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Phone and Data Like most Nokia phones, voice quality for calls is excellent. Reception is a bit above average for a GSM phone, but not as strong as the best Nokia smartphones. Data speeds are good over AT&T's HSDPA 3G network with quick email downloads and page load times, but T-Mobile folks will only get EDGE. As a consolation, the E75 has WiFi 802.11b/g for fast Internet when you're in range of an accessible WiFi network. The Safari-family webkit web browser is excellent, but the low screen resolution limits surfing ease. The E75 has triband 3G HSDPA which means it will work in Europe on the 2100MHz band as well as in the US on AT&T's 3G bands.
A little business, a little pleasure Nokia's E series phones are designed for business, while their N series phones are self-described "multimedia computers". That said, the E75 packs a lot of leisure-oriented fun. It has Real Player, Nokia's gallery application, Flash Lite 3.0 (it can play full desktop Flash YouTube videos, though the 320 x 240 screen resolution is a bit low to enjoy them since they're often clipped and require scrolling), a music player that handles MP3, non-copy protected iTunes format AAC files and WMA, local video playback, podcasting, FM and Internet radio and voice recording. The phone balked at locally stored MP4 video larger than QVGA resolution for some reason (gave an error message and only played the audio tracks, but it could play self-recorded VGA video). An extra surprise is N-Gage gaming support. Watch our video to see the E75 running 3D N-Gage games quite well.
The QVGA 240 x 320 pixel color display is very sharp and has good colors. It's quite nice but at 2.4" it's small and that resolution feels low and dated. We really wish Nokia would offer VGA resolution on the S60 phones to make web browsing more enjoyable and video playback more compelling.
On the business side, the phone comes with the usual QuickOffice to view, edit and create MS Office documents, though you'll have to pay an upgrade fee to get Office 2007 compatibility. There's a PDF viewer, Intranet support, a multi-language translation dictionary (you can download free dictionaries to add languages direct to the phone), a calculator, unit converter, Zip manager, file manager and Nokia's Active notes. This is the first S60 Nokia smartphone to ship with Nokia's new email client, and it's a much more modern application than the old Nokia messaging application. It handles POP3, IMAP and Exchange email and has a wizard that can set up most accounts with a minimum of user input. It can check on a schedule or manually, though we found it sometimes forgot to check email until we woke up the phone. There's also time-of-day scheduling, so you can set it to check email from 8am to 9pm, for example, and this worked well for us. Nokia's S60 3rd Edition feature pack 2 is fast and clean with good performance overall. The phone packs a few party tricks garnered from its built-in accelerometer. You can silence an incoming call ring or alarm by placing the phone face down or by tapping it. Beware that if the tapping feature is turned on and you've turned on vibrate, the phone will mistake its own vibration for a tap and silence itself in a second. The phone can rotate the display based on physical orientation and you can turn that feature off, along with the turn-over and tap features if you wish. A better Camera and GPS Nokia's E series cameras haven't impressed us, despite features like autofocus and lots of custom settings (take the E71 as an example-- weak camera). The E75 changes that with a solid 3.2 megapixel autofocus offering that has a wimpy LED flash. Photos are sharp and have good color, though nighttime shots are quite noisy. Unlike the Nokia E71 and E71x, there's no bizarre keyboard autofocus control-- just press the center of the d-pad to take a shot. Even more surprising for a business phone, the E75 can shoot VGA video at 30fps, though quality doesn't rival the Nokia N95 and newer 5 megapixel N series phones. The Nokia E75's GPS is simply wonderful. Gone are the days of slow fixes and dropped satellites: the E75 gets a fix even indoors within 15 feet of a window in a residential building and it keeps that fix even under cloudy skies. The phone ships with Nokia Maps 2.0 and includes a 90 day free trial of driving and walking navigation. The basic functions are free (maps, POIs), so it's spoken directions you're paying for should you choose to continue the subscription after the trial period. Directions and routing are good (much improved from Nokia Maps 1.0), and depending on the subscription duration, Nokia's service can be less expensive than TeleNav which is offered by US carriers. Conclusion A superbly slim and attractive phone, the Nokia E75 has the class and quality of a Bond movie prop (we're speaking of the black version, we haven't seen the red model in the flesh). The smartphone has Nokia's usual excellent voice quality and phone-centric features, slightly better than average reception and a good QWERTY keyboard. The phone does an excellent job of throwing fun into the mix with multimedia aplenty, N-Gage gaming support, A2DP Bluetooth stereo and a 3.5mm stereo jack. As a business phone, the E75 does well thanks to the keyboard and Nokia's new email client, though there are still a few kinks to be worked out (and Nokia always does improve their software and firmware). It's hard not to like this phone and the only detractor is the 2.4" QVGA display. A high end E series phone really should be offering something better in this day and age. Compared to the 480 x 360 displays on the BlackBerry Bold and 8900, it's weak for those who are frequent web browser and Office users. Nokia also faces a good dose of self-competition: their own very successful Nokia E71 and E71x offer many of the same features for less money.
Price: $529 list web site: www.nokiausa.com
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