Nokia N75 Phone (AT&T)

I waited for this phone for a long time and finaly it came out. Just about everthing is greath with the phone all of the apps and features are great. The olny real downside is the battery life if nokia just fixes that problem then this phone will easly be a 5. Oh and one more thing, if you have sideburns WATCH OUT! Your hair will get caught between the internal display and the frame around it. I just order some screen protectors and hopefully that will close the gap.

I really had high hopes for this phone, but was ultimately disappointed. I have been a loyal Nokia guy for years and looked forward to my first smartphone. More than that I wanted a combo phone/music player and the N75 seemed to fit the bill. I was skeptical about going from candy bar to flip phone, but I figured so long as I could voice dial (you can) and answer (you can't) without opening the phone, that would be fine.

But, in the end, this phone failed because of shortcomings of the music player implementation and poor battery life. Sadly, I will be looking at the Samsung Synch.

DESIGN:
Pros:
+ Gorgeous displays in and out.
+ Outside display seems to have all the right info (especially when using the music player).
+ Great number keypad with large keys and excellent tactile feel.
Cons:
+ Navigation keys are too flat. I often hit the wrong key sending myself off to distant parts of the OS or canceling out in the middle of a task. After a while I got this down and this complaint faded.
+ Battery cover held in place by hair trigger release. Cover often came off when I pulled the phone from my pocket

MENUS and O/S:
Pros:
+ Symbian 60 OS opens up a world of possibilities - more than I had a chance to really sample.
+ Highly customizable menus enabled through obtuse menu trees.
Cons:
+ Power hungry OS.

PHONE:
Pro's:
+ Great call quality, great speaker phone, both with plenty of volume.
+ Can make calls with the cover closed using voice dialing.
Cons:
+ Can't answer the phone with the cover closed - soft keys are available to silence or decline the call, but not to answer on speakerphone. What a shame because I can do this on my wife's Nokia 6126 and this makes a flip phone much more convenient.
+ Easily paired up with bluetooth headset (but NOT stereo bluetooth)

CAMERA:
Pros:
+ Take pictures with phone open or closed, includes a flash. Serviceable image management on the phone (delete, view, etc)
Cons:
+ Shutteer laaaag, mediocre image quality for 2 mp camera.

MUSIC PLAYER:
Pros:
+ Really nice music player app with great controls.
+ Sounds pretty good on phone's little speakers.
+ Controls on outside cover are great.
+ Includes an equalizer.

Cons (the dealbreakers for me):
+ NO STEREO BLUETOOTH - I know that this advertised on the web site, but it is a misprint as confirmed by calls to Cingular and Nokia. Nokia says the required A2DP profile will be available in a firmware update, but they won't tell you when.
+ No 3.5 mm headset jack. You have to deal with Nokia's proprietary POP port, which takes up 1/3 of the left side of the phone and requires an adapter to work a 3.5mm headset. The POP cord/adapter is difficult to insert correctly and is aptly named POP port because of how easily it pops out -- I have lots of Nokia experience here.
+ Nokia Music Manager 2.0 PC software for transferring music crashed often in XP and did not recognize memory on my phone (tried two different brands of sd cards) Thankfully the included Windows Media Player driver worked well and transfers went smoothly with both cards.

BATTERY LIFE: (more dealbreakers)
Very poor; phone gobbles power like a Hummer towing a tank. Combo of small battery and hungry O/S and displays kills batteries fast. I really couldn't get more than 1 ½ hrs of talk time a day out of this, and that's without a bluetooth headset. Yes, I followed all the web advice about setting data to "as needed" setting. If you really want to use this as a smart phone: email, web, PIM and phone, then you better carry spare batteries.


I had the N75 about two weeks and here is my report:
o I find the loose-fitting lid an irritant. Maybe other(')s don't.
o Mine doesn't make any funny internal sounds.
o Mine doesn't get hot.
o Mine doesn't drop calls.
o No stero bluetooth.
o Mine seems to do a good job of voice recognition.
o It bluetooths to my Moto H500 quickly, and the voice recognition works
fine there also.
o The surface does soak up finger prints.
o The display screens are spectacular.
o I like the large buttons on the key pad.
o Large screen, large buttons = large phone, I guess.
o The battery goes flat pretty fast (one day), but I'm constantly
playing with the phone. Maybe when the newness wears off, It'll
do better.
o The pop-port is a pain; also, they should have put it on the top
or bottom.
o Transferring pictures, music and application using the pop-port
is a breeze. It's quicker than screwing with the microSD.
o Speaker are loud enough.
o Being able to load different application is neat.
o The pictures seem plenty sharp for a 2 Mega-pixel. If you blow them
up, they become pixelated (see submitted pictures).
o I'm going to keep it and hope for a battery solution, or learn to
live with it.



Likes:
-WMA Player, all my files are in WMA format, now i truly have a music player
-FM Radio, for the times i dont want to listen to music
-Camera provides the best picture out there for a phone
-Big phone, i dont like small ones with small buttons
-No need to carry a mp3/ipod

Dislikes:
-Voice activated dialing is HORRIBLE. my old motoKRZR worked perfect
-Extremely low battery time, someone please figure this out, i charge my phone at night and at 4pm everyday
-Slow startup time

OVERALL: Buy this phone if you're like me and like bigger phones with great music/media access. Buy the SOny Erricson W18i if you want a smaller phone with nearly the same function. Or wait for the iphone June 29th.
-The cingular/ATT Service is not as good as Verizon my old provider in the northwest

The first thing you should do when you get this phone is change the packet data from "when available" to "when needed".
This is done by going to settings-->config-->connection-->packet data
This will solve the battery complaints posted by others. I can get ~2.5 days on a single charge.

I have had 3 long weeks to use and abuse the features of this phone.

Size wise: If you have a problem putting this phone in your pocket, get some looser fitting pants. People are probably seeing more than your phone bulging if this is the case.

Buttons: The whole keypad is spacious including the D-pad. I have large hands and find the tactility of the buttons to be high and are very easy for texting. The keypad buttons even tilt a little and make it easy to slide your hand around during fast texting/e-mailing.

Camera: Not a strong point. In some situations there is a green tint to the photos. The camera works best outside in sunlight and will produce pictures acceptable for a 5x7 with no green tint.

Operating system: Strong point of this phone big time. The Symbian S60 OS is the most customizable OS I have ever seen. Honestly, if there is something you want to customize you can probably do it. It may take a few days to get used to Symbian S60 but after that you won't look back. The availability of 3rd party programs is endless. I recommend Smart2go & Handy Alarm. Don't tell AT&T but this is actually a smartphone and has all the PIM features you need. Syncs with Outlook much easier/faster than Activesync and Windows mobile. It is also very easy to setup your e-mail accounts on the phone.

Media features: A pop-port to 3.5 or 2.5mm headphone jack is available online for $5-8, or Nokia's version for a bit more. It is worth the investment because the media player + a 2gb MicroSD has replaced my iPod nano. AT&T left Nokia's Music player on the phone and it is the best phone media player I have ever used. The built in speakers are loud, I mean insanely loud. I can turn it to 11 and it will drown out the TV and hurt my ears from 5 feet away. Once adjusting the EQ the sound quality improves. They are slighty tinny but not as bad as you expect.

Screens: Both screens are amazing. The inside screen is very crisp and does not wash out in direct sunlight. The outside is very functional and often times allows me to not flip open the phone for a lot of features.

Web: Use Nokia's web browser and not the Media Net one. It is a full feature browser and displays webpages just like a computer. It does not go to the mobile phone web but the actual web. Very amazing and far superior to Mobile IE.

Call Quality: Very clear and have yet to drop a call. I found myself calling people just to hear the call quality the first few days. I couldn't believe the clarity. Speakerphone is very loud via those little speakers on the back.

I would recommend this phone for anyone looking for a phone with some PDA functionality. The multimedia features just add to the functionality of the Symbian OS.

Every phone has its flaws and I find this phone to possess very few after fixing the battery issue and customizing it a bit.

I will just list the cons since havent noticed any pros
1) Sluggish OS
2) Freezes every now and then
3) voice breaks if you put on speaker phone
4) Location of sim card is the most awkward I have ever seen. Easy to put in but hell lot of struggle to take out the sim.
5) Thick and heavy phone
6) Horrible picture quality evne though it claims to have a 2MP camera.
7) poor battery life ..much worse than I expected.


I am stuck with this phone since amazon doesnt offer replacecment .
The cingular guys told me that they would have replaced this phone with any other phone if I had bought it from them.

Conclusion: Never buy a phone from Amazon. Its better to pay few extra bucks to cingular and get the phone from them. Amazon is a rip off !


I had to pay just $[...] after mail in rebates for this phone and this phone all the features I want. It syncs up with outlook, has nice internet browser interface and many other nifty features. It also calls out the name entered in the address book when you receive a call. I am very happy with this phone.

Only caution to use is, if you are buying this phone from Amazon, please be prepared to wait for nearly 2 weeks till you get the phone. I think it takes some time for Amazon to pass all your info to cellular company and mail the device after getting an approval.

I have had Cingular service on my N75 for only 2 days now and I've had nothing but problems with it.

1) The phone only works for about 8 hours then shuts off. I try to restart it and I get an error message "phone start-up failed. Contact the retailer". In the 2 days I've had the phone this has happened to me 3 times. The first time I left the phone off overnight and was able to start it up in the morning with no problem. The second time it took over 4 hours before I could get the phone to start again.

2) There is a high pitched noise coming from the screen when the phone is open. It isn't very noticeable until you put the phone up to your ear at which time it is very noticeable and very annoying.

3) When the phone is actually working, there are times when certain screens are missing. For example, I click on the "configuration" icon and I get a blank screen. I restarted the phone and tried again and I still would get a blank screen for this icon. I currently cannot check to see if it is working now because I am unable to start up my phone again (3rd time).

I haven't seen any other messages on this site with these same problems but there are other sites where people have complained about similar problems with this phone. I haven't been able to locate any solutions to these problems yet but I will be contacting Nokia and Cingular to see what can be done. If the problems are not fixable I will be returning my N75 and getting a different phone.

If my N75 would actually work, I would probably give it 5 stars. I love the large screen and the numerous functions available and from the few phone calls I've made, the sound quality is pretty good. But as I use my cell phone as my only phone, I cannot keep this N75 if it is only going to work 8 hours a day.

As someone who'd been a die-hard Nokia user for years, I was really looking forward to (finally!) getting a 3G phone from Nokia. However, upon trying it out and using it, I quickly sent it back. Here's why:

- It's too big. Also having come from the 6230 (which was an amazing phone in its own right), this thing was just mammoth. Even folded, you can barely get it into your pocket, and unfolded, it's enormous. Even unfolding it is a chore.
- It feels cheap. The rubberized plastic coating is destined to rub off, and the battery cover on the back is barely held on by a small plastic tab. While the main numeric keys were large, they don't have any distinctive feel, which makes touch-typing kinda hard. In addition, the D-pad keys are too small and too close to the menu and music keys. I repeatedly went into the music menu when I meant to hit "right."
- The camera, well, sucks. I took a few pictures in lighted and dim conditions and they were grainy and poorly white balanced. You have to wait too long for the flash to kick in and it's pretty much useless anyway. Add in the fact that the lens is rather stupidly placed on the bottom of the phone, and it's rather disappointing overall.
- It was too complicated. As others have mentioned here, basic navigation involved too many steps for simple items like replying and whatnot.

As for the battery life, I never even really got that far as the other issues turned me off so much. Considering you have to spend two years with one of these things, you better really like it or just send it back and get something you love. For those that did get this phone, try turning the 3G access from "when available" to "when needed." I've heard that really helps.

I returned this phone (thanks Amazon for a fairly easy return process) and got the Blackberry Curve instead. Love it. I don't even miss the 3G.

I ordered this phone a month back and just received it a few days ago.

I bought it mainly for the 3G connection and the fact that it's an Nseries phone.

I came from a Nokia 6230 which is a fairly small candy bar style phone so going to a bigger flip phone like the N75 is a big step.

I did use a 6102i or whichever free phone cingy had at the time and my gripes are basically compared to those two phones.

HATE:
- Sim card access. I don't know if there's another way to do this but once you insert that SIM card, you have to have a child take it out. Almost impossible for me to grab and pull out.
- Speakerphone is really low and almost inaudible even with the volume cranked up
- Vibrate on the phone is really... mild. If it's in your pocket, you probably won't feel it. Especially if you're on the train, for example.
- Long boot up compared to the two non Symbian phones I had.
- very annoying pop port .. i didn't think it would be an issue but if you have to hold the phone with two hands to insert your headset... annoying.
- no emoticons on txt messages??!!
- to reply to a txt you have to hit options->reply->via txt msg. Why can't i just hit reply and go straight to the txt box?
- zoom on phone takes f o r e v e r.
- where is the STOPWATCH and COUNTDOWN TIMER?!
- fingerprints/face prints get xfrd to phone easily

- my battery life : internet use only on/off = 4-6 hours with 2 10min calls and 6hours standby; MobiRadio on speaker, continuous = 1.5hours; mixed internet, mobiradio, regular radio, phone calls, text messaging, tinkering with phone= 6 hours or so. All hours est from full charge to when the batt just dies. Includes intermittent standbys and where I just look through the phone.

The charger is now tethered to my hip.


Like:
- really soft and big keys
- ability to move around the files/ folders
- Nice big screen
- Video (choppy and pixelated but it will do)


will con't as the months pass.....

**
UPDATE:

-battery life has improved significantly. I still use it 13hrs a day but I now charge just once a day. And i use it more.

-I also bought this primarily as an MP3 player and I'm having the same problem that I had with the 6230. The shuffle is not really a shuffle. I have about 200 songs in there and it insists on playing the same songs over and over every 10th-15th song... it seems to loop to songs I've heard already every single time.

-I use the HS-31 headset that I had before and the volume is just really low. I have to roll the windows up in my car in order to carry a conversation. I thought it was just the speakerphone that had a low volume. The bluetooth earpiece was loud, though.

-And finally, 3G. I found no discernable difference between EDGE and the 3G networks while downloading video or viewing webpages. Maybe it loaded up a page a few seconds faster but that was about it. Mobiradio still buffered every now and then in 3G networks so that was surprising as well.

I'm still going to keep the phone, though.

This is the best phone that you can get for AT&t for this money. But make sure that you order a memory card and an extra charger. The batter drains very fast when connected to the net. My previous cell was a nokia 6682 so I'm used to a much better battery life. It's also annoying that you can't listen to the FM radio via bluetooth. But I love this phone


The reviews here are all positive, so let me temper the mood a bit. I like Nokia phones, but there are some frustrating issues with this phone:

-mediocre image quality (odd lens issues)-- and they stress the camera features in the description
-mediocre battery life
-NO headphone jack, Yes, you read it correctly

Their are many good web reviews by magazines easily found online for this phone: they give it between 6-7 out of 10 stars/points etc.

reception is very good...better than samsung 707A....camera very clear, and you can even talk without openning the phone...I highly recomend this phone...best one at Cingular..ATT or whatever they call them selves now...

I've been using the N75 for a little while and it works great. The screen is amazing. It makes browsing the internet a true pleasure, which says a lot for a flip phone. Also, since it is an N-Series phone it's jam packed with multimedia features. The 2Mp camera looks better than other ones currently in the market and the MP3 player has this cool "stero widening" feature.

Top reasons I love this phone:
1. 2Mp camera and featues that makes uploading pictures, showing them in a cool slide show with music, transfering them to friends, and whatever else I want do very easy.
2. Great internet browser. It's 3G(super fast) and has neat browsing tools like going back over several past pages, a mini map to scan quickly over large web pages, and the ability to view every website I've been to.
3. The call quality is outstanding. It's a Nokia and nobody makes a phone quite a well as they do.

Things I don't like:
1. I wish it came with a memory card. I've got a lot of music and videos on there and need some space.
2. I wish it had a 3.5mm jack for headphones, but the adapter works okay and the loudspeaker's pretty loud.
3. I paid $250 for mine. I'm kicking myself after seeing this deal.

I love the phone as a phone, but I have a few complaints on the N75 I received. Since I love the phone and have but a few complaints, I will just list the complaints...

1. I have a high-pitched noise/pitch coming from the screen when the phone is open. It is loud enough to bother me...especially when I talk over 2 hours on the phone per day...--this could be an issue with this phone rather than with the N75 model (check with Cingular/AT&T);
2. I keep getting a "Smartchip Registration Failed" message. While this may be an issue with Cingular/AT&T, any new customer would be frustrated with the number of times I have received this message (4 times in 3 days). The only solution I have found is to remove the battery, restart the phone, and hope it doesn't fail to register...(failure means no phone service);
3. No really effective PIM. While the phone is great "as a phone," as a PDA it fails in my book because there is no central PIM. An address book and a calendar (as separate apps) work well, but there is no useful PIM included. Furthermore, I have yet to find a "functional-for-my-purposes" PIM available for S60 symbian that even meets the standard PIM provided with Palm, MS mobile, or Blackberry devices...

If you are looking for a great phone with many features (music, great camera/video, etc...), this phone is perfect. If you need a PDA with an good PIM, perhaps you should look elsewhere... Nokia and Symbian would do well to create a PIM to service their deivces "out of the box."


If you have owned other older nokia's, pre N-series, then you will love this phone. Its everything the old phones were, durable, easy to use, with basic to premium functionality and low cost.

This phone is always compared to the N-95 which is ridiculous. this want meant to be the super phone, it was designed for a above average consumer who wants the nokia style phone with some premium fucntionality.

Pro's
> The camera is great, for a camera-phone, 2MP ain't bad for the spur of the moment pics.
> The screens are amazing with vibrant colors and smooth transitions. the whole OS and software is beautiful.
> Great Music - The music can be played with the phone closed, its easy to use, equalizer, playlists, etc. Easy to use too.
> Memory card - You can insert a microSD card giving this phone up to 2GB of memory for all your music, pics, backup, video, etc.
> Under $200 for a smart phone! iPhone will be over $500 and with nokia you know its gonna last.
> Solid Casing, it feels strong and durable, like it will last. Similar size to the Razor but more class, strength and functionality.
> So far my 3rd party apps all work well - gmail, google maps, opera...not to many pop-ups asking for permission....lots of memory for all the apps you wish.

Cons
> The biggest complaint i have is that you can just use your standard headphones with the phone. But for $30 you can buy the adapter that lets you use any standard headphones, but they should just have a standard headphone port.
> my bluetooth headeset(jabra 250) hasn't worked too well thus far. doesn't react to the phone as my old nokia did (6102i). But it seems to be working better lately, not sure if its an incompatibility issue or what.
> Voice-recognition - so far its worthless - it can read your contacts names but it nevers gets what i said right. i liked the voice tags they had on my old nokia 6102i. this issue could be associated with my bluetoth headset as thats when i use the speed voice dialing.

Europe and Asia put us to shame when it comes to carrier-offered phones. If we want a really good, do-it all phone in the US, the only way to go is unlocked, which usually means getting one sans-warranty. This is the first phone I have seen which has a feature-set to match most high-end phones available unlocked...amazing screen, excellent expansion options (both in memory and applications), very high-speed data connections - for e-mail, for web browsing, for sending mms messages - excellent build quality (Motorola will never touch Nokia in this). Quad-band, so it will work anywhere where there is a GSM signal. Props to Cingular/AT&T for finally bringing the goodness to the US.

Here's why it gets five stars based, again, on its SPECS and FEATURES, and compared to hands on experience with Sony Ericsson's latest w810i, LG CU500, Samsung SYNC and Mot's KRAZR:

It's made by the most trusted cell phone manufacturer - Nokia

It doesn's cost $500 bucks, like the ipod/cingular entry will next month. It's $50 bucks through Amazon/Cingular.

It has stereo bluetooth transmissions (A2DP). w810 does not-most other cell phone music players do not, though they do have bluettooth, they are not stereo bluetooth enabled

N75 has the latest version of bluetooth, 2.0, allowing for multiple items to paired simultaneously, and hopefully creating better connections than bluetooth 1.2, which the other music phones have.

It has exterior music controls that are bigger and easier to operate than than the LG CU500, Samsung SYNC and especially the MOT Krazr verizon version (which are not buttons but which you slide your fingers across. They look cool, but are repeatedly by many users, hard to operate)

It's exterior controls allow you to start the MP3 player without opening the clamshell.

It's exterior display shows a playlist in a lateral fashion, like a streaming stock market ticker, making for intuitive use of the exterior playlist scroll button (positioned laterally and directing you as a backward/forward button which it doubles as within play mode of a song). CU500 has this scroll function, as does sync and perhaps the others, but on that small exterior display its setup for a vertical scroll on a harder to use, horizontally oriented button.

There is an an eight band graphic equalizer that lets you set each frequency range manually to your taste, allows you to create presets of these settings and which allows you to take one of the equalizers other standard settings and customize and save it (you want more base on the preset pop music setting? add it and save and you still have the phones original pop setting as well)

N75 has a 2 mp camera; a step up from cu500's 1.3 and beating or matching Sync, Krazr, w810

The N75 camera is oriented just like a digital camera, besting the cu500 and others, or matching the others.

The interior display measures 2.4 inches, bigger than candybar displays on others.

The memory card, which music lovers will likely swap with frequency, is on the phones exterior. CU500's is behind the battery and really does require the use of tweezers or needlenose pliers to get it out. Ball point pens don't even do it on the cu500.

AN IMPORTANT CAUTION:

While the N75 is rated for a 2 gigabyte micro sd memory card, as is the cu500, and the others, the other phones will not read 2 gb cards, but usually read the 1 gb cards well.
If N75 reads a 2 gb memory card, it's a hands down winner because you won't have to swap out cards so often. Remember, its the memory capacity from one mp3 player and ipod to the next that you pay more money for.