Nokia releases a lot of mobiles. And many times, if you aren’t really paying attention, this company will slide under your nose something like the Nokia E75 — the kind of device that grabs and keeps your attention.
This is a good thing, except that you won’t find this device in a carrier store. Which is a shame, because in build and performance the E75 touches the bar a bit higher than even the highly-regarded Nokia E71 released last year.
At $149.99 with a two-year contract, the Nokia E71x is AT&T’s best smartphone deal right now. A variant on the Editors’ Choice–winning unlocked E71, this handset is strikingly slim, classy-looking phone with excellent e-mail and Web support—all at half the price of competing handsets. AT&T subscribers looking for a phone that can act as a mobile office can’t go wrong with this Nokia.
The talented and attractive E71 is one of the phones I carry with me most often. It’s super-slim (only 0.4 inch thick) and incredibly slick, with a stainless-steel back and small, domed keys. The phone’s voice performance is superb; it feels fast; and it runs thousands of Symbian programs. It also syncs easily with your PC. AT&T’s version uses the same hardware (except that it’s black, whereas the E71 is silver), but makes some firmware and software changes, which I’ll focus on in this review. For more details, check out the E71 review.
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has quickly become a very popular Symbian S60-based mobile device for the Finnish company. In its first few months on the market, there have been over 2 million of these devices sold.
And while one can point to the similarity of the 5800XM to other famous touchscreen models such as the iPhone, Instinct, and Prada; none of these devices have demonstrated the sheer capability, or market friendliness that Nokia’s offering has. Maybe that is why, despite some glaring weaknesses, that its found a solid place in this reviewer’s pocket.
Build and Design
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a simple tablet-based touchscreen mobile. Composed completely of plastic, it doesn’t have the feel of a very expensive device, but it takes a beating and keeps going better than most.
An Overview of the Nokia N97
The Nokia N97 will be powered by Symbian S60 5th edition (S60v5), a new touch-enabled version of the operating system this company puts on its high-end models. It will be based on a 434 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM.
This device is going to include a 3.5-inch, 640-by-360-pixel display that can be moved aside to revel its landscape-oriented keyboard. This will cause the screen to pivot up, making this phone look a bit like a small laptop.
The N97 will have no less than 32 GB of built-in storage, and that can be supplemented by up to 16 GB more on a microSD card.
When Nokia introduced the very thin and powerful Nokia E71 QWERTY smartphone, it probably had no clue that this would be such a popular model. So much so that they could keep it at a higher price point and release a sibling model, the E63, with a lower price and slightly reduced feature set.
The interesting thing is that the Nokia E63 doesn’t really feel like a cheaper device when you are using it. It’s that good.
Nevertheless, the soft-touch paint of the rear, and wide profile are pleasing in the hand. The E63 brought back memories of the Treo 680 that I used to own as it felt simply “hand-friendly.”
Keyboard: The QWERTY keyboard is the same that is used on the E71 — domed keys that offer great feedback and travel. Comapred though to the E71, the spacebar is smaller and there’s an extra two keys for common symbols.
