It may be named an enterprise device, but Nokia's E75 could easily measure up as a consumer device on the High Street, couldn't it? Ewan takes a look at the slider form factor device from the point of view of the regular man in the street. See also the rest of our full Nokia E75 review: Nokia E75 - Part 1: General Design and Hardware (Rafe) and Nokia E75 - Part 2: Camera and Multimedia (Steve)
Read on in the full article.
Hello,
I don't know why you seem so surprised when a device tries to not specifically target a small market and prefer to aim at many of them. If someone have to choose between two devices that fulfill it's main needs and one of them give him/her some extras which one would you think he/she will choose?
It was kind of stupid (and still is) the market segmentation that nokia is doing with their software/hardware: if you want to take photos you had to choose a N series. If you wanted good agenda/calendar management you should choose E-series.. well, I want both of them!!
I think it's best to give for each price-range, the maximum features possible in different form factors and let that be the deciding factor. Normally people have a maximum price set before choosing the device, a preferred form factor and a minimum set of characteristics and ergonomics.. or maybe I'm the green dog here 😊
I agree - the very rigid split between business and consumer orientated devices in Nokia's top-end line-ups is surely more to do with Nokia's internal structure than any real sense of what users want to do.
I work in a very large company and see senior executives poking and prodiing at iPhones, Walkman phones and N-series devices day in and day out. They then reach for a Blackberry or E-series for work - if Nokia can combine the things these users (hardly any of whom would be described as 'power users'😉 around a single deviceor range, they will have a much more powerful offering that the current N/E split gives them.
RIM, after all, has been busily and successfully combining entertainment/media functionality with pretty hardcore enterprise support for several yearsd now and their sales figures (and my collaeagues fondness for the Bold) show that it's working.
Also, iPhone now sports QuickOffice and a range of business-orientated apps and email system support. Further evidence that sometimes people with jobs also want to watch videos or listen to music or play games.
I've had a chance to play with the E75 and it's a nice phone - very good hardware quality, nice keyboard, useable (though small and a bit disappointing) screen. But it's no more than 'nice' - there is no 'wow factor' here really. The major changes most long-time Symbian users will notice are little, but welcome, things like a 3.5mm plug and a decent (though far from market leading) email client.
The amount of software on board is, as usual for Nokia, amazing but as Rafe says, very confusing and a lot of it does not work as smoothly as it does on other devices (Podcasting being a good example).
If you have, as I do, an E71 now, there's no compelling reason to upgrade to this but if you're looking for something new and want to try a QWERTY phone, it's a solid, and very very good value, option.
This is all nice but yet again what has not been mentioned is that: QVGA=COMPLETE UTTER COLLOSAL FAIL !
This is all nice but yet again what has not been mentioned is that: QVGA=COMPLETE UTTER COLLOSAL FAIL !
Well, with this form-factor and size I think more resolution will be unusable. More resolution needs a bigger screen and if you favor a physical keypad and relatively small size over screen size (which a lot of people do) I think they have made a pretty sensible choice. Every kind of phone has is fans, so call this a utter fail is an exaggeration.
I just dont understand the E/N series seperation. its the worst way nokia could possibly develop handsets, honestly. i owned my e71 for 6 months as my daily phone, and i honestly cannot tell you what the REAL difference in OS is for this so called "business" phone. great, i can choose which active standby plugins i want displayed. WOOT! seriously, the only difference with Eseries is the excellent build quality. that's it.
nokia really should do away with E/Nseries and just make good _s60_ phones. but the list of boneheaded things nokia does goes on and on, so i dont know why THIS would be something they would consider.
I'm actually in the Litchfield camp on this - on a screen that size a greater resolution will have more visual impact but will not significantly increase useability. The resolution is fine for what the E75 does, more than adequate in fact.
If that resolution were on a full-face screen I'd agree with Arthur that it was a 'fail' but on this size, it's fine.
The issue with Nokia's and QVGA in the past has been more to do with software than hardware - the formner email client was all but unuseable given the limitationsd of its font sizes. If there was a way to chabnge that I never found it in several years of using E-series devices and went for Profimail.
New client is much better at using the screen properly.
As for web browsing - yes, generally more pixels = better but again, at this size a higher res would have produced an unreadable web page.
E75 is a work-orientated device that can amuse you a bit while waiting for a flight. It is certainly not a fully-fledged PMP/multimedia entertainment device - if that's what you want you need to look elsewhere (I will for my next phone as I find myself carrying an E71 and an iPod Touch and would rather not).
Really, we should judge devices by how successfully they do what they set out to do, not what they won't do that we, personally, might want them to. The E75 does what it is designed to and does it well - like I said, no 'wow' factor but it's a solid enough device within its limitations.
RogerPodacter wrote:nokia really should do away with E/Nseries and just make good _s60_ phones. but the list of boneheaded things nokia does goes on and on, so i dont know why THIS would be something they would consider.
Absolutely agree with this - the split is maddening. I still think the best phone Nokia never made is an 8gb N95 with a QWERTY slide-out.
As for 'bone-headed' - I think we forget that Nokia is a mass market, global (stress: global) consumer retailer. They have enough pride to want to make the very best phones out there but realistically, if that means blunting impact into fast-growing emerging markets by diverting investment, then it won't happen.
They also have a legacy user base and a rather over-complex OS to deal with.
They also have to deal with being embarassed by Apple's ability to realise content and data useage that firms like Nokia were, just a few years ago, thinking simply weren't wanted. Turns out they were wanted, it was just too hard on the devices on offer.
I get frustrated with them too - so often they seem on the verge of producing something utterly, inescapably, wonderful and fail by leaving a couple of bits out. BUT it's more important to Nokia to shift units than create technological wonders, and if the most complete smartphones sold the best and had the best profit margins then we'd have the perfect device.
But they don't and we don't.
For the price, the screen is not good enough. If it had to be QVGA it should have been 2.6", it fits!! If it had to be 2.4" then it should have been HVGA. Simple.
A device that combines the quality materials and enterprise features of an e-series and the multimedia/camera capabilities of an n-series would be a killer device, absolutely killer. The upcoming n86 for example....is there any reason why it looks like a fisher price toy????...lol....also,great specs but do I really want to carry 2 devices??? absolutley not.
I have no need for lengthy email/text sessions so a numeric only keyboard would be fine, I would even think about a slider but prefer candy bar style for quicker access to functions...
S60 is awesome, interface and menus need a little help for true layman adoption to take place.
Cmon Nokia, we know you got the chops, give us what we want, no time for half baked offerings in this market.
You produce a device like I described above and you will truly lead the market....period, not to mention make a ton of money.
Put the e-series guys in with n-series guys for a few weeks and see what pops out !!!!
The E75 is a sign of the N and E series moving ever closer. The alleged gradual convergence of the N and E series within Nokia whereby N series devices operate as competent business aids and E series devices incorporate more multimedia elements is possibly a recognition by Nokia that whilst the marketing programmes at corporate HQ might wish to segment the products along clearly defined lines of what constitutes a business minded buyer and what constitutes a multimedia focused consumer, the fact is that customers do not wish to be segmented in such fashion.
Why should someone engaged in work in his/her free time not wish to take photos if travelling on business, or relax with some music, and equally why shouldn't a multimedia enthusiast not be regarded as someone who would also value the connectivity and software available on the E series?
As a result, the market has its own ideas and many non corporate individuals have opted for an E series due to its class leading build quality, excellent connectivity and value (just look at the success of the E65 and E71, and I promise you also, the E51). Similarly, business customers have opted for the N series in recent years specifically because of the multimedia features (the N95 has sold very well to this group).
It will be interesting if Nokia maintains the E and N series division in 5 years time. (a long time in the mobile world, I appreciate).
My Nokia E75 screen failed after only 5 days. Nokia are refusing to honour warranty claiming "impact damage". I wouldn't recommend this phone or Nokia to anyone