Nokia N75-A Complete Review

Nokia N75 Review Introduction The N75 was designed for the US market, unlike most other S60 smart phones that make their winding way here many months after their overseas release. A large segment of the American market has an ongoing love affair with the flip phone, perhaps thanks to the venerated Motorola StarTac of old that seemed to define "cell phone" in the US. We like our music controls on the front flip. And so Nokia gave us a clamshell phone with music controls on the flip and a RAZR-esque metallic flat keypad. Unlike the not so bright RAZR and other flips on the market, the N75 gives us plenty of brains: it's a Smartphone running Symbian OS and Nokia S60 3rd Edition. It features a best of breed web browser (though Cingular has buried it in the Tools folder), PC syncing capabilities and it can run third party applications (not just the Java kind you buy from the carrier and download online). It provides company for the Cingular 3125 Windows Mobile Smartphone-- the only other smart flip on the market today (OK, Verizon has a Pantech clamshell MS Smartphone that hasn't exactly taken the world by storm). Nokia's first US 3G phone, in fact Nokia's first US flip smart phone, and AT&T's first 3G Symbian OS phone, the glamorous Nokia N75 has been the subject of many hopes and dreams in the seven months since it was first announced. It's beautiful and powerful to be sure, but poor battery life makes me worry you won't be able to get the use you want out of it. The N75 is a big, broad (3.7 by 2 by 0.8 inches, 4.3 oz) flip phone with a luxurious 1.4 inch external screen and a glossy, beautiful 2.4 inch 320 by 240 internal screen. It also has big buttons and handy external music controls. Tiny, tinny-sounding, but powerful stereo speakers near the flip pump out the jams and provide audio for the excellent speakerphone. Also, a 2-megapixel camera sits on the back of the handset. As a quad-band world phone, the N75 is close to perfect. Sound quality was absolutely terrific, impeccable, and even delicious. Voices sounded sharp, loud and well-rounded, without a touch of either distortion or hiss coming or going. The speakerphone is loud enough, too, to be used outside. A little bit of in-ear voice feedback makes talking more comfortable. The phone doesn't really cancel background noise, but pumps voices through so they can be heard clearly over any background noise. The device supports Bluetooth headsets, and uses wired headsets through an annoyingly placed, difficult to use Nokia Pop-Port behind a balky side door. Voice dialing comes courtesy of Nokia's rather difficult and perplexing suite. We've been waiting for the N75 since December 2006, and its release went from seemingly imminent to be it ever going to happen in the months since. It's meant to be a relatively affordable Smartphone (in the US, we don't like to pay a lot for our phones). At $250 ($199 after rebate) direct from Cingular, you get a lot of phone for the money. It's a Smartphone, has a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, a music player, 3G and great call quality. Unfortunately, it has the slower flavor of 3G, called UMTS rather than the raging HSDPA found on the Cingular 8525 and Samsung Blackjack. UMTS caps at 384k, while we regularly get 900k on our HSDPA phones (with a much higher theoretical cap). UMTS is prevalent in Europe, and thus so far Nokia has stuck with that standard. Still, it's twice as fast as EDGE and good enough for Internet use on the phone, but slow for tethering with a notebook. Clearly, the N75's 2 megapixel camera isn't meant to compete with the flagship Nokia N95's 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss autofocus lens. Those of you who were thinking of opting for the N75 rather than the N95 to save many hundreds of dollars, be assured the N75 is a nice phone but no N95. The N75 isn't as responsive when navigating folders and launching programs, lacks Wi-Fi and the internal GPS to name a few points. If you're upgrading from the aged Nokia 6682 or 7610, you'll be in heaven (unless you hate clamshells) since the N75 is superior in every way except battery life. Design and Ergonomics Not RAZR thin, the Nokia is a phone of substance. It's broad and long, though not much more so than the RAZR. But its 20mm (0.80 inches) thickness gives a sense of it being larger than it is. It's by no means a fat bugger, being a hair thinner than the Nokia N95, and similar to current flip phones from Verizon such as the LG VX9400 and Samsung u620. The Nokia is understated, with very clean lines and a geometric feel, and its not the kind of phone that begs attention as do the LG Shine or Moto KRZR. The matte black with a hint of deep brownish color is pleasing and the textured coating feels good in the hand. Silver and chrome accents add style and interest, and the back of the phone looks like a point and shoot camera.

The outer display is large, bright and colorful. In standby it displays signal strength, battery level, carrier name, time and date. You can set the wallpaper for both inner and outer displays. Three music playback buttons below the display handle track back, play/pause and track forward. You can start music playback with the flip closed and select tunes for playback (menus include all songs, genre, artist, album and playlists). Two tiny stereo speakers are at the top corners of the phone toward the back and they generate a fairly small sound.  As it should be (to avoid accidental powering off or profile changes), the power button is hard to press. Like all S60 Nokia phones, a quick press of the power button brings up profiles while a long press will power the phone on and off. The volume rocker is on the upper right side of the N75, and we found it a bit too hard to press. The Gallery and camera buttons are on the lower right. The Pop-Port is on the left side under a brutish rubber door, as is the Micro SD card slot and the tiny power jack sits in between, uncovered. The camera lens and LED flash are on the back of the phone with the battery door below. The SIM inserts into a spring loaded slot (there's a tiny release button next to it that will pop the SIM half way out so you can grab it).

The keypad is very large with depressions on each key that help with blind-dialing. The backlight is blue and it's triggered by a light sensor. Both the keypad and d-pad have too little travel, so you get that bottoming-out feeling when pressing them. That's the price we pay for the RAZR derivative design. Surrounding the d-pad you'll find the usual S60 keys: pencil key (switches between input methods such as numbers vs. letters), clear key, programs launcher, two soft keys directly below the display and a button that launches the music player. The Nokia Pop-Port makes us feel as if this were last year's phone. More recently, Nokia has joined the 21st century and the Nokia E62 and N95 have standard 2.5mm stereo headset jacks. Why, especially in a music phone, are we going back to this pain the rump connector? The only consolation is Cingular customers upgrading from the old Nokia 6682 will be able to use their wired headsets with the N75.

Phone Features

The N75 is a quad band GSM world phone operating on the GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands and it's locked to Cingular (this means you must use a Cingular/"New AT&T" SIM and not T-Mobile, Vodaphone or etc. SIM). It has UMTS 3G on the US 850/1900MHz bands (Europe uses the 2100MHz band) with fallback to EDGE if you're not in a 3G coverage area. Unlike most S60 Nokia phones, there's no manual network selection and no option to set the phone to GPRS only, 3G only or automatically switching between the two. You'll have to let the phone do it automatically, which it does well. However, if you're in a marginal 3G coverage area where the phone frequently flips between 3G and GSM, battery life will suffer. Cingular likely blocked manual network selection, as they often do on their phones, and not Nokia.

As we've come to expect from Nokia, reception on both GSM and 3G networks is very strong and voice quality is excellent with good volume (it's louder than recent S60 import phones). The speakerphone quality and volume are also excellent. Sound quality through a stereo Pop-Port wired headset is also excellent and quite loud, Data transfer speeds using the full web browser rather than the WAP browser were good by UMTS standards and we averaged 350k on DSL Reports' mobile speed test. Still, that's less than half of what we get on the HSDA-equipped Samsung Blackjack, Cingular 8525 and Treo 750 (with hack to enable HSDPA since Palm and Cingular haven't released that update yet). That said web pages downloaded and rendered quickly enough and we didn't find ourselves staring blankly while waiting for emails to download. UMTS is certainly pleasant for on-phone browsing, but those who tether and use the phone as a wireless modem for a notebook will want an HSDPA phone.

The "Media Net" browser tied to the right soft key is really the Nokia "Services" WAP browser rather than wonderful Nokia browser (you may recall that the Nokia E62 for Cingular has two browsers as well, and so do non-US Nokia phones like the N73 and N80). It doesn't have the virtual arrow cursor, handles WAP sites well but not robust HTML sites, lack the full browser's RSS feature and gets poor results on speed tests. Instead, use the real Nokia web browser for surfing (In the Tools folder, it's the icon labeled WEB). It's regrettable that Cingular gave front page billing to the lesser browser on a powerful Smartphone that has the best web browser among all PDA and Smartphone’s today. The full web browser does a phenomenal job of rendering sites in near-desktop fashion with support for HTML items such as dynamic menus, JavaScript, tables and frames. It's based on Apple's Safari technology, as will be the upcoming Apple iPhone's web browser. It also has an RSS reader, SSL support, bookmarks, cache management, cookie management, font size settings and more.

The email client is Nokia's usual Massaging which handles text messages, MMS and email. It uses a mailbox paradigm, where you define a mailbox for each email account you set up. It works with POP3 and IMAP email, but does not support MS Direct Push or BlackBerry Connect. Cingular bundles their client for web-based email accounts such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, AT&T Yahoo and Bellsouth accounts. An IM client is included and it handles AIM, MSN and Yahoo instant messaging with support for setting status, auto or manual sign-in, showing online and offline contacts and audible incoming message alert tones.

Performance

Nokia doesn't disclose the CPU model or speed. Our test utilities pegged it as a ARM family CPU running at 206MHz which feels reasonably close given the N75's performance, though it's probably 220MHz like the Nokia 6682. While not as fast as the Nokia N95 and N73, if you've used Windows Mobile 5 devices or most other S60 phones, you'll be right at home, but be aware that the phone isn't as fast to open folders and launch programs as the average feature phone (this is generally true of PDA and Smartphone’s). The phone has 21 Megs of RAM free at boot to run programs, and that's average for S60 phones. Running memory hungry programs like Gallery and the web browser didn't trigger low memory errors for us in two weeks of testing, but add in a 3rd demanding program or forget to exit a 3D game and the phone will starting closing down apps to free up memory or will show an insufficient memory error. Thankfully, S60 applications have an exit/quit program menu option so you can manage running programs yourself, much as you do on a PC and unlike Windows Mobile devices which generally have only a minimize program option.

Core Functions

The Nokia N75 is a 3G UMTS handset that works on Cingular's 850/1900MHz GSM and UMTS networks here in the USA. It also supports the 900 and 1800MHz GSM bands that are also used in most of the rest of the world, making it a capable world traveller. The N75's internal antenna appeared to be an average performer for us in tests. It does not perform as well as Nokia's own N80, but does a reasonable job most of the time. Audio quality on calls was very good, but I do have to note that I had trouble establishing calls on a number of different occasions. It is hard to say if the phone or the network was to blame, but either way, something was occasionally amiss. To its credit, the N75 managed 5 hours and 11 minutes in our talk time test, a good 25% more than Nokia rated the device for.

As is the case with all modern Nokia S60 smartphones, the N75 has a top notch contacts system. As many contacts can be created as the system's shared memory pool will allow, and each record can contain nearly every conceivable data point possible. Chances are great that if Microsoft Outlook supports it, the N75 supports it as well. This means details as obscure as an assistant's phone number or a nickname can be stored along side of the more common phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, and notes. Contacts can be searched for by first or last name and can be organized into groups. Groups can be used for sending out mass text or email messages, and can also be assigned a special group ringtone. Ringtones and photos can also be assigned to individual contact records as well.

The N75 has a very versatile profile system. The device comes with 5 pre-defined normal profiles and a special "Offline" profile for use on airplanes. The pre-defined profiles can be edited to taste, and new profiles can be created just as easily. Calls, email, and text messages each get their own ringtone. A system-wide vibration alert can be enabled, but cannot be configured for each individual alert type. One of my favorite things about the higher end Nokia S60 devices of late is their ability to verbally announce the name of a caller if the contacts system has the number in its database. This feature uses the same voice generation system used for voice dialing. The voice is very mechanical sounding, but is clear enough to be understood in most cases. Profiles can also restrict inbound calls to groups that have been defined in the contacts system so that a newly created "Family" profile might only allow calls from your spouse or children, for example. Sadly, the N75 does not support timed profiles, which would put the group inbound call restriction feature to even better use.

In our experience, the Nokia developed voice dialing system was a bit of a mixed bag. When used on the handset itself, by long pressing the right softkey, the system seemed quite accurate, properly identifying and calling any of the contacts I tested. Using the system with Nokia's own BH-800 Bluetooth headset was quite a hit or miss proposition, though. At best, it managed a 50% success rate when I was virtually shouting into the headset, and performed worse when I used a normal volume level. It performed much better with a Sony Ericsson HBH-662, but the fact that it never confirms the name before connecting makes it a bit risky to use - especially if you have a lot of overseas contacts in the phone, as I have. The speakerphone didn't impress us much, either. The N75 user sounded quite distant to the remote caller, even though the sound quality on the other end was just fine. The speed dial system on the N75 works either by long-pressing or dialing 1 through 0 on the keypad. 1 is predefined to be voicemail, and 0 brings up Cingular's MEdia Net portal in the web browser, but the others can be assigned as the user pleases.

The Nokia N75 on Cingular is a very capable messaging phone. It supports the standard SMS and MMS messaging that all of Nokia's smartphones do, and even has a message reader application that can read messages out loud to the user. The app is buried in the settings menu, but would be useful for drivers if linked to a softkey or placed on the Active Standby screen. The N75 has very good email and IM support. The Nokia messaging application supports both IMAP and POP based email accounts quite well. It even supports IMAP folder subscriptions properly. What I was most pleased to see, however, were the dedicated mail and IM applications that were included. This gives the user non-web based access to MSN, Yahoo!, and AIM instant messaging, as well as email from MSN Hotmail, Yahoo!, AIM/AOL, AT&T Yahoo, and BellSouth. It is disappointing that Gmail support is not included. The applications work very well, offering a nice tabbed user interface that will make sense to people. The only problems I encountered seem to have been network related.

In general I was unimpressed by the N75's 3G data capabilities on Cingular/AT&T's network. While I averaged download rates of around 300kbps using the DSL Reports mobile test site, the network latency seemed to be excessively high. This made the web browser and some of the applications perform rather poorly. Simply put, I have yet to use a UMTS or HSDPA device here in the states that can compare with the EV-DO offerings from Verizon and Sprint. I was quite disappointed to find that the N75 does not support stereo Bluetooth connections, though it supports most of the other major profiles. For a device that seems targeted at music lovers, this is a real red mark.

Memory

The N75's flagship feature is music. It handles a variety of formats, with two annoying headphone-related problems. Using a USB cable included with the phone, you can drag and drop music onto a MicroSD card up to 2GB stuck in a slot on the side, and play WMA, MP3, or AAC music over Bluetooth or wired headphones. Downloads are speedy at about 4 seconds per song over USB cable. The phone will also let you sync music and playlists directly from Windows Media Player, Napster or Yahoo! Music Unlimited, including purchased and subscription WMAs – but then won't let you play you’re WMAs over a Bluetooth headset because of truly psychotic security restrictions. That's more than disappointing, it's appalling. Meanwhile, if you want to plug in wired headphones, you have to use Nokia's oddball Pop-Port jack or an adapter. If you don't actually own any music, you can also stream music through MobiRadio or the built in FM radio, though the FM radio requires you have a wired headset plugged in.

The N75 has 40 Megs of flash memory available for storage and you can expand that using a MicroSD card up to 2 gigs capacity. The card slot is on the side of the phone and its hot swappable. You can store music on the card and use a card reader to copy music to the card or you can use a USB cable and connect the phone directly to your PC to transfer and sync music files. And of course you can save photos and video on the card, along with Office files and you can install programs on the card.

User Interface

Though announced at the same time as the N95, the Nokia N75 runs the older S60 3rd Edition user interface instead of the N95's S60 Feature Pack 1 system. This also means that the N75 uses the slightly older Symbian OS v9.1 as its base, instead of the newer v9.2. While it can run the same applications as the N95, the N75 lacks many of the visual tweaks that make the N95 so enjoyable. One of my favorite parts of the S60 UI is the Active Standby home screen. For those not familiar with it already, the Active Standby screen allows the user to configure a row of shortcut icons near the top of the display that can be navigated through and selected to access the user's most commonly used functions. Upcoming calendar appointments and events, as well as a summary of the to-do list state and the name of the currently playing music track, are listed below the icons. You can scroll down to those items and select them to run the associated applications.

Otherwise, programs and most phone functionality are accessed through the main menu. Pressing the dedicated menu button, colored in blue and located left of the d-pad, will bring up a 3x4 icon grid main menu (a list view is also available). The menu is organized into items and folders. The order and placement of everything can be changed to suit the user, items can be moved into or out of folders, and new folders can be created as needed. You can not, however, create a folder inside of another folder. The main menu and the contents of folders can be navigated to with the joystick or with the keypad. In most parts of the N75, the left softkey will bring up the options menu. The first item of that menu will typically be the default action assigned to the d-pad select button, even though it has no on-screen labeled. Sub-menus can be opened by navigating to them and selecting them or by pressing right on the d-pad. The right hand softkey is nearly always linked to an exit, back, or cancel function, depending on what is most appropriate. Applications and major sub-sections of the N75, such as the Settings app, can make use of a dual-mode list/tabbed interface that is pretty easy to use and understand. Regular tabbed screen controls are used liberally throughout the rest of the system.

Like most Smartphone user interfaces, S60 offers a large number of features and functions that might not be obvious to the casual user. For example, holding down the menu key will bring up a list of running applications, and pressing the C key on the keypad will kill the highlighted app, freeing up badly needed RAM. Learning things like this will greatly improve the user's experience with the device. It might seems a bit daunting at first, but most people should find the N75's user interface easy to work with once they have spent some time with it.

Multimedia

With a fantastic main display, outside music controls and stereo speakers, the N75 has the basics of a strong multimedia phone. Video playback using Cingular Video is smooth, despite the slower UMTS rather than HSDPA connection for streaming media and the screen shows off both video and photos beautifully. Sound through the built-in stereo speakers is adequate for video soundtracks (and not as good as some of the LG phones with stereo speakers) but you'll want something better for music-- which is true of all phones. The outer playback controls make it easy to turn the phone into a portable MP3 player, and it takes about 5 minutes to get a hang of the outside display music playback interface. Without even opening the N75, the user can choose a playlist or find songs, albums, or artists in the music library and start playing music. Managing and accessing music using the main display and d-pad is even easier.

The music player handles MP3, AAC, AAC, eAAC and WMA files and OMA DRM 2.0 as well as Windows Media Player 10 DRM. With that DRM support, the phone can sync to Windows Media player on the desktop and is compatible with Plays For Sure services such as Napster and Yahoo Music. The Nokia also has an FM radio, which is uncommon in US phones. The radio uses a wired Pop-Port headset as its antenna; so once again, you'll have to buy one of those to listen to FM radio. For some reason, the FM radio application isn't in the Music folder, but rather in the Tools folder and it's simply called "Radio". Reception is decent but you'll need to use manual tuning to pick up less than super-strong stations (the same is true of many other phones with FM tuners). Sound quality is quite good and you can save up to 20 favorite stations, though the app otherwise is no frills.

Nokia's beautiful web browser renders websites the way they were meant to be. For example, the MobileBurn website looks just like it does on a desktop PC. Javascript driven menus work as expected, ads pop into place, and tables and graphics are all where they should be. A very sweet scrolling window aid helps the user tell see where they are on the page when moving the pointer around, and the Back function actually shows thumbnails of the pages that are in the cache so they can selected visually instead of by page title. When a number of applications are running, the browser can sometimes run out of RAM. There is only about 17MB of program RAM available on the device, which is not a huge amount. Built-in storage runs about 35MB in size, though users can easily add a microSD memory card of up to 2GB in capacity to augment that.

Also included are Cingular Video, Music ID, MobiRadio (think MobiTV but for broadcast music) and Billboard Mobile. Cingular Video service is included with MEdiaMax data packages but the others each require a monthly subscription fee

2 MP at the Back

Expectations are naturally heightened with the recent release of the Nokia N95 with its 5 megapixel camera and autofocus lens. Now pull back those expectations: this is a much less expensive phone with a 2 megapixel camera and fixed focus lens. Phones and their cameras are evolving so quickly that we were first unimpressed with the Nokia N75's camera. Then we revisited last year's 2MP fixed focus offerings from Nokia like the N91 and E70 (neither offered by a US carrier) along with a few even more recent phones from other manufacturers. At the time, they looked pretty darned good for a phone but in comparison to the N75 their images were weaker with poorer focus and hazing. So, with a little perspective, we have to say the N75's photos are pretty decent for a 2MP camera phone. Even HTC and LG's 2MP fixed focus cameras don't do much better. Indoor photos show noise that's easily reduced with an image editor, but they maintain unusually good color saturation. For example, many camera phones we've reviewed turn the low-light still life to the right into something nearly monochromatic. Indoors photos have a cool green cast unfortunately, but the good news is Photoshop's Auto Color feature fixes most of them easily. In contrast, outdoor shots tend to be the opposite-- a bit warm but not nearly as over pronounced as indoor shot color cast. Under good (but not strong) light, the camera whites out highlights when the background contrasts (is dark). Otherwise, metering is good.

The 2-megapixel camera is disappointing. It gave me dim, bluish photos with a one-second shutter delay that made me miss some shots. I also saw purple halos in outdoor shots, and a bright sky was washed out. You're supposed to take photos with the flip closed, using the external screen as a viewfinder. But, if you take photos with the phone open, you have to rotate it 90 degrees, which is awkward to hold. The video mode, on the other hand, was pretty good at 352 by 288 and 15 frames per second, with very clear sound. The N75's fixed-focus camera can shoot photos of up to 2 megapixels in resolution as well as record CIF (352x288) resolution video at 15 frames per second. The camera records pretty decent photos, though they tend to appear quite digital in nature. White balance tends to be fairly accurate, but slightly on the cool/blue side of things. Using the camera with the N75's folder opened is a bit cumbersome, since the display and camera are not located on the same half of the device and the N75 has to be held horizontally. Most people will probably prefer to use the camera function with the external 262k color display while the phone is closed. Luckily, as previously mentioned, most all of the camera's settings can easily be control with the external buttons that are available on the phone. A few sample photos shot with the camera are available in a gallery at the end of this review.

The camera can take images up to 1600 x 1200 resolutions and save them directly to a card or internal memory. It supports lower resolutions including VGA and 1024 x 768 and has an LED flash that somewhat improves indoors shots at close range. The camera uses the inner display as its viewfinder and it has quite a few settings for white balance, scene settings and color effects. Images are saved in JPEG format with EXIF data. Video quality is quite good with no undue blockiness, pleasant color saturation and proper audio-video sync. The camera can take video at 352 x 288 and 176 x 144 resolutions in MPEG4 or 3GP format with AAC audio. It has digital zoom up to 8x and takes video at 15fps up to 1 hour in length.

Battery Life

Here's the big hurt: battery life isn't good. Get a spare battery if you're a moderate to heavy user. Talk time in solid 3G coverage areas hovers at just less than 2.5 hours which is too short. Cingular Video will eat the battery quickly and even playback of local video content taxes the battery, though not as much as streaming media. The phone managed 7.6 hours of MP3 playback (we didn't use the phone for anything else during this time, and the flip was closed). Light users and those in non-3G areas will fare better but we still recommend a second battery for moderate to heavy users. Ultimately, that dooms the N75 for me. I want to like this phone. But without sufficient battery life, and with the headphone and network speed restrictions, it'll leave you unhappy at the end of the day. I'd recommend the Samsung Sync for music and 3G fans instead (though it, too, has an oddball headphone jack), and the Nokia N73 for folks looking for a stylish Symbian camera phone.

Connectivity

The N75 has a very complete Bluetooth stack, including transferring files at a zippy 800 kbps/sec. You can also use it as a Bluetooth modem for your PC on AT&T's UMTS and EDGE networks. I got 230 kbps down and 251 kbps up on the UMTS network – which is about double EDGE speeds, but much slower than HSDPA phones like the Samsung Sync and especially the Motorola RAZR V3xx. Unlike PDA/phones such as the Cingular 8525, the N75 also doesn't have foreign high-speed bands, which will slow down Internet access for world travelers.

Software

The N75 comes with PC Suite desktop syncing software and Life Blog, both for Windows. We hope that Nokia releases an iSync plugin for Mac OSX, as they recently did for N95. Syncing is reliable and easy and PC Suite also installs drivers to use the phone as a modem for your computer over the included USB cable. Phone software includes the standard good suite of S60 applications including Contacts (instead called Address Book on the N75) with support for most fields used in Outlook, a full-featured calendar with repeating events support, day/week/month views and a Tasks applet. Also included are the afore mentioned web and WAP browsers, the email client, IM client, music player, RealPlayer, Cingular Video, FM radio, Cingular's usual subscription service apps like Music ID, a call log, full and demo versions of games such as Lumines, 3D Pool Hall and Tetris, the Flash Lite player, Java, notes, an un-zip utility, calculator, unit converter, voice recorder, Adobe PDF viewer and Quick Office which allows you to view but not edit MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (you'll have to purchase the upgraded version to edit MS Office files). That's quite a lot of useful software to make the most of the phone.

In The Box You’ll Find

Phone, battery, compact world charger AC-4U, USB sync cable CA-53, printed manual and software CD with PC Suite, Life Blog, Windows Media Player driver and Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition. 

Merits

No Merits

Demerits

• Slow data means slow Internet browsing (EDGE, UMTS)
• The huge dimensions allow it to be used as a brick replacement
• It is so thick it needs a personal fitness trainer (0.79 inches)
• Low resolution display (240 x 320 pixels)
• Lacks global positioning system (GPS)
• Low-resolution camera (2 megapixels)
• The camera lacks auto focus
• Lacks a standard (3.5mm) headphones jack
• Proprietary USB connector - have to use its cable for computer connection instead of a standard micro USB
• Lacks an ambient light sensor for automatic screen brightness adjustment

Final Words

In general, we love Nokia S60 phones. While the N75 doesn't earn our outright love, it still gets a positive nod. The good features outweigh the bad, and indeed there are many good features like the fantastic display, easy to use S60 interface and software, good music playback quality and features, Cingular Video support, excellent voice quality and good call volume, strong speakerphone and 2MP camera. It's a Smartphone that's easy to use and sync and it has good multimedia skills. And it speaks to Americans' love of the flip phone, though it doesn't appeal to a high sense of fashion. But the rose has a few thorns: lack of the faster HSPDA standard which road warriors may crave, short battery life and that darned Pop Port headset connector with no headset or headset adapter in the box. I mean c'mon Cingular: folks can't even use the FM radio without that headset. Our other quibbles are smaller and have to do with Cingular's choices such as putting the WAP browser closer at hand than the real HTML web browser, disabling manual network selection and 3G vs. GSM manual selection and marketing this Smartphone which competes with the Cingular 3125 as music phone instead. 

While it might not be as sexy as some of the other Nseries devices that Nokia offers, the N75 is a very solid and capable multimedia device that is sure to please a lot of people. The control of the music player and camera offered by the external display and buttons sets a new standard for folder phones, and the internal display is nearly a work of art. I was not all that pleased with the speed of the 3G data connections when it came to practical uses, but apart from that, the only other non-minor complaints I have about the N75 is that it lacks stereo Bluetooth and it needs more RAM for running applications. Too often the N75 user will get a memory full error message when trying to use the camera or web browser. Apart from those few things, I really enjoyed my time with the N75 and give it a strong "Recommended" rating.

Nokia N75 specifications

Design

• Device type:
• Smart phone
• OS:
• Symbian (9.1)
• Form factor:
• Clam shell
• Dimensions:
• 3.74 x 2.04 x 0.79 (95 x 52 x 20.2 mm)
• Weight:
• 4.35 oz (124 g)
  the average is 4.3 oz (124 g)
• Design features:
• Numeric keypad, Soft keys, Music control keys (2)
• Side Keys:
• Right: Volume control, Camera shutter, Other

Display

• Physical size:
• 2.40 inches
• Resolution:
• 240 x 320 pixels
• Pixel density:
• 167 ppi
• Technology:
• TFT
• Colors:
• 16 777 216
• Additional display:

o     

• Color, TFT
• Resolution:
• 128 x 160 pixels
• Physical Size:
• 1.36 inches
• Colors:
• 262 144

Battery

• Talk time:
• 4.15 hours
  the average is 7 h (446 min)
• Stand-by time:
• 8.3 days (200 hours)
  the average is 16 days (390 h)
• Capacity:
• 800 mAh
• Type:
• Li - Ion

Hardware

• Built-in storage:
• 60 MB
• Storage expansion:
• Slot Type:
• micro SD

Camera

• Camera:

o     

• 2 megapixels, Immobile
• Flash:
• Yes
• Features:
• White balance, Digital zoom
• Camcorder:

o     

• Yes
• Features:
• Video calling

Multimedia

• Music player:
• Supported formats:
• MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA
• Video playback:
• Supported formats:
• H.263, H.264
• Radio:

o     

• FM
• Speakers:
• Stereo speakers
• Streaming:

o     

• Audio, Video

Internet browsing

• Browser:

o     

• HTML Browser
• Supports:
• HTML, XHTML, WAP 2.0, Flash Lite (1.1)

For Video Review Go To-