Quick bytes
- 5 megapixel auto focus camera; LED flash.
- GPS with A-GPS support.
- WLAN 802.11 b/g.
- Accelerometer for auto rotate and tap-for-time.
- FM Radio, Bluetooth and a 3.5mm Audio Jack.
- Digital compass, Office document viewer.
- 250 MB of internal memory with a microSD expansion slot.
Looks like a huge piece of chunk when you take a quick look at it with the metallic backcover which grabs your partner’s eye. A pretty large screen with a well spaced out QWERTY layout.
The QWERTY is well laid below the 2.36″ display and the earpiece of Nokia E72 is placed at the center of the top panel. Towards the right, you can find the video call camera and an ambient light sensor . Turn the phone and you can find the volume keys along with the Voice command button on one side with the covered microSD slot and the microUSB port on the other. It features the 5 Megapixel camera with the LED flash, the speakers and the huge metallic backcover at the rear which also is ‘fingerprint clean’ friendly.
User Interface
The 600Mhz processor which was packed in by Nokia seems to be working well on this phone. Multitasking, seemed very viable as we were running around 14 applications at the same time. There wasn’t any kind of sluggishness the phone showed to us, then. The menu was easy to navigate through with the apps being put into appropriate folders by default. The S60 v3.2 is more advanced than the E71 by a 0.1. Now, that should be interesting! Slight animations were seen between clicks which made the experience a lot more interesting. We tried Video calling and that came out well, too. The Music player featured the same interface which Nokia phones sport and delivered good results while switching between tracks. Classic Nokia.
The Battery.
The battery [BP-4L] stayed on for around 3 days with Wifi on and 3G connectivity and casual use. There was no complaints of the battery heating up, as it was rumoured before.
Nokia Messaging
The most hyped Nokia service on this phone is the Nokia Messaging. From the results it delivered, it sure is one of Nokia’s best initiatives. Trying to bring up a service like Blackberry has done, is a very good initiative to make emailing a cakewalk for all users.
To get started, all we had to do was to choose Gmail from the list, and enter our username and password. Within the next few minutes, the Gmail was perfectly set running along with perfect integration of the other Gmail folders.
Whenever emails were recieved, the email icon popped up at the bottom and the Google Mail on the homescreen had the number of unread mails by it. There is a green circular indicator at the top which indicates the status of the Email service, too. Connectivity was not a problem as the phone was tested with a 3G service with an unlimited data plan.
Nokia is still testing this service in the Beta phase and soon, would launch innovative plans with the leading operators in the Indian market. Till then, GPRS/3G or Wifi should serve the purpose for the Indian customers.
Camera
The 5MP shooter on this phone delivered pretty good results. Shots from this one during the day were awesome; the shots at night with the LED flash were average, just like every other Nokia. Geotagging seems missing here. Did Nokia just forget it?
Applications :
– Multiscanner
The multiscanner is one application we loved experimenting with. Two modes, Text scanner and Business card scanner were present which interpreted the data very well.Move the phone’s camera over a business card, point the application’s focus area on the card and click. Voilà! Every data on the card gets segregated into appropriate categories and you can save it onto your contacts by pressing the save button.The error rate was pretty low, must say. The application got the data right, 8 times out of the 10 times we tried it. A very useful app for the businessman out there!
– Document Reader
This one can read your doc , xls , ppt and also your docx , xlsx and pptx files. Yeah, the document viewer supports Office 2007 and integrates seamless scrolling through the document with the optical trackpad.
– Activenotes
Activenotes was also a bit interesting on this one. One could add multimedia content with the press of a few buttons onto their notes. Made the notes colorful and musical!
There is also a wireless presenter built on it and the facebook app for the Nokia E72 from the app store was also very well tailored to suit the screen of the E72.
The Optical Trackpad
The 4-way navi keys around the trackpad made quick scrolling a bit difficult to handle. Also, during a call, when one tries to navigate through the menu or the contacts to provide the guy at the other end some quick information, he cannot use the trackpad. You have to work with the -way buttons, only. This is one awkward thing on the E72 which seems pointless.
The trackpad on the E72 is one of the first ones Nokia has worked with and we expect better ones to follow on the upcoming phones.
Web Browser
With wifi around, we were always on the internet , typing everything possible with the QWERTY and know the browser very well. The optical trackpad did its job very well helping the user scroll through long webpages very easily. Full flash support helps you load everything you want from the internet. The browser was decent enough and opened up non-mobile web pages quite well. A lot of improvement from the Nokia 5800!
Maps and GPS
A quick download of the new Ovi maps set me running on the roads. My location was opened in a few seconds and the turn-by-turn navigation proved to be really useful. Nothing more to comment on the maps. Everything worked out smooth.
What’s Hot
->Well spaced out QWERTY.
-> Amazingly fast 3.5G. [HSDPA upto 10.2 Mbps]
->3.5mm Audio jack and the default headset.
->Multiscanner app. [Yeah, it is that useful!]
->Excellent ability to multitask. [Thanks to the 600Mhz processor and the 128MB RAM]
What’s Not
-> Very poor loudspeaker quality. A CorbyTXT sounded a lot, lot more louder!
-> Disability of the trackpad during active calls.
->Poor image quality at night; No Geotagging.
->No TV Out.
->Limited number of applications/games compared to S60v5.
Verdict
At today’s price of 19,000 rupees, this is one phone from Nokia’s stable that delivers a lot. Worth buying, for every businessman and text crazy chap out there who has the buck to spend on.