Nokia E72 - Enjoying the Upgrade

Features

You've Got Mail!

As expected of an E-series device, the E72's focus will be on its messaging portfolio. But Nokia hasn't exactly forgotten its other suite of services. Off the rack, the E72 will be bundled with the usual Nokia apps such as Nokia Music Store, Ovi Store, and the latest Nokia Maps 3.0 that will utilize over-the-air synchronization with Maps on Ovi.

Undoubtedly, the core feature of the E72 is in its push email service, aptly dubbed as Nokia Messaging. Setting it up would be rather easy, since the home screen will have your email setup laid out in plain sight. The easier way, is to simply enter your email address and password as prompted by the setup. This is mostly for the common web-based accounts such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo, where the settings have already been preloaded onto the E72 and won't require any input.

The trickier ones would be its support for Mail for Exchange and Lotus Traveller Notes. For both, you'll need to contact your system administrator for the necessary domain settings. If your contacts and calendar entries are saved on Google, you can also utilize the Mail for Exchange feature to synchronize your content via its Personal Information Management (PIM) settings. A quick tutorial can be found here for reference.

A new addition to the Nokia messaging features on the E72 is the Chat function. While this instant messaging feature was announced earlier this year, the E72 will be the first Nokia device that comes bundled with the Chat app out of the box. The major instant messaging protocols, such as Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger are included within. Nokia's own Ovi portal is also bundled within, and all four IM services can be run concurrently.

Office-related apps are also found on the E72. From what we observed, the more practical apps include a full version of Quickoffice to read and create text, worksheet and PowerPoint documents, and a Multiscan app to capture information off name cards for building your contacts base. In fact, we were pleased at the high level of accuracy from the Multiscan app. Once in a while, it did falter on some text, but not too badly. For those who wish to access their office's intranet, you can also hook up the E72 via its Intranet app, which links up to your office's network and allows you access to the server.