CTIA 09: Nokia E75 hands-on and initial impressions

After seeing the E55 and E75 announced at Mobile World Congress in February, I thought I would buy at least one of these two devices. If you have had an Eseries device you know that the construction is fantastic and the prices for the devices are also very reasonable, especially when they are available in a SIM unlocked configuration in most cases. I looked for both of these devices at CTIA and was pretty surprised that I could not find the E55 anywhere with one person at the booth actually telling me the device was cancelled. The E55 was the one I was considering more strongly because I am actually pretty quick with these SureType model keyboards and thought it would be like a mini-E71 with hopefully a better camera. Since I couldn’t find the E55, I went to look for the E75 and saw both the red and black models at the booth. I was given an E75 to test out and evaluate so I will post a full review soon, but let’s take a first look at it for now.

I surprisingly found the E75 keyboard to be MUCH better than anticipated. As a Windows Mobile user too, I found the form factor to be similar to the HTC Vox and HTC Rose smartphones. The E75 is thinner and has a better keyboard IMHO. The keys are quite large, distinct from each other, have a rubberized coating, and good tactile feedback. It is a 4 row keyboard with the numbers along the top entered with a press of the FN key. I like seeing the large centered space bar, dedicated comma, apostrophe, period, and @ keys, Ctrl button, right and left shift keys. There is a center metal piece that I think would be cool to have as a touch sensitive scroll bar, but it actually is just a design piece. The top of the E75 slides up to reveal the keyboard and so far the only weakness I have found in the device is that it does tend to move a bit on each end when you press on it before sliding it down. It is not bad, but just seems a bit wobbly when the rest of the device is rock steady.

You have to hold the E75 in your hand to be impressed by the rock solid feel, heft, and pure elegance of the device. It is one of those phones that you just want to hold in your hand and feel its metal finish in your hand, very caressible. Stainless steel and heavy duty smooth plastic are used in the casing of the E75. The back battery cover is made of metal with a sleek lined feel.

A 3.5mm headset jack is used for audio and this is a pretty major improvement over previous Eseries devices. The standard Nokia charging port is used while the microUSB port is just for connectivity to a computer. It is good to also now see a dedicated camera button on the right side that acts to focus in when pressed halfway down just like you would expect, unlike pressing the T key on the E71. Initial photos show the camera has no purple tint, hurray!

The software on this device is still under development so I can’t really comment on specifics of most of it since we are not sure what we will see when the device ships and how well it will perform. However, one piece I do want to comment on that makes me extremely happy is the Nokia Messaging application that integrates Nokia Email and Mail for Exchange into a single application. It actually took me quite a while to figure this out and I was getting a bit disturbed when I couldn’t find Mail for Exchange in the ROM or in the Download utility. I browsed to the Nokia Business site and downloaded MFE. When I tried to install it an update error appeared so I knew it must already be loaded on the device. I then just entered my Exchange email address in the mail setup wizard and found a window that let me choose POP/IMAP or Exchange for my email provider. I went through the steps to setup my server and was up and running. There were some rather involved and hidden steps to get my Calendar, Contacts, and To Dos setup, but I need to check with Nokia first to find out if this is final before I give you all the step-by-step setup process because I think that will really help you out when you get a device with this new Nokia Messaging client.

I have now put Gravity and Twittrix on the E75 to test out Twitter clients and figure out which is best for me on the E75. I plan to get it all customized to my liking with apps and folder arrangements. I will post a full review with lots of photos and video over the next week or so.