Ok, I have the absolute greatest wife ever, she got me a white Nokia E72 as a fathers day gift.  I am the luckiest guy ever.  Well here’s my review, I love it for the most part.

The Nokia E72 has a great number of benefits like the

• 3.5mm headphone jack
• The flashlight
• The newer version of Symbian
• A VERY quite keyboard when typing on it
• Many many other benefits.

But it also has some drawbacks

• I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t auto capitalize the letter “I” when typing messages.  It is my biggest annoyance with the device
• It doesn’t have enough RAM
• The build quality isn’t as good as the E71
• The battery life isn’t as long as I would like
• The center of the D pad should be white on the white version of the handset that I have
• My biggest problem with the E72 is that mine is defective.  I wasn’t sure I was going to mention this but I figure I should.  The left soft key on my handset has to be depressed extra hard to make it work properly.

I am madly in love with the idea of this device but I’m not sure it’s a big enough step up from my previous phone the Nokia E71.  If you don’t have an E71 then I think this is a perfect phone but if you have then you may be disappointed.

That being said, I’ll probably get another one anyways.  I do love my Nokias!!!  And I’m proud of it @Ew4n.

Hello Nokia, are you there?  Are you listening?

Ok now that I have your attention I have something to tell you.  Come close so I can tell you in your ear.  A little closer.  IT’S TIME.  It’s time to start pushing apps like never before.  It’s time to step up your game like never before.  It’s time to start competing on the main stage again.  The masses are starting to forget who you are and your name is being trampled in the dirt.

Nokia are you listening?  Are you there?  I’ve just been given an N97 mini to play with and well it seems like you’re at the very beginning of the right track.  But you’re still floundering a bit like a fish out of water.  It seems like things are moving along but not fast enough.

Nokia are you listening?  Are you there?  I have a suggestion for you.  Come close so I can tell you in your ear.  A little closer.  HIRE DEVELOPERS TO DEVELOP APPLICATIONS.  Yes you heard me.  Hire a developer to create an app for DropBox, a developer to create an app for Evernote, an app for Fandango, an app for Kayak, and app for Layar, an app for OpenTable, an app for TripIt, Urbanspoon, GoogleVoice, ZumoDrive and all the other big apps that don’t yet have a Symbian version.

You’re lucky enough to have apps like Truphone, JoikuSpot, Gravity, Nimbuzz, Fring, and emoze.  Give these developers a ton more support.

Better yet, better yet, create  web apps and show the world that platform specific apps are silly!  Ok ok I won’t get out of hand, just work on making apps for Symbian and lots of them.  I’m sick and tired of not having apps for the device I choose to use.  Yes I still prefer Symbian over any other platform.  But this could change if things don’t get better and I’m sure many other people feel the same way I do.

I suggest contacting as many good developers as you can and putting them on retainer to start developing as many hi profile apps as possible.  I’m talking about the apps that will get the big download numbers and keep people interested in Symbian.  It’s just not enough to wait and hope developers create their apps for Symbian as well as all the other platforms they’re already developing for.  It’s just not going to happen guys, Symbian has lost some of it’s luster in the public eye, this is a way to get some of that shine back.

So Nokia it’s your job to get these apps built, at way necessary.  Good luck and if you need some help, I know a few developers.

So as all of my readers know I’m a hard core Nokia E71 fanboy.  I’ve been infatuated with the E71 since I first heard about it roughly 2 years ago.  Now I’m impatiently waiting for the much anticipated E72 but I decided to whip out the E75 I was graciously lent for review and have been using it for 4 days now.  Hot shit, this phone is great.  I forgot how much I liked it.  It’s not perfect but I’m really digging it.  I forgot how much I liked it when I first used it.

S60 3rd edition feature pack 2 is really a nice upgrade to the E71’s feature pack 1.  There are so many little things I like more about it, but what the E75 is missing is memory/RAM.  The E75 seems to stall out sometimes and needs a reboot but that’s really my only single complaint about the software.  Of course it could be a little faster and of course it could have more of this or smarter that, but in general it’s all around solid software.

As far as the hardware goes it’s a candy bar style with a side slide QWERTY keyboard that’s 90% great and 10% ehh because of the lack of tactile feedback on the QWERTY portion.  I find it to be very useful and descent to type on.  You do need 2 hands to type on it because of the width of the keyboard which is good or bad depending on your preference.  Personally it is not my taste but I know quite a few people that are gaga over this style and particularly the E75.

Software wise the E75 does support the 4 apps I can’t live without and of course many many more apps but in particular
emoze – a push email and content client (my companies client)
Truphone – mobile VOIP offering me cheap international calls around the world and to my home country when I’m traveling
JoikuSpot – an app that turns my phone into a wifi hotspot by rebroadcasting the 3G it pulls in
Nimbuzz – an instant messaging (IM) client that supports GChat, Skype, MSN, AOL, Yahoo and ICQ

All in all the E75 is a solid piece of kit that doubles and triples as multiple devices.  Regular phone, VOIP, email, IM and wifi hotspot one by one or all at once.  This phone won’t disappoint and won’t let you down.  I have high regard for it but it’s not perfect because of the minimal RAM.  Most people would never miss it but I like to run everything all at once so if you’re a power user hold out a little longer for the E72 or something else otherwise I say pick one up and enjoy.

I got to spend some time with Karl Good of Truphone over the past 2 days at the ITExpo and have been reminded how much I like the best mobile VOIP service available today.  Karl gave me an ultra secret briefing, please don’t ask me what we chatted about, I won’t tell you.  No amount of sodium pentothal will crack me, I’m not going to share with you how many great things are coming from Truphone.  Things are changing and Truphone is staying on top of it all and doing some amazing things along the way.

I’ve been a Truphone user from what feels like the beginning.  It’s probably been about 3 years or so.  I was one of the early testers and have been enjoying and evangelizing the service to as many people as will listen ever since.

For anyone that doesn’t know about Truphone, it’s a mobile phone service provider at heart.  They started as a mobile VOIP service offering, the best in class then and now.  They have evolved from supporting Symbian S60 wifi phones only to now being on Blackberry, Android, the iPhone/Touch and of course still S60.  They own an international roaming sim card company (Sim4Travel) and have expanded their service offering to include multiple calling options/plans to save money when dialing internationally or if you are abroad.  They are also the 1 and only VOIP company I know of that supports sending and receiving sms.

I have so many stories I can tell you about how Truphone has saved me time, money and hard ache.  I’ll share just one quick experience.  I was staying with family in their guest room in the basement.  I didn’t get any reception down there but had to make some plans.  So instead of having to be upstairs with all the noise of the kids and TV I stayed in my comfy room and used their wifi to take care of my calls.  This is just one example, there are so many more but why don’t you make your own experiences with Truphone, give the service a try.  I can almost guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

I hate to be a complainer about things and I tend to only be the squeaky wheel when it’s necessary.  Well this is really annoying.  I’m a huge fan of Nokia and they are good to me but there’s something about all their phones that drives me bonkers.  Nokia S60 phones are little computers and that’s what I like, but they are computers and as computers go, need to be restarted every so often.  Now I install all kinds of beta apps and sometimes even alpha apps.  I do a lot of email and just use my phone a great deal, being a computer it freezes and crashes every so often.  So what I need Nokia to do is add a restart option.

When I hit the power button to change profiles I would like to see a restart option.  Dozens of times I’ve had to restart my phone and forget to turn it back on after shutting it down and putting it down.  I can’t imagine that it’s a big deal to add this into the menu and for Nokia to include an app that will restart the phone.  This is actually a really big deal for me having a child I have to be reachable all the time.

Does this bother anyone else?  Do you ever shut your phone off but forget to turn it back on?  I can’t be the only one…

So I just looked up the Nokia E72 on the Nokia website and noticed that it is missing a few things.  First off it won’t have included in the packaging a wrist strap or pouch like the E71 had.  It’s not a huge thing but come on, this is supposed to be a step up from the E71.  I know I know

Second thing is that it is apparently coming in 3 versions, Euro, US and a third I believe is APAC. What’s missing is the 3rd band on all the handsets.  They are all 4band GSM but only 2band 3G according to Nokia Europs Spec page.  Your options are

• E72-1 Quad-band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 900/2100 HSDPA
• E72-2 Quad-band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/1900 HSDPA
• E72-3 Quad-band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/2100 HSDPA

Now I was under the impression this handset was going to be tri-band 3G.  Am I reading this wrong or or does the HSDPA count as a band?  If so what wave length is it?  I’m just trying to figure out which model to get.

Alert: This just in: I was told my a Nokia employee that we will not see a US/NAM version of the E72 released anytime soon.  I am extremely disappointed about that and don’t really know what to think.  I’m now perplexed what to do and what model to get.

I want to start off by thanking WOM World once again for sending me the amazing Nokia N97.  It is without a doubt in my mind one of the most technically advanced and good looking mobile phones on the market to date.  It blows many handsets out of the water, chews them up and spits them out, in some ways.  In other ways it’s inferior to much older phones produced by Nokia also.

To start with it’s beautiful when opened up.  I’m a fan of phones with a QWERTY keyboard and this bad boy sports a pretty reasonable keyboard when it’s opened up.  The buttons don’t give much feedback at all but sometimes that nice.  The phone feels good in your hand and in my pocket, it looks big in some aspects like thickness but it really isn’t all that thick compared to other similar devices.   Physically the N97 is just splendid, it incorporates so many aspects and does it well.

Now when it comes to the software it fails miserably in my opinion.  It’s not a phone for the meek.  I consider myself a well versed and competent Nokia phone user and in so many cases I stumbled around with the N97.   I have been able to hand almost any other Nokia S40 or S60 phone to my Dad and he can easily figure it out, I would not even attempt to give this phone to my Dad.  He would be lost and frustrated.  For example the auto rotation doesn’t always work when the phone is slid shut and going back and forth from vertical to horizontal and back.  The response is also quite slow to a point that I’m hitting things again because I think I missed it the first time and then I’m getting into the wrong app when it finally catches up.

I have had the N97 browser crash more times then I can count.  I think it may have something to do with the lack of built in Ram.   How can Nokia let that happen to a flagship phone?  I expected these problems to go away as soon as the first firmware update rolled out.  I even waited to write up my review till I had that infamous first firmware update but the update came and went and I continued to have the same issues.

There are a ton of great aspects to the N97 including it’s camera, 3.5mm audio jack, video out, slider lock and many many more points.  I have tried giving it chance after chance but it just kept failing me.  Battery life and lack of ease of use are two big points without tearing it apart.  I can’t in good faith suggest that you go out and buy this phone at this point.  I hope that we will see additional updates and I hope I get to give the N97 another try.  It has some awsome aspects to it but to many major draw backs.

I left on vacation a few days back, as I write this I’m in the passenger seat of a giant 12 passenger Ford F350 van.  This thing is a monster but I like it. I’ve been preparing my electronic gear bag (I like to call it my toy bag) and I never know exactly what I’m going to bring until I leave.  I have also been updating the firmware on some of my phones (N85, N79, and N97) and in the case of my E71 I had to reinstall all my apps and have it ready for this big trip.  So I decided to make a list of all the apps I’m putting on my E71.

• emoze – push email – 1 email or facebook account is free, then it’s a yearly subscription
• Taskman – manage the apps on my phone – 1 time fee
• Nokia Email – mobile email – free for now but will start charging for it
• Ovi Maps 3.0 – map program -free with option to buy voice guidance
• Ovi Contacts – mobile IM – free
• Ovi Store – place to download apps for Nokia phones
• Qik – Video Capture and instant upload to the web – free
• Gmail Java app – mobile email – free
• Google Maps – java map app – free
• Skyfire – web browser – free
• Truphone -mobile VOIP (highly recommend) – free within SIP network and paid for other
• Boingo – agrigated wifi service – paid
• Nimbuzz – IM and VOIP – free
• Fring – IM and VOIP – free

This isn’t a complete list but what I put on for this trip knowing I needed my phone to be my single point of communication at some times.

Update: Truphone is my lifesaver. I had nearly 0 reception in my cousins newly remodeled basement and not very good reception anywhere else in their house and Truphone made it possible for me to conduct a few business calls and conference calls I needed to participate in.  I also loved how easy it was to reroute my Google Voice # to my Truphone # in just a few seconds.  Once again Truphone combined with Google Voice (previously Grand Central) saved the day land kept me working.

The following post is from Kkndka over at Bright Hub.  He wrote one of the best step by steps I’ve ever read covering emoze Exchange OWA installation and I just had to republish it.  It’s part of a series he’s writing and I’m very impressed.  Kkndka please contact me, I’d love to chat with you Jeb at emoze.com.

Anyway, please enjoy and if anyone has any questions I’m here to answer them for you.

Ever wanted to have push email functionality on your phone just like Blackberry users? You can experience push email on your Symbian phone with Emoze. Read on to find out how to configure Emoze to work with your office email.

Introduction

Microsoft Exchange Server has a component called Outlook Web Access (OWA) that allows you to check your mail anywhere from a web browser. It requires a stable network connection to operate. Emoze can use OWA to push emails to your Symbian phone. Emoze provides end to end security using AES 128 based encryption and authentication.

Read on to find out how you can configure Emoze to work with your workplace email.

How To

Step 1 : From the main screen of Emoze, select Add Account.

Step 2 : Emoze will check for all available account types and display them on the main screen, choose the Office option.

Step 3 : You will need keep the following OWA details ready for the next step – username, password, OWA URL and windows domain name.

Step 4 : Fill up the user name field, password field, your OWA domain which is your windows domain name , and OWA URL. These field are vital and are required for getting your office ail, contacts, email and calendar data. You may need to get some of these details from your System Administrator.

Your windows domain can be obtained by selecting Alt+Ctrl+Delete on your windows terminal. The OWA URL is the URL of the exchange server. It cannot be behind a firewall or VPN.

Step 5 : Select Next and choose the folders which you want to synchronize. For example, you can choose Calendar and Inbox.

Step 6 : Now choose Settings and select Account info. Specify the folders which you want to push. You can specify Active Days which decides on what days the application will synchronize your emails.

Step 7 : You can enable Power Saving mode to increase the synchronization period to save your Symbian phones’s battery life. During this time the application will check for mails with longer gaps. In the Active From and Active To fields, you can enter the duration for the power saving mode.

Step 8 : If you want to specify an access point which you want to permanently use with Emoze, you can enter it under the Settings menu. The Statistics option will display the connection details, so you can track your data usage.

This was part 2 of 3 from kkndka of Bright Hub. Part 3 is coming soon.  Stay tuned to learn how to set up emoze to check Gmail, POP3 and IMAP email.

I put together this short video showing you how to install emoze mobile push email client on to a Nokia S60 smart phone, also known as Symbian.  emoze is best 3rd party email application (I may be slightly biased because they are a client of mine), they are not just the best 3rd party email app they are also a push email application.  There’s a free version and a paid version.  Visit emoze.com for details and to get the application, or go to emoze.com on your mobile browser to download it directly.

I can be reached with any questions about Emoze at Jeb@emoze.com or on Twitter at @EmozePushEmail.