Today Nokia announced a new E-series smart phone. It is the successor to the E71 and is named E72. The front of the E72 looks very similar to the E55. The main difference here is the full QWERTY keyboard on the E72 which makes it considerably wider than the E55. The landscape screen and QWERTY keyboard are responsible for the extra width. It is also because of this fact that the E72 is 2.5 mm shorter than the E55 but at the same time it is slightly thicker than the E55.

The design around the d-pad of the E72 is the same as that of the E55 but the major difference is that the E72 has an optical d-pad which should come pretty handy while scrolling through the menus and pages. Besides the brushed metal around their d-pads both the E55 and E72 have a steel frame going around their whole front. The battery covers on both devices are also made out of metal and both use the same battery (1500mAh).

Some major upgrades in the E72 over the E71 and E55 are the 5MP camera with LED flash and the support for up to 10.2Mbps HSDPA. A very nice thing is that the E72’s LED flash can be used as a torch by simply pressing the spacebar. The camera and its LED of the E72 are surrounded by a silver frame. Video recording capabilities seems to be the same on both phones. The hardware platform (CPU+RAM) should also be the same.

Even though both devices are based on the same software (Symbian S60 3^rd Edition Feature Pack 2) the E72 will have a range of new software improvements over the current devices. The E72 will be available in the 3^rd quarter of this year and at a price of 350€ without taxes and subsidies. Therefore it will cost about 100€ more than the E55.

Overall the E72 seems to have better hardware and software than the E55 but it will come with a price. Besides that the E72 should also appear later in the market than the E55.

To get more info on the new E72 please visit the official Nokia Forum.

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The E51 was announced back in September 2007. Almost one and a half year later Nokia introduced the successor of this device as their first compact QWERTY keyboard smart phone. For customers who prefer an alphanumeric keypad over a QWERTY keypad Nokia announced the E52 at the beginning of this month.

Both the E52 and the E55 seem to be an evolution of the older E51. Therefore let’s take a look what Nokia changed to create the E51’s successors. The main focus while creating the E51 and the E52/E55 was to make a compact smart phone with a reasonable price. The E51 has almost the same size as the E55/E52. It is two millimeters thicker and one millimeter shorter than its successors. The unsubsidized initial price of the E51 (without camera) was 250€. For the E51 with camera you had to pay 100€ more. (E55/E52: 265€ unsubsidized)

Other than the small differences in size and price what are the major changes between the 2007 smart phone and the 2009 smart phone?

1. Updated OS: From S60 3^rd Edition FP1 to S60 3^rd Edition FP2.

2. Screen size from 2” to 2.4”

3. From 96MB SDRAM to 128MB SDRAM

4. CPU clock from 369MHz to 600MHz

5. Camera from 2MP or rather non to 3.2MP

6. New E-Mail client in E52/E55

7. Battery from 1050 mAh to 1500 mAh

Of course there are several other differences like video recording, the GPS feature in E52/E55 and support for certain image and video file formats. But all in all it shows that the E52 and E55 are worthy upgrades from the E51.

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The major difference you will notice between those two devices is the screen and the keypad. The E71 has a 2.36-inch landscape screen while the E55 has a 2.4-inch portrait screen. Due to its portrait screen the E55 is much narrower than the E71. With a measure of 114 x 57 x 10 mm the E71 is wider and slightly thicker than the E55. But the E55 is a bit taller.

While the E71 features a full QWERTY keypad the E55 comes with a compact QWERTY. Therefore typing with the E71’s keypad should be easier than with the E55’s keypad. The full QWERTY keyboard seems to be a worthy sacrifice since without it the E55 would be much wider and not as much pocket able as it is now.

The E71 and the E55 use the same 1500 mAh battery namely the BP-4L. In the case of the E55 the battery is charged through the micro USB port which is very convenient. The E71 meanwhile has to fall back on its 2 mm charger connector. Even though both have the same battery the E55 has a much higher GSM standby time and WCDMA talk time. But the E71 wins in WCDMA standby time and GSM talk time.

Though I personally think there won’t be a big difference in battery life between those two phones once the E55 is on the market.

The cameras of both E-Series phones seem to be almost the same but there is a difference in the video recording department. While the E55 records videos in VGA resolution at 15fps the E71 records its videos in QVGA at 15fps.

There are also some other features that the E55 has which the E71 is missing like a dedicated camera key, Nokia’s mobile gaming platform N-Gage, a 3.5 mm audio jack and an accelerometer. However the latter wouldn’t make much sense in a device which natively has a landscape screen.

The E71 is powered by an ARM11 CPU clocked at 369 MHz while the E55 is powered by an ARM11 CPU clocked at 600 MHz.

Besides having a faster processor than the E71 the E55 comes also with a newer mobile operating system. The E55 is based on S60 3^rd Edition FP2 while the E71 is based on S60 3^rd Edition FP1.

It seems like the E55 excels in many areas compared to the E71 but if it will be as successful as the E71 is still hard to tell. We will know more when we can get our hands on a retail version of the E55.

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