The N75 was designed for the US market, unlike most other S60 smartphones that make their winding way here many months after their overseas release. A large segment of the American market has an ongoing love affair with the flip phone, perhaps thanks to the venerated Motorola StarTac of old that seemed to define "cell phone" in the US. We like our music controls on the front flip. And so Nokia gave us a clamshell phone with music controls on the flip and a RAZR-esque metallic flat keypad. Unlike the not so bright RAZR and other flips on the market, the N75 gives us plenty of brains: it's a smartphone running Symbian OS and Nokia S60 3rd Edition. It features a best of breed web browser (though Cingular has buried it in the Tools folder), PC syncing capabilities and it can run third party applications (not just the Java kind you buy from the carrier and download online). It provides company for the Cingular 3125 Windows Mobile Smartphone-- the only other smart flip on the market today (OK, Verizon has a Pantech clamshell MS Smartphone that hasn't exactly taken the world by storm).
We've been waiting for the N75 since December 2006, and its release went from seemingly imminent to is it ever going to happen in the months since. It's meant to be a relatively affordable smartphone (in the US, we don't like to pay a lot for our phones). At $250 ($199 after rebate) direct from Cingular, you get a lot of phone for the money. It's a smartphone, has a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, a music player, 3G and great call quality. Unfortunately, it has the slower flavor of 3G, called UMTS rather than the raging HSDPA found on the Cingular 8525 and Samsung BlackJack. UMTS caps at 384k, while we regularly get 900k on our HSDPA phones (with a much higher theoretical cap). UMTS is prevalent in Europe, and thus so far Nokia has stuck with that standard. Still, it's twice as fast as EDGE and good enough for Internet use on the phone, but slow for tethering with a notebook.
Clearly, the N75's 2 megapixel camera isn't meant to compete with the flagship Nokia N95's 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss autofocus lens. Those of you who were thinking of opting for the N75 rather than the N95 to save many hundreds of dollars, be assured the N75 is a nice phone but no N95. The N75 isn't as responsive when navigating folders and launching programs, lacks WiFi and the internal GPS to name a few points. But then, it's not $700 either!
If you're upgrading from the aged Nokia 6682 or 7610, you'll be in heaven (unless you hate clamshells) since the N75 is superior in every way except battery life.
We've been waiting for the N75 since December 2006, and its release went from seemingly imminent to is it ever going to happen in the months since. It's meant to be a relatively affordable smartphone (in the US, we don't like to pay a lot for our phones). At $250 ($199 after rebate) direct from Cingular, you get a lot of phone for the money. It's a smartphone, has a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, a music player, 3G and great call quality. Unfortunately, it has the slower flavor of 3G, called UMTS rather than the raging HSDPA found on the Cingular 8525 and Samsung BlackJack. UMTS caps at 384k, while we regularly get 900k on our HSDPA phones (with a much higher theoretical cap). UMTS is prevalent in Europe, and thus so far Nokia has stuck with that standard. Still, it's twice as fast as EDGE and good enough for Internet use on the phone, but slow for tethering with a notebook.
Clearly, the N75's 2 megapixel camera isn't meant to compete with the flagship Nokia N95's 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss autofocus lens. Those of you who were thinking of opting for the N75 rather than the N95 to save many hundreds of dollars, be assured the N75 is a nice phone but no N95. The N75 isn't as responsive when navigating folders and launching programs, lacks WiFi and the internal GPS to name a few points. But then, it's not $700 either!
If you're upgrading from the aged Nokia 6682 or 7610, you'll be in heaven (unless you hate clamshells) since the N75 is superior in every way except battery life.
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