Nokia N75 Review

[Mobiles24]

Please post your Nokia N75 reviews and opinions in this topic.

• Nokia N75 Photos & Specification

[Ghost]

Here is a bit longer review hope you like it

Physical Aspects

Nokia's N75 is a conservatively styled, attractive clamshell smartphone. The exterior surface of the device is covered in a matte finish paint that stays pretty clean, though doesn't offer as much grip as many of the newer soft-touch paints being used by companies such as Motorola. A nice 262k color, 160x128 pixel TFT display is located centrally on the exterior of the top flip. It is a transflective display, which means that it is very easy to read in harsh outdoor sunlight - regardless of the state of its backlight. This is particularly handy since it can be used in conjunction with the dedicated music keys and the volume rocker to control and navigate through the many layers of menus associated with the music player and the camera. This can be done without ever having to open the device to rely on the main display and controls.At 125g (4.4oz), the N75 isn't exactly a lightweight handset. Its 95mm x 52mm (3.7" x 2.0") height and width are roughly the same as those of a Motorola RAZR, though the N75 is significantly thicker at 20mm (.8"). The upside of the added thickness is that there is more room for controls and ports on the side of the device. On the right side of the N75 are the volume rocker, the camera shutter button, and a multi-purpose media button that changes modes of the video and music player when the device is closed, and loads the media gallery when the device is open. The Nokia pop port USB/headset connector is located on the left side of the N75, along with the microSD expansion card slot. Both have secure, attached covers on them. The mini Nokia charger socket is located between them. A very small power button is located next to the hinge on the silver part of the device. It is somewhat difficult to activate, but is still quite handy for switching ring profiles as well as powering on or off the phone. From the back of the device it is easy to see the stereo speakers that are located by the hinge. Just below them is the large, circular camera area. The lens itself is quite small, but the design makes the N75 look much like a dedicated point and shoot camera when held horizontally. Part of the reason for the N75's large size is its massive internal display. This QVGA (240x320 pixel) display is capable of generating over 16 million different color shades on its 50mm x 36mm (2.4" diagonal) surface. It is simply beautiful. The dark, polished frame that surrounds the display is less pleasing. While attractive, the finish is near impossible to clean once it becomes dirty. No casual wipe on a shirt sleeve will cut it.

Core Functions

The Nokia N75 is a 3G UMTS handset that works on Cingular's 850/1900MHz GSM and UMTS networks here in the USA. It also supports the 900 and 1800MHz GSM bands that are also used in most of the rest of the world, making it a capable world traveller. The N75's internal antenna appeared to be an average performer for us in tests. It does not perform as well as Nokia's own N80, but does a reasonable job most of the time. Audio quality on calls was very good, but I do have to note that I had trouble establishing calls on a number of different occasions. It is hard to say if the phone or the network was to blame, but either way, something was occasionally amiss. To its credit, the N75 managed 5 hours and 11 minutes in our talk time test, a good 25% more than Nokia rated the device for.As is the case with all modern Nokia S60 smartphones, the N75 has a top notch contacts system. As many contacts can be created as the system's shared memory pool will allow, and each record can contain nearly every conceivable data point possible. Chances are great that if Microsoft Outlook supports it, the N75 supports it as well. This means details as obscure as an assistant's phone number or a nickname can be stored along side of the more common phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, and notes. Contacts can be searched for by first or last name and can be organized into groups. Groups can be used for sending out mass text or email messages, and can also be assigned a special group ringtone. Ringtones and photos can also be assigned to individual contact records as well.The N75 has a very versatile profile system. The device comes with 5 pre-defined normal profiles and a special "Offline" profile for use on airplanes. The pre-defined profiles can be edited to taste, and new profiles can be created just as easily. Calls, email, and text messages each get their own ringtone. A system-wide vibration alert can be enabled, but cannot be configured for each individual alert type. Profiles can also restrict inbound calls to groups that have been defined in the contacts system so that a newly created "Family" profile might only allow calls from your spouse or children, for example. Sadly, the N75 does not support timed profiles, which would put the group inbound call restriction feature to even better use. The Nokia N75 on Cingular is a very capable messaging phone. It supports the standard SMS and MMS messaging that all of Nokia's smartphones do, and even has a message reader application that can read messages out loud to the user. The app is buried in the settings menu, but would be useful for drivers if linked to a softkey or placed on the Active Standby screen. The N75 has very good email and IM support. The Nokia messaging application supports both IMAP and POP based email accounts quite well. It even supports IMAP folder subscriptions properly. What I was most pleased to see, however, were the dedicated mail and IM applications that were included. This gives the user non-web based access to MSN, Yahoo!, and AIM instant messaging, as well as email from MSN Hotmail, Yahoo!, AIM/AOL, AT&T Yahoo, and BellSouth. It is disappointing that Gmail support is not included. The applications work very well, offering a nice tabbed user interface that will make sense to people.

Multimedia / Applications

Based on the external music controls, the stereo speakers, and dedicated music key next to the d-pad, it appears that Nokia is positioning the N75, at least in part, as a music-centric device. With the glaring exception of the lack of Bluetooth stereo support, I feel they have done a good job. For starters, the combination of the external music controls, the volume control, and the media key that is located next to the camera button allow for far better control of the music player on the N75 than I have seen offered by any other music capable folder phone. Without even opening the N75, the user can choose a playlist or find songs, albums, or artists in the music library and start playing music. Managing and accessing music using the main display and d-pad is even easier. The music player supports MP3, WMA, M4A, AAC, and eAAC+ music formats. The audio playback quality from the built-in speakers was OK, but I was very pleased when I attached a pair of regular stereo headphones to a 3.5mm jack adapter - not included. I find it odd that no headphones are included at all, especially since the built-in FM radio requires that one be attached before it can be run (it acts as the antenna).The N75's fixed-focus camera can shoot photos of up to 2 megapixels in resolution as well as record CIF (352x288) resolution video at 15 frames per second. The camera records pretty decent photos, though they tend to appear quite digital in nature. White balance tends to be fairly accurate, but slightly on the cool/blue side of things. Nokia's beautiful web browser renders websites the way they were meant to be. For example, the MobileBurn website looks just like it does on a desktop PC. Javascript driven menus work as expected, ads pop into place, and tables and graphics are all where they should be. When a number of applications are running, the browser can sometimes run out of RAM. There is only about 17MB of program RAM available on the device, which is not a huge amount. Built-in storage runs about 35MB in size, though users can easily add a microSD memory card of up to 2GB in capacity to augment that.

User Interface

Though announced at the same time as the N95, the Nokia N75 runs the older S60 3rd Edition user interface instead of the N95's S60 Feature Pack 1 system. This also means that the N75 uses the slightly older Symbian OS v9.1 as its base, instead of the newer v9.2. While it can run the same applications as the N95, the N75 lacks many of the visual tweaks that make the N95 so enjoyable.One of my favorite parts of the S60 UI is the Active Standby home screen. For those not familiar with it already, the Active Standby screen allows the user to configure a row of shortcut icons near the top of the display that can be navigated through and selected to access the user's most commonly used functions. Upcoming calendar appointments and events, as well as a summary of the to-do list state and the name of the currently playing music track, are listed below the icons. You can scroll down to those items and select them to run the associated applications.Otherwise, programs and most phone functionality are accessed through the main menu. Pressing the dedicated menu button, colored in blue and located left of the d-pad, will bring up a 3x4 icon grid main menu (a list view is also available). The menu is organized into items and folders. .

Conclusion

the N75 is a very solid and capable multimedia device that is sure to please a lot of people. The control of the music player and camera offered by the external display and buttons sets a new standard for folder phones, and the internal display is nearly a work of art.