brighter colors would be better. There also appears to be no way to change the voice used to give directions. Again, not a major point but all other navigation applications I have used provide the ability to use different voices.