Nokia E72, should be good, so many problems
The upgrade to the well regarded E71, with many good improvements on the spec sheet, should be good. Unfortunately it’s riddled with so many problems. I’m quite a Nokia fan but quite disappointed by this model.
Here’s what I’ve found so far
1. Sign up for Nokia Messaging is confusing. Do you sign up on line or on the phone? Sign up on the phone and it’s not clear you’re getting an NM account if the email address you use is recognised.
2. Fixing your NM account username to the first email address you used is plain daft. There’s no chance to change the username and the password for the whole of NM is tied to that account.
3. NM stopped working. No sync on phone. Tried to log in to email.nokia.com, but it comes up with an error and “try again later” message. Could recover the account briefly with the ‘forgot password’ option, but the account is marked as ‘cancelled’. Contacted Nokia support and they claim it’s active, but still it doesn’t work. Worse is now they’ve changed it so you can’t use ‘forgot password’ any more. NM is dead and support won’t answer emails.
4. Can’t delete NM accounts on the phone if you can’t connect to NM. Daft.
5. The ’spacebar’ bug. Only hit this once but the spacebar stops working for no good reason. Reboot fixes it.
6. Destinations settings suddenly stop working with “feature not supported” error when trying to change settings. Only been able to fix this with a full format so far!
7. Mail for Exchange just disappeared for no reason. Account gone on the phone and the email set up wizard no longer offers MfE as an option!
8. Firmware update releases staggered across the many variants around the world such that some variants have to wait 6 months or more for the same firmware that’s already released for other variants of the same model.
9. Email client cannot be updated without a firmware update because it is integrated into the firmware. Other, and older models are getting newer clients because they are not integrated.
10. No Destinations support in the email client (except in MfE). Serious drawback as you can’t roam between connections and have to change the settings all the time.
11. Now finding the d-pad selector button is tricky. A light press may not be enough, and a hard press will make it ’select’ twice.
12. ‘Chat’ app has stopped working and just comes up with an authorisation failure error no matter what.
13. ‘Chat’ app only shows Messenger as an option with my Vodafone SIM, not Orange (despite using WLAN for the connection and it being an unbranded phone direct from Nokia).
14. A-GPS positioning set to auto in home network only, but when roaming apps keep prompting to use A-GPS. Okay, could set it to not use A-GPS at all, but should be an option to avoid having to change the setting when roaming.
15. Data log seems to have gone screwy with entries from a week ago suddenly appearing at the top but others more recent below them or gone missing.
16. Roaming has caused duplicate calendar entries even though it said it was updating the calendar entries when the time zone changed.
17. IMAP Idle doesn’t work with manually configured IMAP accounts. Evident from the amount of data being consumed when supposedly IDLE. Not the same with NM or MfE (when they work), which consume little data when used in an always on mode (as required for push email).
18. Many new apps being released by Nokia that won’t work with the E72 (and probably other 3rd Ed FP2 models). Instead concentration is on 5th Edition touch and even older 3rd Ed FP1 models. The E72 is supposed to be the new flagship business emailer yet is very buggy and neglected.
E72-1 UK generic variant, Firmware 021.024
And a couple of general annoyances with all S60 phones…
Swap the SIM (as I often do for work purposes) and it will auto set the operator settings for the new SIM, changing it all over the place and taking priority over your preferred WLAN settings (e.g. you have a WLAN as your choice for the web browser, and it changes it to Orange or Vodafone or whatever).
Vodafone PAYG SIM always ends up with pay monthly settings which don’t work and needs to be provisioned online to get the correct settings.
