Nokia’s E-Series of business class handsets has always been a fore-runner when it comes to this particular segment. The company has made sure that their handsets are more than adequately loaded with goodies for both work and play. I won’t mind admitting that the E71 impressed me quite a lot with regard to functionality and I was quite eager to get my hands on the latest in the range of the E75 and see what the improvements in the system were, from OS and UI to the design. After working with it for a week, here’s the story.
GOODS:

Decent battery life
Loaded with very relevant and useful features for biz. and pleasure
Superb audio player
Smooth slide function

BADS:

Buttons on the handset are badly placed
QWERTY keyboard is too flat and not easy to use
Nokia Email refused to work

Nokia’s E-Series of business class handsets has always been a fore-runner when it comes to this particular segment. The company has made sure that their handsets are more than adequately loaded with goodies for both work and play. I won’t mind admitting that the E71 impressed me quite a lot with regard to functionality and I was quite eager to get my hands on the latest in the range of the E75 and see what the improvements in the system were, from OS and UI to the design. After working with it for a week, here’s the story.

Form Factor
Nokia has gone with a slide out QWERTY for the first time with this the last in their popular business class E-Series range. Sadly, their folly lies in the design of this particular feature. The E75 is essentially a variant of the E51. This model is however, equipped with a much larger 2.4-inch screen (240 x 320 pixel, 16 million color resolution). A secondary VGA camera and light senor are located on either side of the speaker. The keypad has been modified and reduced in size, but that’s not the problem. The home and delete keys are joined with the function keys beside them and that is not a good thing at all. This placement (on either side of the five way nav-pad) will have you constantly returning to the main menu screen when you simply wish to select the options. So you’ll have to go all the way back to what you were doing. Thank goodness for multi-tasking, otherwise you’d have to restart the application as well. The same issue was with the other end as well. When simply wanting to Exit a screen or app, you’d end up trying to Delete it.

On one side of the handset is a micro USB port and a slot for a microSD card. On the other side of this slim handset are a set of volume keys that double up for zooming in and out for the camera, and a key in between them that activates the voice command feature for the handset. Below those three is the camera button to both activate the function and release the shutter. A 3.5mm handsfree socket is located at the top with the charging port on the bottom.
When it comes to being user friendly I’d have to put my foot down and say, it’s not.

The slider for the keypad is very smooth and worked without a hitch every single time and I tried it a lot just to check. The keypad itself was another issue altogether. Sure it’s well laid out and the divider in the middle makes it easier. The entire darn thing is just too flat. This makes it extremely hard to type with your thumbs if they’re as plump as mine. In fact I went around asking people to have a go and give me their feedback and not a single person I spoke to was comfortable using this system. Most of the time I stuck to the alphanumeric, even though I kept hitting the Exit key every time I wanted to delete something.  It will take some real getting used to. It’s been about a week and I still haven’t been able to adjust to the level I’d find comfortable. While I love the fact that Nokia was able to incorporate the keypad and still keep the device so slim and sleek, I really wouldn’t have minded if the handset was a little thicker with keys that were slightly raised like those on the E71 or E90.

I really can’t argue with anyone who says that the E75 is a great looking handset, because do believe it is, but when it comes to being user friendly I’d have to put my foot down and say, it’s not. If the keypads were better thought out the whole thing would obviously be moot.

Features and performance
Interface
Running on a Symbian Series 60 (rel. 3.2), the interface is vibrant and clear. I like this version of the S60 UI. The E75’s ARM 11 369 MHz processor keeps the handset running smoothly and in all the time I used it no matter how I filled the card or the system memory, I had no issues with speed and performance of the OS. Everything was copasetic.

The little tweaks in the system like the Sensor control for incoming calls and alarms – simply flip the handset over or tap the front for it go silent – the smooth accelerometer for screen rotation or the quick access option in the contacts menu and features like Text to speech and Voice Commands all make the UI come alive.

Camera
I have to say, the 3.2MP AF camera on the E75 is way better than the one on the E71. The images look a lot better. Feature-wise there’s absolutely no difference. The standard S60 UI is present with features that include scene modes, Exposure, White Balance, A self Timer, Sequence mode, Color Tones, Contrast and others.

Battery
I can’t say that the handset excelled when it came to battery life. It’s not average but just a few steps shy of being really great. With a full charge, I used the handset for just about 2 days, with an average amount of calls, messages, music and net connectivity. The more I used Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
though, the faster my battery ran down. With the battery saver mode active, the handset ran for just a little over 2 days. The average talk time alone was about 3 hours and 45 minutes. That may not be great but I think it’s pretty good.

The Bottom Line
The E75 comes with a price tag of Rs. 26,299 (MRP) and that includes an 8GB memory card. I was quite conflicted with this review as the handset embodies some very helpful and useful features for business and otherwise, but no one, myself included, seemed to like using the QWERTY keypad and the placement of the Menu and Delete keys were also just wrong. If the handset sells it’ll be purely based on functionality, that’s if you can get your emails to download.

The rest of the handset worked beautifully, the design looks snazzy, I’ll agree with that, but in reality, its functionality is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. So at then end of it, I wouldn’t advice going in for the E75. If you’re looking at a QWERTY, the E71 is much cheaper, comes with the same features and the keypad is SO much easier to use.

[Via Tech.in]