My critique / review of the cellphone Nokia E72 (bought Nov. 2010):

This is not a systematic review! I just point out a few positve and unfortunately many more negative things. Result: immature! Not up to the task (business phone...)!

Positive Nokia E72 - Advantages:

+ : Great battery! (The battery was the great weakness of the predecessor E61i!)

+ : Establishing a connection to my email-account was feasable for somebody like me (never made it with the E61i ...).

+ : leather case: with the E72 an elegant leather sheath is provided. hopefully this prevents the loudspeakers from gathering dust and getting obstructed this time (E61i after a while got weaker and weaker untill you couldn't listen any more...)

+ : keypad very pleasant! Essential for a business-phone like this one! German "Umlaute" (mutated vowels) are available on the german version (even if not visible on pictures - only english phones shown...), so you don't have to interrupt the flow of hacking things in like with the i-phone...

+ : the camera can do one thing, that most high-end normal cameras can not do: it can produce semiautomatically panorama pictures, adding up serval takes...!

Negative Nokia E72 - Drawbacks (scope for improvements!):

- : "system crash" - It occurs repeatedly and not rarely that the whole system 'freezes' and you have to shut it down and restart it to be able to continue to work... The OS Symbian really does not seem to be up to the task...

- : "internet usability" - Using the internet via Vodafone is generally just not practical: a nuisance! The building up of websites takes an eternity if it takes place at all. Moving with the cursor over the websites is a nuisance, because a totally useless 'overview' of the whole page appears and covers the text in which you want to navigate... You have to stop doing something until that layer vanishes after a while and then you can continue...

- : "alphanumeric modus" - If you want to ring up a new numer for instance and type it in and then press the 'go'-button you get a drop-down-option-menu, giving you the choices: "alphanumeric modus, language call ("Sprachanruf"), video call, save under contacts..." now what you need in 99,9 % of the cases is "language call" and NOT "alphanumeric modus" (which just brings you back to the number you entered...??). so why is this mysterious option first?? you allways have do scroll down before being able to do your everyday task... annoying...!

- : "emailing" - rather often the email-program, while checking for new ones, 'hangs itsself up' and the whole operation system with it. You have to shut it down and restart the OS... Professional??

- : "email synchronisation" - sent emails (the ones you sent from your mobile) are not synchronized like other emails (e.g. you change an email-status from unread to read); consequence: you send an email from your cell-phone, you want to look at it at home at your computer, being logged in on your account, you don't find it... must use your mobile... not professional...

- : "email synchronisation" - you look for new emails, the programm signals the arrival of new ones - and shuts down (in almost every case!)... why? you have to open it up anew...

- : "reaction times": in many instances the phone reacts too slowly to signals from the keys, e.g. you want to unlock your mobile and press in quick succession (not simultaneously!) the two necessary keys - and it remains locked; you have to do it rather sloooowly... in other cases there seems to be too much time programmed in for nice but useless fading effects... clumsy...

- : "ear-'plugs'": the provided ear-phones are just ridiculus, embarassing for a supposed high-tech-company like Nokia: they are so dysfunctionally shaped that they drop out of your ear at the slightest movement of your body. A shame! Damaging for Nokia's image!

- : "unlock key-board" - no information about how to 'crack open' the automatic locking of the keypad... no relevant keywords in the manual... The screen asks: "unlock keypad?" - but no infos, how to... You need google and some helpful 'friends' out there in the internet to tell you...

- : "beep" - produces an unpleasant sharp beep at be beginning of every connection process before the ringing starts. Why? My poor ears...

- : "acoustic signaling" - the acoustic signaling of the calendar or the email-program does not work correctly or at all if some program is open... You get your alert only when the 'home page' is open... really not what it should be...

- : "camera": the camera does not quite fit to the overall luxury of the implement - designed for an upper-class business clientele (images are dull and blurred, videos are badly jerking, far too poor a lense for so many pixels...)

- : "shortcut-keys": when you try to personalise your shortcutkeys, namely, the "communication-key" (the one with the letter-sign), you are being offered "short or long pressure" (I'm translating from german into english); under short pressure, there are six alternatives on offer; when I chose "E-mail" and in the following enterbox my email-account, this choice is just not being accepted or registered; always the original constellation reappears... I can leave the original choice "communications" (Mitteilungen) and choose in the second dialog-box "new e-mail" (instead of new sms) and that's accepted... when I then press the button, I am being offered the choice between various accounts, but when I want to move the cursor to the right choice, it jumps into the main menu, whereas the first choice-box disappears half into the background and can't be reached any more... so the operating system symbian is deficiant...

- : "task-alarm" - when I want to be 'alarmed' by my cell-phone because a task has to be delt with and I program the calender correspondingly, then it is utterly annoying, when the phone arbitrarily sometimes rings or sometimes just silently blinks, not even vibrating... (which you easily miss...) again: the operating system symbian is deficiant... dysfunctional, distressing and deplorable...

- : "identification of callers" - normally a caller, who is registered on the phone with number and name, is being shown by name, when he rings you up. nokai E72 is not able, to do that regularly and reliably... often just the number is shown, and the caller is astonished, that I respond in a standard manner... again: the operating system symbian is deficiant and dysfunctional...

- : "calendar" - There is no over-view of the "meetings"... meetings ("besprechungstermine") are the only option for marking something in the day-view of the calender, i.e. as a time-span "tasks" or "aufgaben" can not be shown like that; they are always shown only between 7:00 and 8:00, despite the fact that you attributed a precise time-span to them, say from 16:00 to 18:00... tasks are shown en bloc to the right of the calenderview that's shown when you click the calender-key (when you choose options > change view > calender view then just the tasks are shown...); but you can not direct the cursor to them to open them; you must choose options > change view > task view... Then I go on a day in week a) and I'm beeing shown all my tasks (301...); on a day in the next week I'm being shown just 2 tasks... that's all not very logic and user-friendly... again: symbian is deficiant! Do something and quick!

- : "calendar" - You want to up-date your hundreds of tasks, extinguishing the ones you have done. Everytime you have deleted one task the program jumps back to the beginning of the list - and you have to scroll back to the point, where you were before, to continue your up-dating. A nuisance...

- : "communicator": keyword does not exist in the manual. You find infos only on the website...

- : "mail for exchange": is being praised on the website, but the help-function does not know the key-word, so no help how to use it... you need the website...

- : "connection with phone via nokia-pc-suite": the soft-ware just would not let me connect to the device... so the whole suite is useless. you can only access the phone via usb and windows-explorer, which however does not allow to copy (store on the pc and then delete on the phone) SMS-messages... the suite asks you to connect: you choose as means USB, the dialog says: "nokia usb-device bla connected"; then you want to "synchronize" or "back up" using the functions of the suite; in all cases you are to "chose the phone", but you can not choose and activate the indicated usb-devise, because the "ok"-button does not become active... Finally I find out by chance that when I plug in the phone I have to expecially chose "nokia suite" as connection mode and not "usb" (though the phone is linked via usb in any case...), in order to communicate with it via the nokia suite... Could that not be indicated to us normal mortals...
Then I want to synchronize the contents (after having backed up): "Your device (an N72-1, one of Nokia's "best" business phones!)
is not supported..."
Finally I would like to store my sms-messages before I delete them to free storage space (because they are not stored any more without any message because the store's limit-number was reached - just lost...); but where on earth are they stored on my pc or on the phone... Nothing tells you, no folder looks like it, no data-format... Why is the path and the folder not indicated???
well, no, deep inside the back-up-program you find a path to "content copier" and therin one huge .xml-file, evidently containing everything... How can I isolate and secure my sms-messages...?!

- : "recording a sound-bite": If you do not chose under 'adjustments' (or the like - my text is in german) the option "high quality" but just leave "standard", your sound-recordings will have so many breaks or gaps (passages left out!) that you can forget them...

- : "managing SMS-messages": If you want to change your storage site from "telephone storage" to "storage chip" (or the like) all messages will be copied there. But should you then want to copy for some reasons messages from one storage site to another - impossible...! because the great "nokia suite" shows only the actually chosen storage site...

- : "managing SMS-messages 02": If you want to see the "detailled information" about an SMS-message looking for the time the message was sent to you - bad luck...

- : "managing SMS-messages 03": The phone starts extinguishing messages when the maximum storage capacity, you have chosen, is reached - without any warning. So you loose messages without noting it and without having a chance to save them. If you want to check how many there are in your folders - no way... You'd have to count them individually (a bit lot if you have chosen 500 or 999 as max. capacity...). And the only way to save them self-controlled is by "export messages" as .csv-file... (the information about the name of the sender or emitter is lost; only the telephone-number remains...)

- : NOKIA - it's just a desaster... sorry guys...! Even at my provider's branch-shop they tell me not to choose one of the latest models (N8) because of soft-ware problems... wake up there, especially in your soft-ware-department!!!!!

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key-words: cell-phone, mobile phone, nokia E72, review, critique, symbian, operating system symbian, os symbian, plus and minus, advantages, draw-backs