Autotragisk wrote:
4. Stable firmware
6. Should be futureproof, 2-3 years at least (build quality, battery and new firmwares)
Fails these two points for a start.
Firmware is very bad out of the box and updates don't appear to fix much if anything of use to most people, and firmware updates are taking a huge amount of time to appear. It's taking 6 months+ to get firmware updates on many product codes, and worse some codes get updates in the same region whilst others don't.
Email client is seriously buggy and lacking features that should be there. e.g. No Destinations (grouped Access Points) support except in Mail for Exchange, and this is a key feature of 3rd Edition FP2. IMAP IDLE doesn't work on manually configured accounts. Nokia messaging, apart from bugs when it stops working and your account gets cancelled for no reason, works okay but there are issues such as no way to configure periodic connection. It's always on or not at all. Mail For Exchange has a habit of just disappearing entirely after working okay for a bit.
The email client is built into the firmware so it's not updatable outside of it, whereas the way Nokia are updating it in other phones, including 5th Edition, is to roll it out as an independent application. i.e. this means Destinations is supported now on 5th edition and I think some other 3rd Ed FP1 devices (maybe FP2?), but not on the E72 because it's integrated and firmware updates are not forthcoming.
For me, Destinations is the critical issue. It's the feature that would let me be able to roam about between home, work WLAN and the outside world on 2G/3G networks without having to change Internet settings. It works in other Nokia apps, but not the email client which is where it's the most useful.
Lack of IMAP IDLE in manually configured email accounts means you cannot have it always on as it consumes vast amounts of data. Though Nokia Messaging does work properly, so you can configure your mail through that (it aggregates your mail and pushes it to the phone, so long as your phone is connected. The data consumed is only that which is required to push the mail. Low on data, but drains the battery a bit more).
I've formatted this phone twice so far to fix it after apps and settings get corrupted for no reason (both email client and Destinations database have been corrupted rendering the phone near useless for Internet & Email use). Though it could be related to apps I install. I'm very careful now to only install apps I know are known to work fine with the E72. Anything else seems to kill the phone, even if you uninstall them. Essentially it's easy to break this phone.
I'm finding Nokia are releasing apps with no support for the E72. Point and Find is an example. E71 supported, many 5th edition devices too, but not the E72 and they don't seem to have plans for it. I keep coming across apps like this, and of course updates to Nokia Messaging and the email client.
Oh, and 3rd Ed FP2 is already old, even though it's newer. 5th Edition, whilst also buggy is a far newer platform, but not on E series devices, and then Symbian^3 comes out towards the end of the year which changes the game a lot, especially if we start seeing the new Qt user interface. Doesn't make devices like the E72 unusable, just old (and even less likely to see updates).
I'd love to love this phone, as it's a very nice build and design, but the software really lets it down, and lack of updates is frustrating.