E72 - Honeymoon to Divorce.

Question

Like many of you here, I've had quite a few mobile phones through the years and it's always a source of great excitement when a brand new phone lands on your desk. The new OS to explore, the Apps, the form factor. The downside of playing around with so many phones through the years is that there is no perfect device, no form factor that's perfect in every situation and no OS that can retain your interest beyond a few months before it's time to convince yourself that you need to try a new 'thing' which will solve everything for you (and make you more productive).
 As long as you know this up front and understand your interest is going to stray, you can get a fairly balanced view of what makes a great, as opposed to a good phone. Here are my thoughts on the E72.
As a background to my adventure, I recently had an iPhone and although it's far from perfect I was fed up with the lack of a physical keyboard. It's not that I failed to bang an email out but I found it tedious when I made a typo and then had to spend 10 seconds trying to edit the message by tap'n'hold to move cursor, delete (x10), tap'n'hold to continue typing etc. It just got 'old' so I started to look for a device with a keyboard - remembering with fondness the keyboard on the old E61,  Treo680 and even the Blackberry 8700 (love those clicky keys!).
Last October I bought an E63 because it was 'cheap' and to see if I could get back into using S60 + keyboard after such a long period in iPhone land.  To my surprise, the E63 whilst creaky and a little too 'red' for me, was good, it, I even took it to Hong Kong on a trip and left the laptop behind as an experiment (it worked.. but only just) although it obviously had some shortcomings. Toy like Email client, browser standards, ram, camera etc.overall it was a positive experience that made me want to explore further.
I had bought a Nexus One in January the day it was released and although it's a super phone, it still had no keyboard and the Droid keyboard is awful so having had a half decent experience of the E63, I decided the E72 was the next best thing and decided to snap one up.
The Honeymoon / First impressions.
First impressions of the E72 is that it's a 'handsome' phone - not a good looking phone or a kiddy toy but a good, solid, classy looking phone for business. The keyboard was as good as the E63, the form factor was obviously near identical other than the materials being of higher grade and obviously it's slimmer and easier in the pocket.  First impressions were very good.
The screen was a step back from most new phones, especially the Nexus One's gorgeous High-res effort but it's certainly clear and as it needs to be judged as a utility, not a spec-sheet competition so it fitted the job of a phone with a keyboard.  The screen was clear and bright and easy to use.
Software seemed to be not much of a step up from the E63, I was expecting a higher grade of Application to be included and to my surprise (not disappointment) there was little on the surface to distinguish the E72 from the E63. I disliked the new transition effects as they felt like Nokia had iPhone envy rather than functional enhancements.
Camera quality was very good for a phone although I don't like the viewer application with its spinning wheel of pictures - iPhone envy again? what's wrong with a 5x5 thumb view that would work well with the D-Pad? Once again, it works but it's not designed to optimise the experience of the form-factor.
The touch-pad, I quite liked it, although I rely on the D-Pad more as it's just too small a surface to be useful.
The Email client. At first it felt like a step back from the E63, the E72 client seemed 'bare' for some reason and I also wanted to make the font smaller so I could see more email headers on the screen at once (cant do it), I put all of this down to the email client being prosumer rather than consumer
Overall, first impressions were good with the caveat of some changes to what I was used to, no bad thing.
Married life / day to day:
Day to day, as a Phone, the E72 is fantastic. Calling people by typing their name is so much easier than 'flicking' through lists, call quality is absolutely top notch, signal strength and 3G connectivity is years ahead of my old iPhone/Nexus/Blackberry/Treo and really shows that Nokia know how to make connectivity work from a technical perspective, something that almost every other company from HTC to Apple trail considerably behind on.
Short-cuts to communication 'tasks' are as good as it gets. Series60 is a superb, intuitive and  well polished hierarchy of menus to get your calls and messages answered, read and replied to in record time. I can't praise the work that's been done over the years any higher.
Setting up email was easy enough as standard manual entries although after a week or so I decided to setup mail through OviMail - this was painful.
I'm pretty experienced in these things and technically very able (I'm into heavy  tech for a few decades) but this was a challenge for me. Passwords, logins, usernames etc.. it all becomes one mixed up frustrating jumble that I think would  have any mere mortal turned off or turn to their I.T. department in haste. It took me a couple of days to get it set up properly and even then it felt like it was hanging by its fingernails. Blackberry by contrast feels military strength compared to OviMail and BB's are far from a walk in the park when it comes to ease of setup.  Once I did get OviMail setup, it did work but I always had the feeling that it might break at any minute if I touched the wrong option. To its credit, it never actually did break, but it just left a bad taste that I never quite got rid of.
Nokia are obviously moving heavily into services such as cloud infrastructure with Ovi services, Music etc. This push into services is being implemented the same way as Microsoft did a while back where none of the teams talk to one another other, it's all through a technical specification sheet. The E72 software works as silo-applications with each requiring the same login information being entered independently rather than simply log into Ovi services once, per device, and everything else flows. This constant entering of information per application is what makes S60 feel dated, it's unforgivable for a product manager of an integrated device like the E72 to let this pass. It either shows weak leadership within the product team or it shows a lack of cohesion between the teams within Nokia - again, a failure in leadership although higher up the chain of command. Yes, it's a big company but to let this happen shows the company has too many toothpaste managers and not enough tech savy people that love their work.
A second level of confusion is the PC software that's bundled and are encouraged to install. Nokia's PC suite is solid, but why am I encouraged to install Ovi software and map loaders which seem to replicate the same job? It's not a problem with the device itself, but it significantly dilutes the user experience to bemused confusion. Obviously this is not the E72 but companies can no longer separate user-experience from device experience, especially when they're intertwined to the degree that they are these days.
Setting up through a Mac was a lot simpler as you dont get all the Nokia apps, you just use iSync after manually searching for a plugin online. You loose some features but you do that with Macs anyway (yes.. I use one every day so stay away mac fanboys).
The Calendar and contacts apps are adequate but feel dated and slow and could do with some new views and features.
No Internet Radio feature as was in the E63.. I needed to scour the web to add this manually for some odd reason.
OviStore is an average implementation with some average applications. As the E72 is a prosumer phone, not having games and apps, whilst good to pass time on a 747 are far from needed and using the stock built in applications was fair enough.
Music player is 'functional' and did its duty without a hitch.
One thing that worked particularly well was Skype. I do a lot of international calls and I think the Nokia implementation is the best around, hopefully they can make more of this feature as times goes by.
Ovi/Nokia Maps. Where do I start with this? It's absolutely wonderful. I went a few trips to California, installed the map data on the device for California and Nevada and it worked perfectly. I bought a little car stand for $10 in Fry's electronics which worked for the trip and this just blew me away. Even with it's small screen, this has made me give away my Tom-Tom which I took with me on trips and never turned on once. Full marks.
Battery life is incredible, for a device in this day and age to last 4 days on a single charge is simply stunning. I'll put up with the lack of a decent movie player any day if it means I get 4 days out of a single charge. Once again, Nokia should shout about how awesome this is to anyone that will listen. iPhone users get trained into worrying about battery life and turning things off where possible, not having to worry about battery life is an absolute blessing. Well done Nokia.
To give an example, I drove from San Francisco to San Diego which takes 9 hours. I had the GPS running giving me directions, I had the Phone wired into AUX in the Car playing some Audio books for the entire duration and the battery life still had a good 2 days before needing a charge. The E72 battery life will forever go down in Legend as an 'I remember when' story.
Not that this piece is about comparisons with other Phones, but coming from the UK it means heavy roaming charges if I use data. I took a similar business trip with a Nexus One and it was pretty much useless as their GPS mapping software is US only in features and, it can't work with offline maps and would have cost me a pretty penny to use on a roaming contract with all the Data it would download. The Nexus one is arrogantly setup to be of use to US consumers, overseas users get a half-glass feature set (no turn by turn / street-view etc..).
The Divorce:
There is a time in the daily life of using a Phone where the 'unique characteristics' of the Phone start to become tedious. This happens with all phones and gadgets, if it didn't we'd all still be using Videostar VHS recorders (does that give my age away?).
After travelling up and down California, replying to a hundred or so emails over the course of a week, I noticed that I had just sent a handful of emails without being connected to Wifi. After examining a little further I worked out to my horror that the email client does not connect over Wifi - ever. It fails to work with Profiles, connection orders or anything remotely standard on almost any other Nokia/other device. Profiles for the uneducated should remain an unknown, it's a black art from a previous era that has no place in a modern day smartphone. Devices should simply connect over Wifi if connected, otherwise prompt the user if it's roaming - simple as that, no 'profile' needed. This is how all smartphones work, even the senile Blackberry OS does this out the box.
I foolishly presumed that as the old mule E63 has worked over Wifi, the E72 being an 'evolved' device would also have this feature as standard. Nokia took it out.. what the $£%$£?
I can only imagine at this point in time, Nokia deliberately engineered this deficiency to keep carriers happy. The E63 being 'consumer' can be used over wifi with a standard phone tariff, the E72 being a 'prosumer' device needs the user to buy a more expensive Smartphone tariff. I can't for the life of me work out why Nokia would remove a standard feature that was in all of their older phones.
This little oversight of the Email client not connecting or alerting me that it was using a non-wifi connection actually cost me over 100 euros in data charges. This is simply not acceptable, no excuses, no patch-it at some point please. It's simply stupid. Yes, I've used Profimail etc.. but should I need to on a messaging device? I bought the phone for this feature, paying to replace it is simply counter-intuitive when so many other options exist without wrestling with work-arounds.
Other than creating a hole in my wallet, I also through sheer paranoia removed all my Email accounts from Ovi and set them up as 'pull' accounts where I manually check my email. I need to do this simply as I travel so much and the roaming feature sometimes works - it's back to the holding on by your fingernails thing with this device, it should work but you're not quite sure.
Running the much loved Maps application brings up a notice asking to connect to download data - even after saying NO, I still fail to have faith in the profiles working which removes the confidence you have in the device, It removed the feeling that you're in control and that really gets to you after a while. If Email has been engineered to ignore profiles, what else if going on under the surface, I should not have to read forums to gain confidence and if I was a typical consumer I wouldn't know where to start to find this out.
Other problems starting to appear are that the E72 is starting to crash a few times every week, the dreaded space-bar problem has appeared, I can't upgrade the firmware for some reason even though I'm a few revisions behind (I bought it unlocked from Nokia), the back cover feels like it's starting to work loose and has fallen off a few times and the transition effects needed to be turned off (only half of them disappear). All of these things are in the forums here to some degree. Sometimes they annoy, sometimes not, but overall when you're having a tough day they all get to you.
Summary:
There's a scene in the Film "Flash Gordon" where a poor chap puts his hand in a tree trunk as a drunken game to see if the creature that lurks will bite him, he puts his hand in, smiles then slowly starts to pull his hand out before getting bitten just before he pulls his hand to safety - for some odd reason the E72 reminds me of that this. You approach with trepidation, become comfortable with the device then you get bitten just when you think all is well and you're about to make off with the cash.
The E72 is the end of an era. You can tell by Nokia's responses to the problems on the E72 that their corporate focus is no longer on developing S60 but maintaining it with minimal effort.
Their focus is now on Maemo and 300 other pressing priorities, their software engineers are stretched way too thin working on OviCloud services, Maemo and a multitude of new devices and holes/low quality are starting to become standard. This is starting to reflect on devices like the E72 which should be a flagship device but instead is not much more evolved than an 'old' E63 at half the price - which incidentally has an email client from the same codebase that can download over wifi. In many ways, plastic aside, I thought the E63 was better, more stable (for me) especially for the price.
Nokia will obviously keep churning out yearly revisions to the S60 line (C6, E5 etc). But you know for a fact that they're pretty much the same devices with a cavalier attitude to improvements and the least engineering time to fix bugs/features as they can get away with. Arrogant yes, damage to the Nokia Brand by doing this? Absolutely. It will take me 5 years before I return to a new Nokia device after seeing the speed of progress and responses despite some great promise. Look how quickly Google turned around a Nexus One update with multi-touch after an outcry - it can be counted in days after launch, not 'devices' as seems to be the case here.
The E72 device feels great, I love the form factor, the Keyboard is not the absolute best as that remains with Blackberry but it's certainly one of the very best. The phone functions are second to none.
Ovi-Maps is just brilliant and the Battery life is as covered above is the stuff of legend.
In many ways the E72 is the device I'm least able to move on from as there is so much to like and so much potential, but the amateur email implementation and creeping software problems makes this device seriously handicapped for anyone that travels or cares about the significant roaming fees that this device is designed to incur which is a genuine shame.
Hopefully these things will get fixed in firmware upgrades, I'm sure some of them will but why should I wait? this is not the 1990's - this is mature technology and a (very) mature Operating system which should be solid as a rock.
I like many on this forum would like to see Nokia do well but they've simply not stepped upto the plate by fixing basic feature holes nor have they communicated to the community that they're listening and will fix any of the problems. Instead they've announced new devices to replace the handsets that still have serious flaws. This is not the actions of a company that listens but a company that simply churns like a machine on a pre-set course with nobody at the wheel.
Despite much to like about the E72, I for the single reason that Nokia seem to have no ears to hear and no fingers to type, am out until further notice.

Answer 1

Gentlemen,
Thank you for your kind words and replies to my experiences with the E72. Since writing the original post my Firmware has been updated not once, but twice no less.
As I bought the device 'vanilla' style from Nokia online, I have no idea why I was unable to use PCSuite to upgrade my firmware despite my E72 being clearly a few revisions behind, I also tried upgrading from the device itself and it gave me a firm but fair 'No'; one day after hammering the server for a few minutes with constant requests, Nokia's servers finally rolled over and let me download an upgraded firmware directly onto the device. I can only presume it was a load-balance issue with their servers although open to being educated otherwise, I have no idea why PCsuite/Ovi Suite failed to upgrade the E72 despite downloading the new firmware every time I checked for an upgrade. Not to worry, these things happen.
The new firmware (031.023) has some new features with a few new icons added and many bugs fixed. If I were to relate it to my original 'Honeymoon to Divorce' post, it's a bit like the Wife has put on some heels and lipstick and has lost a bit of weight in an attempt to win my affections (sorry female readers, I know it's unforgivably sexist).
In that spirit, and considering the Nexus One that I moved back to using is a poor quality phone (remember that function?) I thought I'd give the E72 another spin to see if it fixed my original problems. I reset the device, cleared the SD card and set the device up from what should be a clean and sparkly install.
You'll all be glad to hear I wont go into another vast post as most of my thoughts still stand, however:
Email:
The new email revision does fix some of the Wifi connection issues I was having. I'm glad to say it's faster and does indeed work over Wifi although it seems very slow when updating itself. Other phones seem to download a full header+message infinitely quicker that the E72. As I've been using the new firmware for a week solid, I'm increasingly annoyed that I need to download the HTML versions of email manually which takes terra-years; I believe the E71 email client can be configured to download HTML versions automatically as can my old E63 so why not the E72? Did someone 'merge' the old email source-code into Nokia messaging when they made the E72 client?
A new bug has appeared that seems to lock into a constantly 'downloading' logo loop - where it never completes the email download. I need to click 'cancel' manually then the email appears as if by magic. There are other niggles that have seemingly crept in such as when using the E72 without a SIM card, the email client will work for a few hours then simply stop connecting manually or automatically, needing a reset to come to life again. **Geek alert on** As an old games programmer, this looks to me like a memory leak problem that could be easily found (or a thread that's gone haywire) - especially considering good debug tools have been around since it's Psion Series 5 roots. **Geek alert off**.
I'm sure your mileage - or bugs - will be different from my own depending on your own unique circumstances but it's another of those two steps forward, one step back things which Nokia seem to do with the E-series.
What's frustrating is the phone part of the E72 is world-class which when coupled with a bottom of class email client it defeats the reason to have a QWERTY in the first place. I'd trade the Phone stability for a best of breed email client on this device in a heartbeat. I've not tested the Gmail client as RistotheGreat did (above) so this may solve the email conundrum for some.
Memory:
As Beowulfpt above originally questioned, Ram is becoming as scarce as the Yeti. Before the firmware update I had plenty of spare RAM, after the firmware update I get low-RAM notifications every few days and I'm running the exact same email accounts without running ANY 3rd party software whatsoever.
Stability:
Overall crashes of the device are now far and few. It seems to be a step forward. Well done Nokia.
Other:
It's worth mentioning (thanks DeadKenny) that you can now sign in once to Ovi services and it's supposed to work across the Ovi suite of apps. I've not checked this personally as I'm using the device without adding extra apps at present but there was a note in the firmware note when upgrading.
Internet Radio has now been added back to the Radio client - no need to go hunting for external versions of this anymore. This, as before, works pretty well.
To close, it's interesting to read others frustrations (above) with this device, there are many good things about E72 and I can live with compromises in a device if it does other things well. In the case of the E72 it's a great phone but it's an incredibly poorly implemented email client, too poor if you ask me. If Nokia added a half stable email client with HTML (as they had many years back in other similar devices) then I'd put up with the tedious old-school 'profiles' and an old-school approach to connectivity and other such compromises. As it stands I can't in all honesty make this my main device when it's fails to offer a usable email client that I can use without frustration on a daily basis despite the new lipstick.
As Nokia are so close to making this device 'ok', should I go back to the Nexus and put up with the lack of a keyboard and poor phone functionality, but excellent mail client - waiting for one more Firmware revision from Nokia? How long did you good E71 owners need to wait until Nokia fixed the problems for you? I really want to like this device despite my sheer frustration at it's implementation.
Note: Despite the E72 still sitting on my desk and not on Ebay, my original post conclusions about Nokia's tardiness in selling half-finished devices still stands. I'd find it incredibly difficult to justify buying a new Nokia device for a number of years. This is a real shame when they have so many voiceless employees within their organisation that if given half a management-vote could turn this cheap strategy around.