Its almost been a day since I’ve been using the E75 full time (pics here), banishing the E63 to the inner confines of my drawer. Here’s what I’ve initially observed about the E75 as a hardware unit.

For starters, the build quality is pretty sturdy. The steel body makes it a little heavy, at about 140g, which is not too bad. The Horizontal slide mechanism to reveal the QWERTY keyboard is quite solid too (like the E65/E66 and MUCH better than the N80), though I did accidentally half-open the slider a couple of times when using the phone in the conventional vertical mode while typing out a few numbers on the numberpad.

When slid out, the screen auto-rotates into landscape mode as it logically should, and the part with the LCD screen that has slid out forms a very thin sheet. I wanted to check if pressing the farthest number keys (*,0,#) on the front keypad (not the QWERTY), causes the screen to depress or bend, but it turns out that when in landscape mode,only the function keys on the front keypad work. In other words, all the number keys on the front keypad are disabled when in landscape mode.

The front keyboard is pretty comfortable to type on, though keys on the last row are a little too small compared to the other keys. Seasoned Nokia users should be easily able to use the ‘Left menu + *’ combo for locking the keypad, but for a new Nokia user, it will take a few tries before getting used to it. The 2.4″ screen allows for the display of a lot of stuff on the Home screen. ( I right now have 2 mailbox notifications, 2 calendar entries, now playing, Wi-fi scanner, the missed call and message notification and the active standy icons on display, with none of them being truncated due to the lack of screen space ). The slide out Communicator/E90 style QWERTY keypad is supremely comfortable, and should be so even for people with big fingers. I’d rate the comfort of this QWERTY keypad much higher than the QWERTY Keypad on the E63/E71, considering that there’s more space per key.

The placement of the rest of the buttons and sockets is pretty standard. Volume control, camera and voice buttons on the right side, microUSB slot and microSD slot on the left, charger slot on the bottom right and the 3.5mm headphone jack on the top right.

The Camera, as always, is placed on the back side with no lens switch, but protected none the less with a lens cover. The secondary VGA camera is also conventionally placed on the front right hand side on the top.

To conclude my initial thoughts, the E75 appears to logically be the E51 upgraded with a slide out QWERTY keypad, a 3.2MP autofocus Camera, a larger screen and the OS upgraded to S60 V3 FP2.

I will be digging deeper into the software side today. This would be my first experience with a S60 V3 FP2 phone, and this is the first E-series with FP2, so I’ll go through this in detail. I’ll try and post screenshots of the new FP2 features and menus. Hope to post soon!

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