Nokia E72 Full Review - Part 4: Multimedia/Browsing

The fourth part of this extensive review covers the multimedia and browsing capabilities of the E72. Note that I had previously mentioned the battery was still on 3 bars for 3 days, but when I fired off the Maps application and the GPS got a lock for a couple of minutes and then closed that and listened to some music (for around half an hour), I had to recharge by the end of that session. So now that the phone is juiced up, we can continue abusing it.



I. Multimedia:

1. File Transfer:

One of the main reasons why you should consider migrating from E71 to E72 is file transfer speeds. I will not elaborate much here, instead I will post some numbers that speak for themselves, but you should know that transfer speeds on the E72 have been greatly improved.

- Music transfer: 206 MP3 files - 1.58GB – while the phone is in “mass storage mode”:
• E72: 6 minutes 46 seconds (4GB HC microSD Class 4)
• N97: 7 minutes 21 seconds (internal mass storage memory)
• E71: 29 minutes 32 seconds (4GB HC microSD class 4) same test was carried on with an 8GB HC microSD class 4 card, results were almost the same.

- Refreshing the library afterwards:
• E72: 1 minute 11 seconds
• N97: 1 minute 32 seconds
• E71: 2 minutes 40 seconds

- Video Transfer 4 MP4 files – 484MB:
• E72: 2 minutes 1 second
• E71: 9 minutes 7 seconds

- Photo Transfer 137 JPEG files – 99.4MB:
• E72: 31.7 seconds
No tests were carried out on other devices.

2. Speaker Quality:

I wouldn’t say the E72’s speaker is bad, but it doesn’t beat the E71’s. First of all I’d like to remind you that the speaker is located on the back and not the top, but since the camera is protruding from the back, the speaker doesn't come in contact with the surface beneath it where the phone lies. This might be different when the phones is against some clothing, either in your pocket or your jacket, but it was never an issue hearing the ringtone (or feeling the vibration).

Besides that, playing the same MP3 file on both the E71 and E72 clearly shows that the E72 doesn’t lack the loudness but the clarity of the sound. In other terms, and though the E72 features more audio settings – covered below – the E71 still delivers better sound quality through its speaker. Better not louder. What I love about the E71 is the depth of the bass and the clarity of the sound overall, which lets you recognize various instruments/voices playing. It’s not that bad with the E72, but even with the tweaked equalizer and a couple of settings turned on, it fails to reproduce the excellent sound quality of the E71. I’ve previously pitted the E52 against the E71 and compared the speaker quality, so the E72 falls somewhere in-between the E52 and the E71. It’s better than the E52 but doesn’t beat the E71. Maybe some firmware updates could also fix that. But don’t worry, you’ll never dislike it. It just doesn’t beat its predecessor, that’s all.

3. Audio Settings:

The audio equalizer now shows 8 configurable bars instead of just 5 on the E71, and the audio settings include balance (left and right) Bass booster (on or off) and Stereo widening (on or off). The last two are mainly noticeable while using headphones but I personally don’t like using stereo widening because it gives the music that certain 3D effect downgrading its quality and the depth of bass. On the other hand, Bass boost is amazing and will blow your brains out when turned on if coupled with the right custom equalizer setting that boosts bass as well. You can go the distance with that, but once bars are full and bass boost is on, you’ll be having trouble listening to any music as even the files ripped at 320kbps sound distorted with that.


Settings and messing around with album art



4. Audio Quality:

It was time for me to test the E72’s performance using the 3.5mm audio jack. And in order to do that, I’d like to invite you to step into my laboratory (across my desk) and take a look at the kit we’re going to use this:

Nokia WH-205 (comes with the 5530XM), Nokia AD-54 (N97) used as a remote control, Nokia AD-56 (came with my 5610XM) adapter used for the E71, Nokia HS-43 (N82), some Sansa earphones that shipped with my Sandisk Sansa MP3 player, some big-ass Philips SHP1900 headphones, the Creative SL3100 Bluetooth Stereo Headset, and a couple more which I will not mention right now because they will be in a separate post – hopefully soon. Most of them are pictured here:


Note that all headsets have been tested with both the E71 and E72, and occasionally with the N97/5800XM just for the sake of comparison. While the 5800XM came on top during the loudspeaker test, all 4 phones performed almost equally well during the wired/wireless headset tests.

The major update from the E71 is the 3.5mm audio jack, now located on the top part of the E72. What used to look weird with the E71 (playing music with an earphone plugged sideways) is now totally normal and intuitive - you can slide the phone into your pocket and keep the music running while the earphones are plugged in just like any other MP3 player out there on the market.

Audio playback is simply amazing. I can recall saying the same about the N86 8MP while using the bundled in-ear headset which is great considering the E72 being a more business-oriented Eseries device, while the N86 is a multimedia-centric Nseries handset. The E72 doesn’t feel anything like a phone when it comes to music; it’s an MP3 player. And this is coming from someone who has always thought the audio quality on the E71 was amazing. Both music and video sounded crystal clear regardless of the headphones I’ve used, and playing around with the aforementioned settings really makes a difference, especially with Bass boost turned on. I’m not sure if I can say the E72 wins over the E71 here – both phones being able to deliver equally well, but I guess it’s always better to have a couple of additional tweaks like, say, Bass boost. I will not compare the headphones here simply because the review does not cover that, but I can assure you that using your own headphones will give you much better results than using the bundled ones. What’s funny though is that the E71 and the E72 were able to stream audio to the Creative Bluetooth headphones with no issues whatsoever, whereas the N97 and 5800XM both suffered badly introducing some cuts every 8 to 10 seconds.

Various screenshots for audio playback


As for the session finale, I brought out “the beast”.

The Beast

The Altec Lansing headphones with ANR (Active Noise Reduction) - one of the reasons why I was broke for a short while last year. Clearly, and unlike the Philips headphones, this baby here needs some raw power, and quite frankly, none of the devices I had on test was able to deliver. Whenever I plugged that thing in, bass was reduced and music sounded like it played on a 1995 Walkman, but with the ANR switched on, everything was great again. I don’t blame any of the handsets for that – big headphones need a mini Hi-Fi systems for full power but what I’m trying to prove here is that mobile phones sound great when coupled with adequate headsets, i.e. some decent bass boosting Sennheisers or some fancy Sony ones. For excellent performance with big headphones, I recommend going for Nokia's BH-504 or BH-905 (which will replace "The Beast", soon), or if you prefer smaller headsets, go for the BH-214.

A final word for this section, I’d like to point out that my tests are purely based on personal experience and no equipment besides my own ears and the headphones was used to achieve that. You might find later on that the audio quality of the E72 is decent enough but to me it’s excellent.

I’m adding a screenshot of the Radio, now supporting RDS. It looks better as well. The Music Search functionality works well, sometimes, but I’d rather search manually within the gallery, it’s more accurate for sure.


5. Video Playback:

One of the movies I have tried playing on the E72 was initially ripped for the N97 with the following settings: Bit Rate 640Kbps, Width 640, Height 360, Frame Rate 24, Aspect 16:9, Audio Bit Rate 160, Sample Rate 48000. It's Ice Age 3 and it played flawlessly. Fast forwarding, rewinding, pausing and playing went smooth, while the quality on-screen was as amazing as ever. Nokia never fails to deliver great screens and good video performance. In order to spice things up, I tried ripping short videos at a higher bitrates i.e. 1.2 or 1.5Mbps which the E72 handled great as well. I also installed the latest version of DivX mobile and tried playing “The Dark Knight” in AVI format (801MB file) which turned out great too. I skipped half of the movie (FF) and only had to wait 2 seconds for the application to recover and the picture to re-appear following the “seeking” blank screen.


Screenshots of the Video Center



6. Gaming:

Both the E52 and E55 got N-Gage support and it’s official, you can download the current v1.40 of the N-Gage application and install it, run it, etc. Everything works fine. Since the E72 did not come with N-Gage preloaded and it never appeared in the Software Updates list, I thought why not log in and download it manually. Once I did, here’s what happened:




So I guess no next-gen gaming for me on the E72 yet. I don’t know if the E72 will be supported, I don’t see why not, but we’ll have to wait for the official release to find out.

The handset comes preloaded with 2 games – Block Cascade and Solitaires – which are both fun to play with. The first is a more advanced version of Tetris while the second, well, is a bunch of card games we all play during those boring afternoons at the office. As part of the test and following a special request on Twitter, I’ve downloaded 2 games from Fishlabs – Rally Master Pro and Galaxy on Fire 2, both of which worked perfectly great on the E72. No lagging, no crappy graphics (more or less), and you can check the below screenshots for that.




7. Gallery:

I’ve previously talked about this briefly so I will not go into much detail here. The gallery is similar to the one found on Nseries handsets, at the least the Images part of it; it’s a rotating one and works perfectly fast. As decent as the phone, it should have been there for the E71 a long time ago instead of the boring list view. Before going in to see your pictures, you can browse them by albums, date taken, tags, downloads, or share them, as per the screenshots attached.


II. Browsing:

The E72 comes with the new S60 browser 7.1 and web runtime 1.1, same as the N86, E52, E55, E75, 6710 Navigator, 6720 Classic, 6730 Classic, 5630 XpressMusic, 5730 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic, and N97 as of 30th, 2009. This has introduced opportunities to create many events and triggers (programming) for developers. Also the E72 now supports Flash Video but still runs the same 3.0 version as the E71 does. I believe either a FW update or the final market release will bring the 3.1 version just like the N86 8MP.


Head to head with the E71, the E72 performs better, but doesn’t win by much. With my current home network setup – a Linksys router that’s in the same room and a 512Kbps connection (don’t laugh, it’s considered fast here) I carried out several tests for the most common websites such as CNN, MSN, Wikipedia, and others, as well as the Nokia main website and came to realize that the E72 does a better job at rendering websites. In other terms, once you type in the address and hit “go to”, the browser connects and starts loading the page; with the E71 you can see some ugly text and big fonts at the beginning before the real website appears… well there’s none of that with the E72. It gets straight to the website and starts loading content as is, no questions asked. Mainly, websites were loaded 1 to 2 seconds faster on the E71 and I don’t consider that a big deal. Keep in mind that the E71 was pretty fast itself and never bothered me, so the E72 does a more decent job.

Lucky us

Just like on the N86, you can now add Toolbar shortcuts to the browser (you have around 20 functions such as full screen, reload, switch window, history and so on) and bring this toolbar up by pressing the middle button or a preset shortcut key. You can also add keypad/keyboard shortcuts (on the numbered keys) and these are pretty handy because they serve you for zooming in or out, reloading and searching for a word on the spot by clicking just one button. You can assign one key to bring up the on-screen menu (a map of the keys for you to see which does what) and then choose according to your needs. Also, once in full-screen mode, the browser shows the “loading bar” at the top each time you access a new page and then hides it once it is done loading, useful if you’re the type that doesn’t like to wait much.



I’ve installed the latest version of Opera Mini which is still in Beta, and it’s quite nice on the E72 but it’s a shame it still lags a bit. Sometimes it takes ages to load a website while at other times it is super swift. Some shots of it are next.



Last but not least, I turned the Optical Navi Key on and decided to get used to it. After several minutes of browsing accompanied by trial and error I managed to get the hang out of it: I’ve set the sensitivity up to the highest level, dried my thumbs up, wiped the key with a piece of cloth, and attacked it. It’s so sensitive at times so you have to be careful not to go too fast and click on the wrong stuff. I’m still convinced that within the menu, this key is not that useful. You always aim for an icon and hit the other. But within the browser and after you really master it, you can pretty much get the same kinetic scrolling effect that you have on the N97. During the first use on the first day, I never managed to scroll fast on a web page. But it turns out the trick is to use your entire upper thumb just like sliding it on a fingerprint reader – from top to bottom – and not by only using the tip of your thumb. Once you do that, you can scroll really fast in all directions even diagonally! Just go crazy on it, swipe your thumb left and right, up and down, and you can even halt the fast scrolling by tapping it when needed. I will be uploading a video about that once my review is done so expect it to be posted within the upcoming days.


The Verdict: Much like the E71, the E72 never failed to deliver. It’s a fun device and a capable one at the same time. Being able to browse the Internet while listening to music, switching between the two apps back and forth, downloading album art and assigning them to audio files inside my gallery is just brilliant. I could go on for days like this, or at least until my playlist expires. Besides my affirmation that the E72 is a multimedia maestro, I’ll leave it up to you to judge its capabilities based on what I’ve shown you so far. Note that the device hasn’t crashed yet, not even once besides the occasional freezing due to the Ovi Store app or while taking screenshots, which wasn’t something to note. Two thumbs up for multimedia/browsing on the E72.

Next up is the rest of the goodies i.e. GPS, battery life, and my final opinion. I am also dedicating most of my final review for readers' requests which have been interesting so far. If you have any further requests please post them here and I'll be glad to carry out the tests. Most of what's been covered so far will be presented on video right after the full review has been posted. Stay tuned.