Nokia E75 review

Forget all that touchscreen mania. If you like a good old-fashioned keyboard, the Nokia E75 is for you. Not only does it have a standard alphanumeric keypad but a full Qwerty keypad slides out from underneath. This is a business phone, but it's also got a split personality, with the ability to rock two home screens -- one for home and one for work.

You can pick up the E75 from free on a £35-per-month contract on several networks, or for £330 with a pay-as-you-go deal on O2.

Undercover keyboard
The E75 plays it cool in the looks department, resembling one of Nokia's classic candybar phones at first glance. But trapped within its 14mm-thick body lurks a full, slide-out Qwerty keyboard, which springs out enthusiastically when you need to get stuck into some serious messaging. Our black sample wouldn't raise any eyebrows in a business meeting, but the E75 also comes in a flashy all-over red colour if you want to make a statement.

We were impressed that Nokia has managed to pack a full keyboard into such a compact phone, but there's positive and negative sides to this feature. On the plus side, the keys are reasonably large and they gave a soft click when pressed. But we don't like how there's no space between them, except for a bar down the middle that divides the keyboard between G and H. Also, there aren't any number keys on the Qwerty keyboard. If you want to write numbers, you'll have to press the shift key or do some hand gymnastics to reach the numbers on the standard phone keypad.

The keys on the Qwerty keyboard are fairly large, but entering numbers with them is awkward

The phone keypad also has flat keys that click softly. There's no space between them but they're a good size, and we don't think anyone would have much trouble with them.

The festival of buttons continues with four shortcut keys to access features like the calendar, a five-way function key, and the usual four call, cancel and function keys. There's also a camera button, volume buttons and the rarely-spotted mute button on the side.

Work to live, live to work
The E75's user interface will be no surprise to anyone who's ever used a Nokia -- the company's stuck with the old familiar. The homepage shows the number of new emails, calendar entries and a range of shortcuts, and it's all customisable. The user interface is starting to look slightly dated following the jazzy innovations we've seen from the iPhone and LG, but, depending on your stance, it may be a case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

There are, however, a couple of new things happening on the E75's homescreen. It can switch between two modes: the 'work you' and the 'play you', if you will. You can set up separate email accounts, for example, on the two home screens, so you won't see those pesky work emails pop up while you're trying to chillax. And your 'play' homescreen defaults to showing more entertainment shortcuts, like the music player, rather than the boring old calendar with its constant work-related reminders. Staff meeting? No thanks, we've got tunes to rock.

We had no trouble setting up a Gmail email address, although you have to configure it online if you want to use subfolders, and then you're limited to ten. We were happy to see the Nokia Messaging service that supports this feature is free with the purchase of the phone.

The E75 also features Nokia Maps, but, disappointingly, the maps near us were oddly labelled with minor street names, rather than major thoroughfares, and the app didn't successfully find major tourist destinations nearby. We'd suggest that you install Google Maps instead. Nokia Maps does offer turn-by-turn navigation for walking and driving, which Google Maps doesn't, but you'll have to pay to subscribe to it.