Nokia E75: A tangible step up from the E71 but it’s marred by quality problems

That’s right, we’ve succumb to the lure of shiny new gadgets once more. We simply couldn’t wait for the Palm Pre or Nokia N97 to become available so, a little under a week ago, we availed ourselves of Nokia’s latest E-series device: the E75.

Regular readers know that until now we’ve hailed the E71 as the best smartphone you can buy. So, how does the E75 shape up against its older brother?

We’re going to assume you’ve read our thoughts on why the E71 beats the iPhone and the Nokia E90 for title of best smartphone. The new E75 is an attempt by Nokia to plug the gap between the E71 and the E90. And it almost works. In fact, the E75 has all of the features (and them some) of the E90 except – and it’s a big exception – for that glorious, wide internal screen.

The good (or “Ways in which the E75 steals the E71’s crown”)

• Form factor: It’s subjective of course, but for us the E75 really represents the best of all worlds in terms of form factor. When closed, it’s really compact – barely noticable in your pocket – when open, you have the width of that amazing QWERTY keyboard. It also has a really satisfying shape and weight to it when you’re using it as a phone (yes, lest we forget, making and receiving calls is still the primary purpose of these things) that the E71 lacked.
• Email client: Nokia’s new Messaging software is leagues ahead of the built-in software on the E71. You now get easy set-up, HTML, and push email. And it’s all fully integated. Very elegant. The next step – and we hear that Nokia is currently working on it – is integrating an IM and social media interfaces into the same package. We’d like to see that in a firmware upgrade before the end of the year.
• Feature Pack 2: The E75 runs the latest version of S60 3rd Edition. Improvements over Feature Pack 1 are incremental but make for a tangibly better experience overall: intelligent ways of handling Internet access points, easier navigation, better Gallery application and so on.
• Photos: the camera on the E75 is a 3.2 megapixel unit just like the E71 but the results are far, far better. We’d say they’re on a par with the Nokia E90. OK, nothing that’s going to blow you away in terms of quality but you can at last take photos that may be worth keeping and viewing on a large screen.
• Video: at last, proper 30 frames per second recoding means you can get pretty decent results from the video camera unlike the E71’s shaky footage.
• Games: the E75 is the first E-series device to have Nokia’s N-Gage client on board which means you have access to the entire portfolio of N-Gage games on it. We’ve tried a few and they’re pretty good. The biggest issue if that the hardware is not really set-up for it. Whereas the N-series devices have built in buttons for gaming, the E75 has to make do with buttons on its keyboard. This is not always a very intuitive solution. Still, better than not having it at all.
• Keyboard: Having the combination of a numeric keyboard on the front and the glorious, tactile slide-out QWERTY keyboard really delivers the right solution for every scenario. The E71’s thumb board is one of the very best of its kind, but you can’t beat having a full QWERTY keyboard like the E75.

The bad (or “Little ways in which the E71 still reigns”)

Not many. Well OK, if you push us….

• Form factor: Yes, yes, we know – we listed ‘form factor’  under ‘the good’  too. But here’s the flip side of having multiple forms: there’s actually something very satisfying about a mono-block device, that you don’t need to unfold, slide open, whatever, to access all of its functions. With the E71, everything you need is there at your fingertips all the time. That’s still appealing.
• Stability and speed: Our E75 is not quite as quick as our E71. It’s not a deal-breaker and many people might not even notice the difference but there’s no doubt to us that the E71 is more responsive. Also, we’ve had a few software crashes on the E75. The browser and music player have both quit on us unexpectedly. Again, nothing too serious and hopefully something Nokia can fix with a software update but it’s worth stating. The E71’s software, on the other hand, was rock-solid. Fast and stable, we never had any trouble with it.
• Battery life: The E75 has a slightly smaller battery than the E71. In practice there’s not a huge difference in it because the E75’s software is better at power management, but there’s no doubt that, overall, the E71 will last you longer between charges. Having said that, the E75 will easily last you a full day of heavy use without charges and it has the advantage of being able to charge from its USB port.

The ugly (or “Nokia, how the Hell could you still be getting this wrong!!?”)

• Quality: you’ll read other reviewers praise the E75’s build-quality. Rightly so, because it is beautifully built. It feels rock solid, the slider is smooth and confident, and there are no creaks or rattles to be heard. But…when we got ours back from Nokia’s flagship store on London’s Regent Street last Saturday, we immediately noticed it had about six, very noticeable, pieces of dust under the screen. That’s right, it left the factory with dust under the screen. This is a problem which has also plagued our E71 and we’ve read of other Nokia owners having similar issues. How hard can it be to properly seal your screens against dust, Nokia? Every other manufacturer seems to be able to do it.
  When we returned the device to the shop for a replacement, the Nokia staff were perfectly apologetic and happy to replace it. The problem was that all five units they brought out of their stock room had exactly the same problem – some were even worse than the E75 we’d originally purchased. A rogue faulty batch? We certainly hope so. Nokia have promised to replace our unit with another one as soon as they receive a new delivery from the factory. We sincerely hope that this is an isolated incident and that not all E75s are similarly affected. It would be a terrible shame for a phone as capable and desireable as this to be blighted by the kind of manufacturing defect that gadget fans thought they’d long since seen the back of.