Nokia N75

The Nokia N75 gets a passing grade as a flip phone with superb voice quality and blazing-fast 3G data speeds, but some design quirks make this "multimedia computer" (as Nokia refers to it) less than impressive. Cingular Video and music playback are bright spots, as are the external music-player controls and LCD. However, the overall package is too bulky, and some key features are lacking given the high ($199) price.
 
With its matte blacks and dull silvers, the N75 isn't much to look at. The frame is flat and blocky (view our photo gallery). On the front of the closed clamshell, you'll find a color LCD with playback buttons for the music player. Along the right edge are volume controls, camera and music mode buttons, and an IR receiver. The left edge sports a Nokia power dock. We were disappointed to find neither a standard USB port nor a 3.5mm headphone jack, but that's typical for Nokia phones. A microSD Card slot on the phone's left side holds more music, music, photos, or Symbian OS applications.
 
On the shoulders rest stereo speakers, and a tiny black power button sits on top. Behind, you'll notice the removable battery and a two-megapixel camera with flash. Opening the clamshell reveals a large 2.4-inch color display, a keypad, and D-pad buttons. The dialpad is certainly large enough, and we appreciate the little grooves on each key for no-look dialing, but we found the overall feel to be too smooth. Worse, the 9 key literally fell off during our testing.
 
The N75's main selling point is its 3G data speeds and Web surfing, despite the fact that this phone supports the slower UMTS technology as opposed to AT&T's higher-speed HSDPA network. In addition to the MEdia Net browser, which often stumbles when formatting pages like CNN.com, you can also go to the Tools menu and open Nokia's built-in browser, which presents unformatted full-sized pages, complete with a cursor. But for the best experience, we recommend downloading the Opera Mini browser.
 
Content-heavy pages like NYTimes.com and Google News loaded in less than five seconds. Streaming videos buffered very quickly (about 3 to 5 seconds), and AT&T offers a fair amount of content. For $19.99, you can subscribe to the MEdia Max 200 Bundle and have unlimited access to news, sports, and weather channels. You can also purchase a subscription to HBO for $4.99 per month. We caught up on a few episodes of Entourage, and although we didn't mind turning the phone sideways to watch, we were a little annoyed that the 30-minute episodes were diced into ten two- to three-minute chapters.
 
Music playback was superb on the N75; the media player handled all of the music files we threw at it--MP3, M4A, AAC, eAAC+, and WMA. You can't download songs over the air as you can with Sprint and Verizon Wireless, but you can use your PC to sync to subscription-based services like emusic.com, Napster, and Yahoo Music. We really liked the external music controls and the loud stereo speakers.
 
The N75 also supports XM Radio Mobile ($8.99 per month) and MobiRadio ($8.99 per month). Sound from both services was crystal clear and buffered quickly. We were disappointed with XM's limited channel offering; some of the talk channels, such as The Virus, were unavailable. This clamshell supports FM radio, but you'll need to purchase a headset from Nokia for $29.95 to use it.
 
Our biggest complaint is the lack of support for stereo Bluetooth and standard 3.5mm wired headsets. We were shocked to find that, despite supporting Bluetooth 2.0, the phone played music only in mono mode on our Jabra Bluetooth headphones.
 
The 2-MP camera captured photos with a good amount of detail, and there are plenty of settings to help you get the right shot, including scene modes, exposure, and white balance. Too bad our pictures had a bluish cast to them. The N75 records smooth-looking video, but on a few occasions we couldn't play our clips back on the phone. We were told to close some applications because the memory was full, even though our videos were stored on the memory card.
 
Technically, the N75 can be called a smart phone because you can synchronize your contacts, calendar, tasks, and other PIM data using the included USB cable and PC Suite software. You can also access IMAP and POP3 e-mail and view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint attachments. We consider these productivity features to be a bonus, given that the phone's primary focus is multimedia.
 
During our week of testing, voice quality was superb on AT&T's network, with no echoes or muffling. Just be sure to take the charger with you on that a weekend; we had to juice our N75 every two days with medium voice and data use.
 
The Nokia N75 is a decent phone and an average music player, but it's too bulky given the feature set. If you prefer a flip phone, get the LG VX8700, which also sports a 2-MP camera but is much sleeker and costs $20 less. And if you want a true smart phone with multimedia chops, buy the Samsung BlackJack.

 

Nokia's ambitious smart phone flagship delivers GPS, Wi-Fi, and a 5-megapixel camera, but is it worth the astronomical price?

 

Samsung BlackJack Review
Hands on with the most feature-packed smart phone yet for those on a budget.

 

Which Smart Phone Is Best for You?
We pick our favorite smart phones, and define the features that make them 'smart.'