In recent years mobile phones, along with virtually everything else, have been getting smaller, lighter and more compact. But in the last 18 months or so we have seen mobiles start to drift in the opposite direction and creep up in size as we as consumers are demanding more usable features from our phones to seemingly make our lives more streamlined. The Blackberry pioneered the large modern phone format that so many people laughed at back in the day, but now it seems every manufacturer has at least one Blackberry clone in its stable.

Nokia has a handful, but the cream of the crop is the E72 which, at about $1000 is in the med/high price range for a phone stacked with many of the features you’d expect from your average netbook.
It’d be fair to say that the Nokia E72 is a business tool first and foremost. The size alone makes it less convenient as a casual mobile phone unless you wear cargo pants a lot. Don’t get me wrong, there’s far bigger phones out there, but at 114mm x 58.3mm x 10.1mm is just big enough, yet at the same time delicate enough to warrant being very careful how you carry it. If you wear a suit or jacket all day then transporting the E72 is never going to be a problem, even with the semi-rigid protective case that adds a few mm to the thickness. But if you wear standard jeans then slipping the E72 in and out of your pocket is a real hassle. Of course you could easily stash it in your back pocket, but then you run the risk of forgetting it’s there and bending it by sitting down. This is definitely something to consider before you buy an E72 or any other phone of the same style.

I liked the slick design and interface but the chrome backing really annoyed me. I couldn’t think of any practical reason for it to be there apart from taking self-portraits, applying make-up, doing your hair, blinding drivers or signalling far away ships from your castaway raft in the open ocean (hat-tip to Bear Grylls).

There’s no touchscreen on the E72, but there is a small optical touchpad between the navigational buttons which was great for flicking through menus and scrolling down web pages but was temperamental and inconvenient in some other applications. I had absolutely no issues using the full QWERTY keypad, even with largish fingers and in fact found typing on it to be very quick indeed (yes I’m the guy who writes out 95% of his txt messages in full – by choice I might add).
I found the built in Assisted GPS with Nokia Maps to work fantastically around Christchurch with the A-GPS very fast at recalculating my position and recommending updated routes to my destinations.