MWC 2009: Live Report

According to Nokia, the new E55 just announced today will be their thinnest smartphone, or even the thinnest smartphone in the World. It sports the standard candy-bar design, but instead of the full QWERTY found in all E-series phones, this one combines two letter per key, making it as Nokia calls it a “compact QWERTY”. This of course saves space, making the device lighter and smaller. The short testing we did with it left us overall happy but still will require some time to get used to it. Still, looks like very good compromise if you want to keep the size down.  The rest of the keys on the front are flush, but still easy to press. Interesting were the embossed edges of the d-pad, which make it very easy to distinguish without having to look at it.


The E55 will utilize noise-cancellation technology, which should improve the voice quality. We couldn’t test this at the show, but will definitely rigorously examine this when we get our review unit. The new technology utilized dual microphone design and special algorithms to surprises ambient noises. During the CES expo, Motorola demoed their Crystal Talk noise-cancellation technology and it really impressed us. Hopefully Nokia’s solution comes close or better to that.

The E55 and E75 will be the first devices to have updated messaging application. Most notably, it now supports HTML viewing of email.  By default, messages are opened in text mode, but you have a link at the top of each message to view it in HTML with formatting and images. Those of us (nowadays most of us) who have several different email accounts, will definitely appreciate the tweak Nokia did to move the switching of the different email boxes directly into the reading panel. So instead of selecting your personal email, reading the messaging, going into the main messaging menu, selecting the next email, you can directly switch between the different accounts.

If you are well organized (not like us), you probably have several different folders in your e-mail mailbox, such as important, to do later, not to answer ever etc. Accessing the stored messages in those folders was not possible up until now. This is one of the other important updates of the new messaging client.

A new feature is the sliding subject field when a message is highlighted. It is nothing major, but should help when you have emails with long subjects.

Sorting emails is nothing that most people do every day, but now and then it always comes handy. The new e-mail client just a few more sorting options – flag, priority, unread, attachment and size.

Nokia E75 is the other new member of the E-family. Even though the device does not bear the Communicator name, it is considered to be part of that line. Nokia claims this is the best messaging device they have ever done. This is not only because of the particular hardware configuration, but because of the added services such as the first device to ship with Nokia Messaging (for those of you not familiar with this, please check out our Nokia World coverage).

Because of the full side-sliding keyboard, allowing it to be a lot narrower compared to the rest of the E-series, it really looks a lot like the E55. For the same reason, it is a lot ticker as well.

The front keypad seems just OK – there is no separation between the different keys on each row. Once used to it, this probably will not be a problem. The d-pad is very comfortable and easy to use.

Sliding the bottom part reveals the full keyboard. The keys are very large, with little space between them. They offered slightly less tactile feedback than what we’ve used to have.

Just looking at the E75’s display, you can guess correctly that it is high-end device. The colors are very vivid with great contrast.
We always want to give you our final judgment after we use a device for a while, but the E75 is definitely something that attracted out attention. If you want S60 based phone with full keyboard and not huge dimensions, the E75 will probably be one of the best choices.

Nokia 6710 is the 3rd device from the Navigator line. As the name implies, the main aim is navigation. The first Navigator was introduced back in 2007, and a new one announced at the MWC. As all other members of the same family, the new 6710 keep the slider design, but the keypad part creates a slight arc. The actual keys design is pretty much the same.

Other than this, it is pretty much very similar to the 6210 Navigator. Of course, each year the specifications are upgraded and now the screen is 2.6” from the 2.4” on the 6210. As Navigation is what is it made for, battery life is really important if it is going to be used in pedestrian mode (or you don’t want to plug it into the charger every time you use it in your car). That’s why the battery life has been generously upgraded to 19 days of stand-by and around 7.5 hours of talk time (almost doubling the 6210 times). The camera resolution has also gone up and it is now 5 mega-pixels with autofocus.


The new 6710 will come preloaded with the new 3.0 version of Nokia Maps. The software is currently in Beta testing and was originally announced during the Nokia World event, which we covered several months ago. 

Depending on the region you live in, if you purchase the 6710 it will come preloaded with different maps set. For example, if you get it in Spain, you might end up having also France and Italy. Purchasing it in the US, might result in having Canada and Mexico for example. Nokia has not worked up the details on that yet. The main point it that by purchasing it, you will get all the premium feature of Nokia maps, plus car charger and holder.