Nokia's slim business QWERTY gets a lot of minor upgrades. Enough to hold our interest? Find out in our hands-on look at the Nokia E72.
The new Nokia E72 isn't much of a departure from the popular Nokia E71 (or E71x on AT&T). We liked that original phone, so we were happy to find that with the Nokia E72, the Finnish manufacturer didn't make too many radical changes. The phone is still a slim, solid QWERTY slab. The keyboard has been reshaped just a bit, and it now resembles the BlackBerry keyboard just a little more. Otherwise, it's easy to see the family resemblance.
See my finger
The biggest addition is the optical trackpad in the center of the phone. Instead of just acting as a 4-way button, the optical pad lets you swipe your finger to make menu selections or control scrolling. In practice, we didn't love the optical trackpad. We've seen these optical buttons before, on the Samsung Epix and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. On both of those phones, the optical trackpad didn't add anything especially useful to the navigation experience.
We tried the optical trackpad on the Nokia E72, and it seemed plenty sensitive. The slightest movement would adjust the selection cursor in the main menu, and the phone also sped through longer menus with a fast flick. Still, we wonder if this is the best option. Nokia's multimedia phones, like the Nokia N85, use a touchable Navi Wheel that basically turns the 4-way button into a scrollwheel. You can circle the button with your finger to scroll, just like on Apple's iPod devices. With some fine-tuning, we think this would make a much better option
Same old Eseries, mixing business and pleasure
Most of the real changes to the Nokia E72 are deeper than the new exterior skin. The interface was completely unchanged. You still get the dual-mode switching, so the phone can jump from work mode to play mode in the touch of a button. It's a nice trick, so let's hope AT&T let's them keep it this time, since the feature was lopped off the Nokia E71x. Otherwise, you still have to put up with the stodgy Symbian S60 interface. There's plenty of advanced functionality built in, but the interface has been showing its age for a while now, and it isn't getting any prettier. It certainly isn't as nice looking as the hardware.
On the outside, the other obvious change is the new 3.5mm headphone port. It's about time Nokia realized that business customer might want to listen to tunes as well. In addition, the phone will ship with a 4GB microSD card, which should provide ample space for storing a day's playlist. If you're tired of your own tunes, the Nokia E72 will also come with an FM radio built in. As Nokia's business phones become more compelling, and much more stylish looking, than their multimedia handsets, we hope to see more advanced media features make their way to the Eseries platform.
Deep down changes
The camera on the Nokia E72 has gotten an upgrade, from 3.2-megapixels on the older Nokia E71 to a 5-megapixel sensor on the Nokia E72. That camera will also feature an LED flash, and will use auto focus for sharper shooting. The networking onboard will also see a significant upgrade, though U.S. users won't be able to take advantage of the new, faster HSDPA radios, now capable of downloads up to 10.2Mbps, and HSUPA uploads at speeds up to 2Mbps. In the right market (read: European), this phone should provide some formidable data handling.
The phone gets GPS support, and like some of the newer multimedia phones we're seeing on the market, the Nokia E72 will also use a compass with its GPS mapping application. Nokia showed us some of the first phones we'd seen with a compass built in, and we enjoyed using the compass on the Nokia 6210 Navigator phone. We're wondering, and hoping, if the compass will become standard. Also, we'd like to see more third parties take advantage of the advanced location based options, including the compass and the accelerometer, as we've seen on the Apple iPhone and Google Android platforms. With the Ovi store just taking off on Nokia's advanced devices, hopefull we'll see more development to take advantage of this hardware in the near future.
Can you hear me typing now?
Of course, the icing on the cake for the Nokia E72 is the keyboard and messaging support. From what we've heard, it seems as though Nokia might be including a more robust assortment of messaging options on this phone. In addition to simple text messaging, the Nokia E72 will also ship with an instant messaging client on board. We're sure it will support Windows Live messaging, but hopefully rumors we're hearing of Gtalk support will also prove true. For e-mail, the phone has business users covered with Exchange support through Nokia's Mail for Exchange app. The Nokia E72 will also be able to display HTML e-mails properly, with their real Web layout and images in tact.
Even in the basic calling features, the Nokia E72 will get a slight upgrade over its predecessors. The new phone will use active noise cancellation to improve call quality. We were happy with call quality on the older E71 device, so we're curious to finally get our hands on a network connected model of the phone to make some calls. For battery life, Nokia will be packing in a whopping 1500mAh battery. The company promises a full 6 hours of talk time, even on the battery-draining WCDMA networks. That's impressive battery life, especially for a smartphone.
The surprise bargain phone
Though the Nokia E71 took months to show up on AT&T's lineup as the Nokia E71x, we were happy that when it finally appeared it was offered for a low $100 price, with a contract agreement. Today, we saw the same phone available on AT&T for only $50, so the E71x has turned into the surprise bargain smartphone deal of the season. The Nokia E72 will be available later this year, in the 3rd quarter of 2009, for about 350 Euros. We're guessing the unlocked version will cost somewhere around $450, give or take $50. What we'd really like to see is a carrier version coming soon thereafter to replace the stylish E71x at the latter phone's original $100 price point. Perhaps then Symbian business phones will finally gain some momentum at U.S. sales counters.
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