Nokia E72 – Smartphone with excellent messaging and GPS-Ovi Map features

For:

Nokia E72 has a faster processor, 5-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, GPRS, EDGE, GPS, Wi-Fi and 3G support. Inbuilt Nokia Mini-Map browser has support for Adobe Flash Player to watch online videos. E72 also have free real-time voice-based directional access to Ovi Maps. Moreover, the phone has support for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, POP3/IMAP4/SMTP.

Against:

The operating system still lacks some features on various aspects. Speakerphone volume is low and optical trackpad needs to be improved. Nokia E72 has high cost.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Nokia E72 is based on WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM. It has a candy bar design and supports the band: WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM 850/900/1800/1900. The basic features include vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, speed dial, voice dialing, call timer, voice recorder and speakerphone. Nokia E72 offers conference calling up to six participants, quad-band world roaming and VoIP calls.

Nokia E72 is powered by 600MHz processor and inbuilt 250 MB memory. The operating system is Symbian OS 9.3 Series 60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. The phone offers synchronization with PC through MS Outlook and SyncML. The phone has a microSD card slot that supports up to 16GB.

2.36-inch LCD display has 320×240 pixels resolution that supports 24-bit (16.7 million) colors. Nokia E72 also has multi-language menu. The smartphone supports the wireless interface of IEEE 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR. The speech codecs are FF, HR, EFR and AMR.

5-mega pixel built-in camera has a 5x digital zoom and focal length of 4.7 mm. The camera’s still image resolution is 2592×1944 and it supports the EXIF/JPEG format. Special effects include sepia, vivid, negative, normal, and black-and-white. It also has features of self-timer delay and white balance. The video recorder resolutions are 320×240 QVGA, 640×480 VGA and 176×144 QCIF.

The additional features of Nokia E72 are HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), Class 32 GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), Class 32 EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution), GPS (Global Positioning System), A-GPS, RDS (Radio Data System), integrated digital compass and text-to-speech recognition.

1500 mAH lithium ion battery gives 21 days idle standby time. The accessories in the Nokia E72’s package include software CD, reference material, carrying strap and case, cleaning cloth, stereo headset (wired), 4GB SD card, USB cable and AC adapter.

Razzle Dazzle:

Nokia E72 is built well and has a beautiful design like E71/E71x. The E72 measures 4.48×2.34×0.39 (length×width×depth) and weighs 4.51 OZ. The phone is a bit wider, heavier and taller as compared to its predecessor, but you won’t notice that much. E72 is comfortable to handle while on a phone call due to its slender frame. E72 is thinner than E71 and it can easily fit in pants pocket and bag. Nokia E72 is sturdy phone with steel edges and back plate.

Inside Dope:

Nokia N series wasn’t much of a success, however, the E series smartphones captured the market quite well. Now, Nokia has launched a solid product-Nokia E72, which is a successor of Nokia E71/E71x. The E72 offers various upgrades in form of more memory, better camera, faster processor and free access to voice-guided navigation to Ovi Maps. E72 continues to have same traditional sleek design. We thank Nokia for the improvements in the user interface, but it still needs to do a bit more. Unlocked Nokia E72 costs around $419 without any service contract. The cost is more as compared to RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700. E72 will not disappoint its buyers. Nokia E72 supports two different platforms: Java MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1. The E72 has inbuilt XHTML based Nokia MiniMap web browser that supports Adobe Flash Player to view online videos at sites like YouTube.com. Nokia E72 has various upgrades to previous N series/E71/E71x. We will discuss all these upgrades one by one.

Display:

Nokia E72 has a 2.36-inch QVGA display with 320×240 pixels resolution that supports 16.7 million colors. The display is bright and clear enough. Nokia has given us a light-sensing technology to adjust the display’s brightness as per the surroundings. We found this feature very exciting and attractive. The display specs are similar to BlackBerry Bold 9700.

Operating System

Nokia E72 has inbuilt Symbian OS 9.3 Feature Pack 2, due to which you will notice modern style icons, menus and smoother transition. The user interface is straightforward and easy to use. Nokia has made very little changes to enhance the phone functionality, multitasking and ease of use.

The user interface of Nokia E72 is not that great as compared to BlackBerry Bold 9700. The operating systems like WebOS, Android and iPhone OS have brought good changes to enhance the user experience. However, the Nokia and Symbian are still working on the operating system for better multi-tasking, customization and ease of use. We hope that Nokia does it soon.

Navigation Array and Trackpad

Nokia has made some changes in physical controls, which results in better one-hand navigation. Talk key, End key, two-soft keys and shortcut keys (Inbox, Contacts, Home Screen and Calendar) are located just beneath the screens. The shortcuts keys are bit raised for easy usage. The navigation array has a directional key with a select button in the center. This key works as optical trackpad and is named as Optical Navi key by Nokia.

Just like a touchpad, we can swipe the finger on trackpad that allows us to navigate through menus and move a mouse like cursor on web page. We found similar feature in BlackBerry Bold and Samsung Omnia. The outer ring of trackpad restricts the thumb movement, so we could not get advantage while using it. You can change the Optical Navi key’s sensitivity in the Settings Menu. We turned off this trackpad feature and used the central button as traditional D-pad.

Keyboard

The QWERTY Keyboard of Nokia E72 is easy to use. The keys are tactile and have a nice vaulted shape; however, they are not wide. The keyboard is not too clicky and squishy. The numeric keys are located in keyboard’s center and highlighted with gray shade on the top of black buttons. The keyboard also offers more shortcuts for features and symbol, so there is no need to access them through menus.

Messaging

The Messaging features include Text Messages (SMS), Picture Messages, Multimedia Messages (MMS) and Instant Messaging. Nokia E72 supports wide range of e-mail protocols including Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, Nokia Messaging, POP3, IMAP4, SMTP and Microsoft ActiveSync. Nokia Messaging application can handle up to 10 personal email accounts. Moreover, the E72 has support for attachment viewing, filters, search and HTML email. Nokia E72 has a setup wizard that helps to configure the email accounts.

Phonebook and PIM features

Nokia E72’s contact memory is only limited by the available space and the SIM Card can store additional 250 contacts. Each contact entry holds multiple numbers, home address, work address, web URL, email address etc. The contacts can be paired in groups with a photo, custom ring tone and group ID.

Browser and GPS

Nokia E72 has Nokia MiniMap Web browser that provides better browsing experience. The browser offers features of full screen, Mini-map to display complete page on the screen and various display options. You can easily switch between multiple windows, search for keywords within page and subscribe to web-feeds. Nokia also provides the Adobe Flash Player support to watch online videos at YouTube, Netfllix and Hulu.com etc.

Nokia E72 has A-GPS/GPS with a compass and updated Nokia Maps 3.0. The application offers navigation tools like hybrid and satellite maps with pedestrian and bicycle modes. Nokia is providing free real-time voice guided directional access to Ovi Maps, which also provide text-to-speech functionality and weather forecasts. You can download Ovi Maps Application from Nokia Ovi Store.

FM Radio and Media Player

Nokia E72 has inbuilt FM tuner, Internet radio and media player. The media player supports AMR-NB, eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, WMA and MP3 files. The smartphone has an inbuilt Real Player to play MP4, RV, WMV and H.263/3GPP videos. The music player also offers on-the-fly play list creation, podcast support and an inbuilt equalizer.

Camera

Nokia E72 has a built-in 5-mega pixel camera. Its feature include CMOS sensor, LED Flash, 5x digital zoom and auto-focus. The camera options include settings for image quality and various shooting modes like color tone, sequence and panorama. The camera can record VGA quality video at 15fps with 10x digital zoom. There is no dedicated key for the camera; however, trackpad can be used for the same.

The captured image quality was good, but not spectacular. The camera had some problems in indoor shoots. Although the objects were clear, yet the flash was a bit harsh. Turning off the flash resulted in a dim picture quality. We faced some difficulties in finding the camera option menu, as the user interface was not too friendly.

Call Quality

To test the call quality of Nokia E72, we made some calls using AT&T service. The call quality was nice and the audio was clear on our end with no voice distortion or background noise. The volume can be increased from the settings and we received very loud sound on highest level. The callers reported that sound quality was nice at their end. A few callers reported that the volume decreased at their end as we moved phone a bit away.

Speakerphone quality needs to be improved. Audio sounded bit hollow using the speakerphone. In louder environments, it was hard to hear the conversation even at highest volume level. We did not have any problems after pairing the Nokia E72 with Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones or with a Logitech Mobile Traveler Bluetooth set. We received full sound with good quality after plugging Nokia stereo headphone in standard 3.55mm.

Battery life

1500 mAH lithium ion battery has a life of 12.5 hours talk time and 21 days of idle standby time.

Verdict:

Although Nokia E72 bears expensive price tag, yet it is equipped with exciting messaging features including support to POP/IMAP/SMTP, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes etc. The phone also has 5-mega pixel camera and inbuilt stored Ovi Maps to provide real-time voice guidelines and weather forecasts.