- First Impressions Of The Nokia E75
- Nokia E75 Review: Email
- Nokia E75 Review – Things I Love
- Nokia E75 Review – Things I Hate
- Nokia E75 Review – Hardware
Yesterday I shared a list of six things that I really love about the Nokia E75 smartphone. However, it’s certainly not the perfect device, and I was easily able to come up with a similar list of things that I really can’t stand about the phone. As with most of my lists of things I hate about phones, most of these are easily fixed with a firmware update, which the E75 should hopefully get soon.
Note: This review is based on pre-production firmware v100.48.58. Some or all of these issues could easily be fixed in the final production firmware.
1. No power button. I have a habit of pressing the end key repeatedly to get to the main screen, which makes it real annoying when device manufacturers use the end key as a power key, as well. I like having a dedicated button that turns the phone on and off, and also offers quick access to the profiles list. The end key on the E75 still pulls up the profiles list, but it’s still annoying, and I wish Nokia hadn’t integrated the two buttons.
2. Predictive text. The predictive text input on the Nokia E71 was awesome, once you got used to it. However, it also allowed you to easily override it, by simply pressing up to force it to accept the exact letters you typed. The E75′s predictive text is a bit more domineering, requiring you to manually re-enter a word that you want to type, if it’s not included in the device’s onboard dictionary. I also noticed that the dictionary, initially, is extremely limited. For instance, I had to manually add the word ‘Symbian’ to the dictionary on the E75. Even the T9 is frustrating, with drop-down lists instead of the normal way to cycle through. Some of you may like this, but it means that I have to move my fingers from the keypad to the d-pad while entering text, which isn’t intuitive at all.
3. Confusing Icons. The Nokia E75 features the new S60 Touch icons, but makes liberal use of them, replacing folder icons with application icons in some places. For instance, the ‘Media’ folder within the Applications folder is disguised as the media player, such that I was initially convinced the E75 did not have Share Online installed. This also happens with the Tools folder, and a few others. In fact, looking at the menu, you wouldn’t know there were folders at all. This might be ok for new S60 users, but I found it really frustrating, as I wasn’t sure whether clicking an icon would launch an application or just reveal a new bundle of icons.
4. Unstable firmware. This can (and hopefully will be) fixed with a firmware update, obviously, but given that I have a production unit, it’s a valid issue. The email client on my E75 crashes consistently, and I’ve uncovered a number of other bugs. The phone is also extremely slow to open both Ovi Chat and the Conversations application. It seems as though this is because it must first open the contacts application, then switch to the right tab, as I can see this process taking place onscreen.
5. The camera button. I know I counted this as something that I love, but it’s frustrating on the E75 because it takes nearly 4 seconds of holding down to actually launch the camera application. This is roughly twice as long as you have to hold the camera button down on an Nseries, and is rather annoying to sit there holding the button down for so long.
Clearly, those are not the only annoying things on the Nokia E75, but they’re the ones that stand out the most to me, and really get under my skin. Am I being silly on any of these, or do you think you agree?
