Nokia E75, the most comprehensive features

Since the first-generation Communicator 9000 was launched back in 1996, it has claimed a special place in the hearts of smartphone users.

Now, Nokia launched the E75, which is also nicknamed the Mini Communicator. It is meant to replace the Communicator 9300i, which some people still find a little bit too large to fit their shirt pockets.

Obviously, any smartphone that bears the name “Nokia Communicator” or inherits some of its distinct traits will always be welcomed by its faithful followers.

One of the inherent features of all Nokia Communicators is a full QWERTY keyboard.

Thus, the challenge in designing a smaller Communicator must be to make the device small without compromising comfort in using the keyboard. Nokia has done a good job in this respect.

Designed as a candy bar, it is even smaller than the LG KT610, which also has a separate QWERTY keyboard and is said to aspire to become a Communicator.

What is the first thing about the E75 to attract our attention? It must be the sliding QWERTY keyboard that complements the numeric keypad. The side slider feels sturdy and is backlit when used in a dark place. The numeric keypad is still there for single-handed operation.

What does the E75 have in store? At first glance, it is not much different from other smartphones. It is a 3G and HSDPA smartphone with WLAN, Bluetooth and a 2.4 inch, QVGA (320 x 240) screen.

Whenever the QWERTY keypad is retracted, the display is automatically rotated to landscape. A close look reveals dedicated keys for Home, Calendar and Messaging in the numeric keypad. Like the Nokia E71, the E75 can be switched from Business to Personal mode and vice versa. The Home screen will change accordingly.

Like the E71, it is also very easy to set up to receive email messages from free email services regardless of the protocol. Just enter your Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, CBN or other email address along with its password, and the E75 will let you pull the mail from these addresses.

There is no need to enter the SMTP and POP addresses of the e-mail services. Neither is there any need to specify the access point.

In their effort to make messaging as easy as possible, adding the email accounts can be done right from the Home screen – we do not have to dig down into the menus to accomplish it.

If you have created several email accounts, say for friends, family members and business associates, you can link this smartphone to up to 10 different email accounts, including your corporate accounts. For corporate users, the E75 already incorporates Mail for Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes Travelers, the client applications for two of the most widely used enterprise messaging systems.

If your company uses Microsoft Exchange, you only need to fill in five fields to get company email messages delivered to your E75. You just fill in your email address, your password, your user name, the domain name and the Exchange server, and you’re set.

In fact, the interface resembles Microsoft Outlook in many ways. We can reply to or forward a received message to a single address or a group of addresses.

Once the account is created, we can even synchronize contact lists, calendar and tasks. As in Outlook and a few other applications, we can also request a slot in other people’s calendars for a meeting.

The E75’s amazing ability to search and find a contact in a global enterprise is another of its strong points. Just type in “Nokia”, for example, and the device will give us all the names of the people in the global address book – and we can contact someone even without having his or her phone number. In addition, if we forget to turn on the “Out of Office” autoreply on our corporate email before we go on a vacation, we can activate it via the smartphone.

The biggest attraction of the E75 is definitely the push email capability that is made possible by Nokia Messaging. When we buy an E75, we get a two-year free subscription to the push email service. All we need to do is create an account on Nokia Messaging, which can be completed in a breeze, and register up to 10 email accounts using our browser or right from the device.

The E75 is smart enough to learn new words as we make corrections to its predictive text. Pressing a key on the keyboard for a while also changes the input from the letter to the symbol shown on the same key.

What else is new? We can receive email messages in HTML format, so we can see the photos and videos that people have included in their email body. The E75 also supports the HTML document format of Microsoft Office 2007.

The Messaging key in the numeric keypad allows us to jump back and forth between the message and the attachment views.

Stylewise, the plain-looking E75 will not attract any curious eyes. The camera is 3.2 megapixel with a flash. The space for the numeric keypad below the screen is a bit limited, and therefore the buttons are a bit too small. But there are also small things that I like, such as the 3.5 mm jack for regular headphones, the stainless steel back cover and the rounded corners.

In a nutshell, the Mini Communicator may be mini in size, but when it comes to messaging it probably offers the most comprehensive features that will leave other messaging phones in the dust.

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