JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The Nokia E75 is the Finnish-giant's first slide-out QWERTY keyboard-bearing mobile phone. It belongs to the dedicated Enterprise division of Nokia's consumer portfolio, but it also packs features that will attract non-business, but messaging-focused users.

The phone was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress this year, where PhoneReport was able to present a preliminary review of the device and deduced that the E75 is a balance between business and personal life; it began shipping in April, and is now available in most regions of the world.

The E75 runs on the default software platform of the Eseries line - Symbian OS9.3 with S60 v3.2. The review unit provided to us at this stage is the production model, with software ready for the market.

In terms of specifications, the Nokia E75 has a 2.4" display with 240x320 pixels of resolution, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB connectivity, a 3.5mm audiovisual jack, A-GPS, and a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash.

The Eseries line in general is meant to compete against HTC and BlackBerry phones. The E75 itself is competing against the HTC S740, although the latter has been in the market since November last year. The moderate, non-business centric look of the E75 will mean that it can broaden its range of users from business users to heavy-weight messaging users, as said previously.

HTC's S740 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard, it does not have a touchscreen, but it features a 3.2 megapixel camera (without autofocus or flash, unlike that of the E75), HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microSD memory card support, and 528MHz CPU, which is higher than the E75's  369MHz CPU. Both phones contain a very similar battery capacity, the S740 having 50mAh more than the E75, which has 1000mAh.

Above: Nokia E75 at the left, HTC S740 at the right

The most advanced phone from HTC, the Touch Pro2, will compete against Nokia's flagship device, the N97. The E75 is not as resourceful the Touch Pro2, alike all other Eseries devices, which pertain to the same level (high mid-end).

Above: HTC Touch Pro2 at the left, Nokia N97 at the right

As Research in Motion does not offer a slide-out QWERTY keyboard-bearing device to the market, Nokia will not face competition from this brand, although BlackBerry phones are rivaled by Nokia's E71 and E63.

Above: Nokia E71 at the left, Nokia E63 at the right

At the time of announcement, the Nokia E75 was set to cost €375, without subsidies or taxes.

Design

The Nokia E75 comes with a battery, stereo headset, charger, USB cable, pouch, and instruction manuals in the box. A 4GB microSD memory card is also included, which contains more memory than the memory cards even multimedia phones have in their sales package.

The included BL-4U battery has 1000mAh in capacity, slightly more than the N95. It allows up to 5.3 hours of talk time, and 280 hours of standby time in GSM; while on 3G, it allows 4.2 hours of talk time, and 264 hours of standby time. With minimal use, our unit lasted 4 days (96 hours) - the unit was in dual mode, its reception divided between 3G and GSM. For a business phone of this size, this can be considered low; a 1500mAh should have been included, just like on the Nokia E71.

The AC-8 charger in the package is a new, energy-efficient charger which reduces standby-time power usage of the charger by 90% of that used by conventional chargers. The phone itself has a power saving mode, which automatically kicks in if the battery is low.

There is no TV-out, which is unacceptable on a business phone.

The phone feels solid, but heavy at 139g. In landscape mode with the keyboard opened, this changes, and it feels as if the weight distribution is balanced.

There seems to be an inconsistency with keypad backlightning. On the front, only the very top keys receive proper lightning, while on the QWERTY keyboard, there are inconsistent light leakages from the key divisions.

Both keypads work well, although the numeric one feels tight, as there are no vertical divisions; the two-sided keys (there are four) feel awkward, and aren't easy to use; and lastly, the full keyboard has little spacing between the keys, although this will not affect typing, but getting used to the keyboard does take its time. Once used to the full keyboard, it is difficult to go back to the numeric one.

The placement of the camera key is not well calculated: one feels uncomfortable with the extra-reach that the finger has to stretch to. The key itself does not respond at times, although this could be a software issue which is yet to be fixed.

The slots - for the microSD memory card and USB port - are of rubber, but impressively, not hard to close, or prone to damage. Only the memory card slot is hard to open; one would need fingernails for this.

The sliding platform, for the full keyboard, feels "wobbly", but upon close inspection, it holds tight and it is safe. Only when typing with the numeric keypad, this feeling persists.

The front and a portion of the back of phone have glossy surfaces. The front part attains marks, such as fingerprints; while the back part is easy to scratch.

On the front of the phone, there is a metallic border to the earpiece - this does not feel well to the ear, as it cold and pointy.

The 2.4" display has a resolution of 240x320 pixels. It seems adequate in both portrait and landscape mode. As the phone is glossy, it is difficult to operate the phone if exposed to sunlight, as there is a glare on the screen.

Unlike on the Nokia 9300, it is the numeric keypad that has more shortcuts: one can toggle Bluetooth, the internet browser, and silent profile from this keypad.

At the right of the phone has a volume rocker, voice dial key, and camera key. The lanyard loophole is located at the very bottom of this side.

Nokia hadn't adopted universal chargers at the time of the E75; at the bottom of the phone, there is a 2.0mm charging port.

The 3.5mm audio jack is located at the top of the phone.

The 3.2 megapixel camera occupies a very small portion of the back of the phone. It has a LED flash, and a mirror.

The speaker is also located in this section, although as this is a business phone, it is rather small and its volume is not very high.

The back cover is easy to open, although it is recommended to have fingernails in order to do it.

Both the battery and SIM card are easy to insert and remove.

Software

The Nokia E75 runs on the Symbian operating system 9.3, with the S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 software platform. This makes the phone a powerful smartphone, capable of catering to business users. This software platform has been analysed at the time of the Nokia N78 review.

Many have complained on the old user interface of the S60 software platform, and also on the lack of touchscreen on Nokia Eseries phones, unlike HTC phones, which have touchscreens. There is no sign of a touchscreen Eseries phone,which is slowing down Nokia's growth in this market.

The E75 can change orientation by means of opening the sliding platform, or by activating the accelerometer (motion sensor).

Recent Eseries phones can lead a double life: being business and personal phones. For this purpose, there is shortcut in the active standby screen, which alternates between these two profiles, which are customizable. The user can set different wallpapers, shortcuts, and even menu layouts.

Unsurprisingly, the business software features of the E75 are the highlight of the phone: advanced calendar, advanced email application, PDF reader, a fully licensed version of Quickoffice, and Intranet access.

We were not able to successfully browse the internet from the E75, via Wi-Fi. This handset was the only one which gave us a gateway error, as every other device present in our office was able to use our Wi-Fi connection. This could be a firmware issue, that would be fixed in future.

Among many other features, the E75 also has word auto-completion (text prediction), which eases the typing on the phone.

The speed of the phone was satisfactory, and the overall usability should improve soon, as the phone is only on v100 of the firmware.

Camera

We decided to test the Nokia E75's camera against the one from the N95. The E75 has a 3.2 megapixel camera, while the N95 has 5 megapixel one with Carl Zeiss optics. We should not be comparing different cameras to each other, but this will show what the E75 is missing. Both phones were set to capture images at 3 megapixels.

Please note: E75 at the left, N95 at the right

Automatic shot (full automatic mode)

The automatic shot was done against a strong blue sky, with houses hit by the sun's light. The N95 clearly has better intrepretation of the blue sky, as well as a sharper detail on the house's roof; this is due to the bigger sensor on the N95.

Close-up shot (close-up mode activated, everything else in automatic)

Once again, in this close-up shot we are also presented with better colour intrepretation in the N95's shot, both in the green and pink colours. Unfortunately, the shade (our error) damaged part of the E75's capture, although the section lit by the sun can be effectively compared against the N95's shot. The N95 is also sharper in this test.

Night shot (full automatic mode)

In this shot, the E75 was not able to even focus. The N95 seemed to have a better flash, which was smoothed in the image; the E75 left a large white light spot on the wall, as visible in the image. Consequently, the picture on the wall was captured in its true (or almost true) colours by the N95, while the E75 was not even close.

Conclusion

As a business phone, the E75 might be fulfilling, it all depends on the requirements: there is no touchscreen or a fancy user interface, but there is a full QWERTY keyboard and the useful S60 software platform.

The aim of Nokia was certainly to attract both the business user and the messaging enthusiast, or just the business user who wishes to use one phone for everything. This was well achieved, as the phone is stylish, and the software allows it to expand in this requirement.

It is the small things that also count, and these are not in favour of the device: the weight, earspeaker, numeric keypad usage, camera, and Wi-Fi. Nokia will need to work on the ergonomic details on upcoming devices, as users may not feel totally comfortable with the E75.

To counter the problems, there are features which will attract the consumer: connectivity options, software versitility, duality between business and personal phone, and the full keyboard.

Advantages: HSDPA, A-GPS, full QWERTY keyboard, powerful software, 4GB memory card in the box, and the ability of working as a business and personal phone.

Disadvantages: Non-working Wi-Fi, uncomfortable earspeaker, wobbly numeric keypad, and low-quality camera.

Rating: 7.9/10

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