Nokia N75 user reviews (AT&T)

Pros Call Quality, Reception, Screen, Memory Size, OS, Layout, MP3 Player, Build Quality, Video

Cons Battery (Common for all phones), Early production bugs.

Summary I recently purchased this phone. I have had it for approx 1 month. My prior phone is a Nokia 6620 Gen1 smart phone.
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What this phone is: A Very Good Clamshell Smart Phone with a solid company backing it up. It as all the modern features to replace your gen 1 smart phone.
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What this Phone is not: A super business machine QWERTY phone, with bleeding edge technology that hasn't even been implemented by cell companies yet.
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Pros:
1. Clamshell. Symbian 60 3.1 smart phone. Very robust community and software support for many applications. All that I have tested have worked including anti-virus software.
2. MP3 Player on the front, works great w/bluetooth. No other phone really does this right now. All major formats supported and sound quality is very good with all encoding speeds.
3. OS is solid, relative fast loading even for large proggies. No crashes with hard reboots at this time.
4. Excellent reception (it is a phone you know), volume is great, speakers are great, handsfree works great. This is a critical feature, as a cool featured phone that sounds like crap in calls is useless.
5. Very good build quality, seems solid, keys very tactile, navigation keys a bit confusing early but quickly you will learn. No more complex than that new 9 button wireless mouse on your desk.
6. WOW - High Def Screen, best I've ever seen on a clamshell. Play Games!
7. Big memory with SD in convenient location.
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Cons: (with comments)
1. Short battery life - higher volume batteries will be available soon I am sure. However it is better than the 2 year old battery in my 6620 right now. I get 1 hour talk time on that.
2. Not a N95 - ok, go spend $800 if you want an N95.
3. Limited high speed data transmission, Yes, but the new data formats (HSDPA) are not even available, 3G was just made available and when higher speed formats are available you will be ready for a new phone anyway. (2 years) Also GPS by dongle is available. Who actually uses WiFi on their phone? (Unless it is a full sized QWERTY smartphone for business.)
4. Propritary ports for headsets...What? You still plug your headset in? Look, the phone is designed to be used with Bluetooth. If you really want to plug it in, buy an adapter. NBD.
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Neutral:
1. New phone, likely to have things needing to be fixed. Luckily the Symbian OS can be upgraded unlike many other phones where you are stuck with the problems. Patience grasshopper, workarounds and fixes are expected with new technology.
2. This isn't compatible, the stereo don't work, my old phone did this better, see #1.
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The lowdown:

Look, if you are a moderate tech smartphone user that wants an MP3 player, video support in your phone, likes Nokia products and wants a clamshell, then this phone is for you. If you are a full sized smartphone/blackberry/business user, dont buy it, you will want more. If you want a good upgrade for your current 1st gen smart phone (or non smart), this is it. Just be realistic, no phone is perfect in early production, but at least you get the good hardware, very nice screen, excellent storage, good layout, good OS, very good community support, excellent call quality, and average battery life. I recommend a second battery for now. I do it on my current phone so what is the dif?

Pros Keypad, screens, O/S

Cons No stereo bluetooth, POP port, battery life

Summary 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 cancelling 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:
+ OS gobbles power.

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: (my deal breakers)
+ 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.
+ Included 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 deal breakers)
Very poor – eats batteries like a Hummer towing a tank eats gas. 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.

Pros Great multimedia phone. A plethora of apps to download and use. Speedy 3G access and Symbian OS.

Cons No HSDPA. Camera could be better

Summary I recently upgraded my phone to the latest RAZR V3xx and after two weeks of constant reboots and freezes I was fed up. I went in to my ATT store the Friday the phone came out and upgraded to the N75. It took me a good day to get used to the navigation with the Symbian OS, but now it comes as second nature. I am extremely pleased with this phone. Here is hoping that ATT continues to pick up the latest phones from Nokia to help beef up the US phone market.

Pros nice screen, decent speaker, nice key pad, good reception

Cons bulky, requires a stupid adapter for regular headphones, battery life, slow to load anything

Summary I have tried may phones including motorola, samsung, and sony, but nokia phones do have the best reception. That after all is why I need a phone, to talk on it. That being said you do pay a premium for these phones to do everything else. I have been using an unlocked d900 samsung for about four months. Personally I liked it better in every aspect except battery life was even worse and not as good of reception. That being said I'm still having a rough time wanting to keep this phone for $249.
My issues with the phone - Size , it definitely could be smaller - the goofey adapter you need if not going wireless (this has always been an issue iv'e had with nokia) - I'm having a rough time setting mp3 as ringtones due to the 600 kb limit (samsung d900 has no size limit) - Slow in loading anything Im just not used to it yet - Battery life is far less than I had hoped.
Now that I have beat up the phone I will say that nokia's quality and reception do make it worth considering. My expectations are just to high apparently. I do think nokia makes agreat phone and in some aspects this is one of them. But it also could be a lot better.