Nokia E75 review

Nokia’s E75 sits between the recent BlackBerry-style E71 and the ageing E90 Communicator.

Rather than using the E90’s clamshell design, the E75’s QWERTY keyboard slides out from the bottom. The phone is far smaller than the chunky E90, which means the keyboard is smaller, too, and the sliding mechanism further limits the available space. The E75 also lacks the E90’s huge internal screen and has only a single 2.4in display.

Apart from the obvious physical differences, the two phones have very similar features. Both use the same Symbian S60 3rd Edition operating system. The E75’s version has been updated visually, but it provides essentially the same features and support for office documents and email. Both have a 3.2-megapixel main camera and a low-resolution front camera for video calls.

The E90 launched nearly two years ago, and the S60 3rd Edition operating system hasn’t changed much since then. The menu system and interface aren’t as easy to grasp as those of rival phones, such as the iPhone or the Google Android-based G1. For example, both the Messaging and Email short cuts accessed our Gmail account. Setting up WiFi is also a pain, and we were prompted for the password every time we tried to connect.

Support for third-party applications is poor, and Nokia seems to be pushing customers to its own social networking, music and games sites rather than encouraging integration with popular sites such as Facebook and Windows Live. There are so few applications available that comparisons with Apple’s App Store are pointless.

This is a pity, as the E75 is a smart piece of kit. The sliding mechanism is well engineered, and the case reminds us of the well-built E71 rather than the plastic E63. The keys are flat with little travel, but typing emails and short documents is easy using your thumbs.

The 320×240 screen is bright and clear, but isn’t really large enough for video or web use. We like Nokia’s web browser, but the screen can’t show full-width pages unless you zoom out until text is too small to read. Office documents suffer from the same problem. Widescreen films encoded to 3GP or MP4 format are so letterboxed as to be unwatchable and the speaker is poor. At least there’s a standard 3.5mm headphone port.

While the E75’s slide-out keyboard looks good, it isn’t much better than the E63’s and E71’s BlackBerry-style keypads. Otherwise, this is just another Symbian phone, but with a small screen and an ageing interface. If you’re happy with Symbian, the E63 and E71 are better value. If you want a touchscreen-only interface, the iPhone is the undisputed king.