TWIN EDGE

Our correspondent gets a feel of the latest BlackBerry challenger in the market

Our correspondent gets a feel of the latest BlackBerry challenger in the market
IT MAY be dressed up as a business phone,but the E75 follows in the footsteps of last years E71,blurring the lines between business and pleasure in the process. With its arsenal of multimedia features,N Gage games and brilliant Internet connectivity,it can pose a serious challenge to the more stiff-necked BlackBerry brigade.

This straddling of opposites continues with the phones designwith a full slide-out QWERTY keypad and a conventional T9 keypad,the E75 has something to offer for everybody,whether youre a predictive texting nerd or a two-handed QWERTY lover.
This is no X1 Xperia,however,and the dedicated one-touch shortcut keys clustered around the navi-pad are cramped and not so easy to use. We also found the whole T9 keypad a little difficult to use. But there is another input option and the slide-out QWERTY keypad makes up for its smaller sibling. You are on surer ground here and the flat and roomy keypad is a breeze.

The display is also quick to orientate itself to landscape mode when the QWERTY keyboard is in use. At 2.4 inches,the E75s screen is a bit on the smaller side and we would have liked a bigger screen,especially since the phone has a full keypad.
The one ace up the E75s sleeve is its BlackBerry rivalling push email setup. Setting up your personal email clients is easy just enter your address and password and the phone will do the rest. You can add up to 10 accounts. We had our Gmail up and running in no time. Most protocols are supported,including Mail for Exchange,and of course attachments can be viewed on the phone. To add to this is the phones browser,which is literally something to write home about.

The E75 runs the latest version of Symbian 9.3 and the S60 3rd Edition user interface. There are quite a few apps installed Quickoffice Quickword,Quickpoint,and Quicksheet,PDF Viewer,ZIP Manager,RealPlayer and Nokia Maps to name a few and plenty more are available to download. The Download! app presented us with some very interesting options,right from a Kolkata Knight Riders T20 game to Facebook and Windows Live apps to an A R Rehman special! This is a must-check.

The E75s internal memory is quite limited at just 50 MB,but the phone does have the capability to accept microSD cards up to a massive 16GB.
While the E75 has an integrated 3.5-mm headphone jack,allowing you to plug in your own quality earphones,the 3.2 MP autofocus camera is not class leading,though adequate for most users. The E75 also supports N-Gage gaming.

Nokia have recognised the need for security and you can protect data on both the phones internal memory and any microSD card through encryption,apart from locking the phone.
At Rs 26,299,the E75,available in Silver black,Red and Copper yellow,looks slowdown-friendly and might prove to be the phone current E Series users are were waiting to upgrade to. We were not entirely satisfied with the E75s built quality,but its still a 4.5 out of 5 in our books.