Hopefully you enjoyed our hands-on video of the new Nokia E75. It’s clearly no secret that I’m quite impressed with this new smartphone from Nokia, and anxiously anticipating its release. In addition to the video I shared last week, I was able to get some great photographs of the Nokia E75, and also discovered some great little extras that no one mentioned previously. Last I heard, the phone was on track for a release this month, which is awesome!
First up, the color – I was planning on placing a pre-order for the Nokia E75 NAM, to have one of my own, but was having trouble deciding between the black and the copper color schemes. Black just seems to ordinary, and I rather like the copper. However, neither really reached out and grabbed me. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I was handed a special blue color E75 to play with during my visit to Nokia last week! The color stands out the best in this photo:
It’s no secret that I like the blue color that Nokia sometimes uses for its phones. We all remember when I found out that Japan got the blue N73, and then later also discovered they got the blue N95, as well. Unfortunately, the blue E75 that I was able to play with was not a final production unit – and I’ve confirmed that this *beautiful* blue color scheme is not currently planned for production. I have already expressed to Nokia that I would *love* to see it available, and would buy one without hesitation. It’s just so….classy.
Next up, as I dug into the menus, I was extremely pleased to see this screenshot staring back at me. Yeah, that’s support for Nokia’s Audio Themes. Again, it’s pretty well-known that I’m a huge fan of this well-kept secret feature at Nokia, and I’m extremely pleased to see that Audio Themes seem to be making their way onto more and more handsets. I only wish that Nokia would add the dozen or so extra themes available to the Download! client on compatible phones, and I’m hoping we’ll see them show up in the newly announced Ovi Store.
Another little thing that I thought was rather neat is also hidden in the settings menu. Apparently, you can have the Nokia E75 automatically launch an application when you slide it open. It was suggested that this might be set to the Email client by default, but I verified that it was user-configurable, so you can have it set to whatever you want (or nothing, if you prefer). That’s a small feature, but still very nice, and something I could see being extremely handy. It could also get real annoying, real fast, though.
In terms of the outward appearance, when looking at the E75 the first time, I could tell something was different about the numeric keypad, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it (excuse the pun). After setting the E75 next to my N79, however, it was obvious: the font is bigger, bold, and the letters are all capitalized. This definitely makes it much easier to read, and looks quite nice. I am a big fan, and was also pleased to see that the * key can be held to toggle Bluetooth on and off.
The QWERTY keyboard is completely flat, closely resembling the Nokia N810′s slide-out QWERTY keyboard. However, I found it easy to type on, as the keys are nicely sized and spaced out well. While I was disappointed to not see a dedicated 5th row for numbers, I was pleased to find that you can type a number on the QWERTY keyboard in one of two ways – you can either press the blue function key, followed by the number, or you can simply press and hold the number key, similar to how you would on a standard numeric keypad. Very nice.
I was able to verify that the Nokia E75 is able to charge through its microUSB port, as well as the standard 2mm Nokia charging port on the bottom edge of the phone. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated power button on the E75 – the end key pulls double-duty for that purpose. On the unit I was using, N-Gage was not installed, so I was unable to test how that would work with the keyboard out, since the d-pad is on the upper portion of the phone. I’m looking forward to being able to test that out soon.
Overall, the E75 is impressive, in my opinion. For me, it has everything that the E90 did not – it’s smaller, thinner, has predictive text, a standard 3.5mm audio port, and US 3G support. Of course, it does have a smaller battery (1000mAh vs the E90′s 1500mAh), and a smaller display, but aside from that, it’s great. What do you think? Are you excited about this new smartphone, or is there something you don’t like about it?
