Days And Nights With…

As those of you who have followed my tweets and blog may know that I got E72 for two weeks from WOMWorld/Nokia. A friend of mine volunteered to interview me about my experience with the E72.

Hi Miss HmusicK! How are you doing? And how is the E72?

Thanks I am doing great. Me and E72 have been getting to know each others nearly two weeks now and I have learned already a lot about it.

First of all, why E72?

I was looking for a Finnish phone with qwerty keyboard, WLAN, chat and music player. Actually the first device I wanted was E71 when I saw it at the store but they had released new version of it. And fortunately I was asked to do a review of a Nokia phone and I chose to go with the E72. Nokia E72 is a business phone. I have always loved professional phones. E72 is my first smart phone I have used so compared to LG KS360 it is a whole new level device. I also love big phones and the design of it looked really cool.

Cool! So what was your first impression of the phone when you first opened the box?

I was very excited and as I opened the box it was exactly the color I wanted. I grapped it in my hand and didn’t let go ever since. Haha. It fitted my hand perfectly and the design was very simple and sleek. I had always wanted everyone to see my phone… And now it was as big as I wanted. I was a bit afraid because of the tiny buttons but turned out that they were good size.

How did the E72 affect your everyday life?

E72 changed my life a lot. I was able to be connected much more than before and was able to use network also outside home. I didn’t walk anywhere without it and I even slept with it. It made me understand why people are so excited about phones. I started to also take a lot more pictures and I got to know applications available to Symbian phones. It also made me hate my LG a bit because smart phones are like small computers. I would gladly take it as a pair with my LG.

Tell us a little about features, what did you like and what did you not? The specifications of E72 is covered with details here.

I shared the qualities to seven different categories.

• APPEARANCE AND USE

Size: 114 x 58 x 10mm

E72 has a great design and particularly I love it’s metal parts. They make the phone look strong and smooth. E72 is good size for me and it fits my hand very well. It is not slippery at all. The phone is big and might not fit for everyone if you don’t like big size phones. But I personally love it.

The first thing I noticed about the keyboard was optical navigation pad. I don’t need to press to slide and browsing is fast with it. I love it because it makes moving around smooth. The phone has a full size qwerty keyboard and shortcut keys for menu, calendar, contacts and email. I actually was a bit afraid of how my fingers would fit to the small keys but turned out that I had nothing to worry about. I was able to type fast with it already second day.

Simple Home Screen

• MEMORY AND POWER MANAGEMENT

The phone memory is 250 MB and E72 package contains 4GB Micro SD card (you can have up to 16 GB). No problems with memory. Battery life depended on how much I used it. I was connected all the time, browsed web a lot and listened music  player so I had to charge E72 almost daily. Though after all I was pretty happy with the battery life since I used it basically 24/7. And it was always on.

• MEDIA

E72 has everything what it is required on a smart phone nowadays. Music player (supports AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, AMR-NB and WMA) two cameras, Radio and voice recorder. All the usual stuff. It has 5 mega pixel camera with autofocus and flash and VGA camera on the front for video calls. The quality of the camera is good but not as good as normal camera. Music player was great because you were able to have songs organized either with artist, album, all songs and so on (also own playlists). Radio worked flawlessly.

Untouched picture taken with E72

• INTERNET AND CONNECTIVITY

E72 has a wireless connection, email features, bluetooth, USB and GPS. Browsing was fast and smooth with WLAN even though it ate battery a lot. I enjoyed having an email on my phone and writing an email with it. GPS worked well and my dad actually said that we wouldn’t maybe even need separate GPS since I have E72… However the thing I loved the most is the chatting capability of the phone. Which allowed me to connect to my friends via IM. I was able to be connected almost everywhere and have more time online. It also allowed me to use the memory card as a mass storage when I connect it to my PC. This comes handle as it allows me to easily transfer files to my phone from my PC other way round.

I changed the messaging language to German to get ä and ö to text messages. There was no Finnish available.

Dabr was my favorite web site and twitter client

USB cable was short so I used some creativity

• OPERATING SYSTEM

From what I read the phone runs on Symbian S60 but I am not really an expert on smartphone OS since this is my first smartphone I have tried. From a user point of view, what hikes me the most about the phone is the endless menus and settings. Finding the right settings required hours of searching and wondering if I am ever going to get to know the phone. In the end I got fine with it but it took some effort and asking around. Also the name of the tools were changed to control panel which bothered me.

Menu

One thing I also noticed was that applications left themselves running and I spent a lot time closing them. (Normal with smart phones?)

I was also a bit frustrated with the slow startup of the device I had to press the power button for like 5 secs before the screen lights up. Even then it took some time before I got a a chance to enter my pin.

Volume buttons on the side

USB and Micro SD card place

• EQUIPMENTS

I used the headphones for 30 minutes and wasn’t really impressed and changed to my own ones. I hated the shape of the wire and ear pieces didn’t fit to my ears plus they looked pretty bad. The good thing is that E72 has 3,5 mm audio connector. The pouch was not so good either. The phone almost slipped from my hand when I was trying to take it out from it.

• APPLICATIONS

I installed different applications for Symbian and smart phones. I tried Chat (Nokia), Fring, Gravity, Snaptu, Skype, Mobbler and Nimbuzz. The best chat client is definitely Nimbuzz and Last.fm scrobbler Mobbler worked well.

Nimbuzz

Mobbler

I would like you to answer these questions with one sentence:

1. What was your most awesome moment with the device?

Chatting with an important person middle of the night.

2. What was your most frustrating moment with the device?

My most frustrating moment with the phone was find the right settings from millions of menu views.

3. If there is anything you would like to add to the device, what is it?

I would add an x button to close applications fast, faster than I am able to close them now.

4. Would you buy an own E72?

Yes, I would buy E72 because it meets my needs and I can handle the dislikes.

Thanks HmusicK for sharing your experience about the E72. Any last words?

E72 is a great smart phone with great qualities and working applications. You can even use the device as a GPS and personalize it match to your own needs. The phone is great for working, but it also changes to a great entertainment device. There is no major mistake which would turn the user away. (I would buy a smart phone in the future.)

Thanks to WOMWorld/Nokia for giving me the opportunity to review the E72. Thanks to bigbrovar for sharing some of his symbian experience with me.

HmusicK