The E72 – Nokia’s latest business QWERTY – A future look

The look

The first aspect to consider is the aesthetics. The E72 sports a sleek black brushed metal appearance. This is lined with a silver finish around the edges creating a nice contrast of dark and light. It is easily inferable that the phone will be encased in a stainless steel body, similar to its predecessor, the Nokia E71. The metal body always adds to the quality of the phone. The rest of the E72 deviates little from its bloodline, retaining almost identical dimensions and screen size, (114 x 58 x 10 mm & 2.36”). However, one poignant change is the keypad – the functional keys are now in keeping with the brushed steel visuals, creating a more subtle appearance as opposed to the obvious look of the keys on the E71. This is also in keeping with the newer Eseries models.

More changes lower down the pad with the space button dramatically shrinking to accommodate two new buttons, although a similar design was adopted in the E63. An interesting feature of the E71 was its breathing light, which was a faint white light behind the D-pad, it was nice as is rapidly flickered if there any new communication to the phone – a nice touch which has hopefully been adopted by the E72. However, and it’s a big however, the E72 is very reminiscent of certain Blackberry models, a deliberate design decision – we think so. Nonetheless, there are a choice of three colours available, a black, grey and brown, which should create some scope for individuality, especially when considering that Eseries QWERTY’s are the slimmest within the niche.

The hardware

Right, now on to hardware functionality. Nothing in the E72 is a major technological advancement, as in there is nothing revolutionary and unique specific to this model, everything has been seen elsewhere. Although, the E72 does incorporate some much needed upgrades. The processor for instance has been up rated from the tiresome ARM 11 369 MHz chip seen in the E71 to a more up to date ARM 11 600 MHz processor – essential for rapid shifting between apps. However, it is a shame the RAM remains at 128mb, this may well detract from the usability of memory hoarding applications running simultaneously. Internal memory has been increased to 250mb, which is always welcomed. Other hardware upgrades include the camera, which now comes in the form of a respectable 5 mega pixels, with LED flash and autofocus; the video recorder too has been promoted to the ranks of VGA. A 3mm headphone jack is finally included, something of a novelty in Nokia phones of old. Of course the indispensable features which we all take for granted remain, the GPS module, WIFI, Radio, hot swap memory card, miniUSB port etc. However, perhaps we have finally seen the death of infrared with the E71 as its big brother has succumbed to the newer technologies.

The software

So now we come to the much loved Symbian OS. This new E72 will boast OS 9.3, version 3.2 UI, which now has full compatibility with Flash Lite 3.0 – thus we can be expecting some interesting visuals to this business orientated phone, the extent to which this will be appreciated is dependent on the individual user, although generally it’s always pleasant feature to have. The E72 should be an excellent device for the corporate user, with a superb email client allowing the E72 to become the recipient of two email addresses. Obviously the great Opera browser remains for fast, seamless surfing of the web. There will also be an extensive list of PIM functions available, including MS Office 2007 support (with editing), a PDF viewer, active notes, dictionary…the list goes on. One great feature is the active display on the phone’s homescreen, this collates a range of desired information and displays it prominently ensuring nothing is ever missed. The organiser will be most users point of reference, it was great in the E71, so we can guess that little will change here! Furthermore, since it’s a Symbian handset there are hundreds of thousands applications for your every desire.

The conclusion

Well, on paper the E72 seems like a very nice phone – it’s great to see that design has been modified and now looks more aesthetically pleasing; furthermore, it is now in line with its competitors in terms of looks – on this front it is certainly worth paying the extra money. Moreover, Nokia has seemed to have accomplished an excellent all rounder, improving on the short comings of the E71. The extra power of the processor will be enough to sway the most demanding users, that is if the stylish design hasn’t already.