Nokia Launches E72 Smartphone, Dubbed a Blackberry Killer

Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer, well known for its successes such as the N95 today revealed its first pictures of the E72 with new Blackberry-styled QWERTY keyword.

The new smart phone comes with a massive list of new upgrades to its previous specification including a 5 Megapixel camera (upgraded from a somewhat lacking 3.2 Megapixel on the E71).

The screen of the E72 is the same as its predecessor with the standard 2.4 inch, 320x240 pixel display. It works well on the S60 3rd generation platform however it is not any real improvement over its predecessor that we would have liked to of seen.

They have also added numerous features to help with your personal safety and navigation including an integrated electronic compass (James Bond anyone?), GPS, pre-installed Nokia maps and LED flashlight torch. They clearly know exactly who their target market is for this phone, adding all the boy's toys they can get their hands on. It is all packed into a very strong 128g aluminium body that is despite its strength is only 10mm thick.

Other improvements included a new type of optical navigation very similar to what you may have seem on some Samsung phones called the Optical Navi Key, a 3.5mm audio port, a 10.2mbps HSDPA connection for blisteringly fast sending and receiving of emails and Wi-Fi.

One area Blackberry users will tell you their devices really excel is with integration. How their devices are an extension of their business pc's and how it all works flawlessly. Nokia have included Quickoffice 5.3 which includes Microsoft Office 2007 support. Support has also been added for Mail for Microsoft Exchange servers as well as IBM Lotus Notes Traveller that I know a lot of busy business people use. It seems to be a very complete package however how flawlessly this works only time will tell.

The on-board memory of the Nokia has been downgraded from 110MB on the previous to now only 40MB. To me this seems ridiculous, even with the advent of expandable flash memory you still need more than that for every day usage of the actual device. They have also included a 4GB microSD card that can be upgraded to 16GB; we just don't want to always have to completely rely on these.

We can expect the E72 to retail for around £300 or $500 sim-free on its release in the fall of 2009 although if you are looking to upgrade your contract you should be able to get a deal on one significantly cheaper

Nokia Conversations - Nokia E72 Unveiled - JBC