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Along with the N900 and the N97 Mini, the Nokia E72 is definitely one of the most anticipated handsets from Nokia at the end of this year. This new mobile device represents the pinnacle of Nokia's Eseries expertize and builds on the amazingly large success that its predecessor, the Nokia E71, gathered both in the business and the everyday user crowd. So it is with great eagerness that we welcomed the E72 review unit that Nokia Lebanon sent us to have a detailed look at. Before covering the E72 in intricate details in its complete review, we wanted to highlight today just one issue with it that is easily its most important letdown in our opinion: the Arabic keyboard on it is a mess.
Color Issues
The unit we received is a topaz E72, with golden highlights and a beautiful metallic look. It oozes elegance and style and has been attracting eye glances from everyone around us. The only thing hampering this classy feel is the light green color of the Latin letters on the keyboard: we're not the fashion police, but we can't find anyone to agree that light green and topaz are two colors that fit together. Other than the style annoyance, these green Latin letters light up very weakly compared to the white ones and are almost invisible and impossible to differentiate from the white Arabic ones in broad daylight.
Given that this is an E72 unit intended for use in the Lebanese market, we understand the inclusion of an Arabic qwerty  keyboard on it. What we don't understand is why it is designed as the primary one, whereas the Latin keyboard is just a secondary add-on. As far as experience has showed us, there is a small minority in Lebanon that sends SMS in Arabic or uses their phone in Arabic. The general population tends to either use the phone in English or French, and send SMS in one of those languages or in Latin-letters transliterated Arabic.
Our first suggestion would have been to use the white color for the Latin letters, making them more prominent and visible given that they're the most widely used in Lebanon. The Arabic letters could have been colored in orange or yellow to fit the Topaz color scheme, or maybe blue to create more contrast. In fact, any color of the rainbow would probably look better than this light green one.
Crowded Keys
 The E72's Arabic keyboard is crowded, to a point where our eyes start aching when we try to look at it. If a user isn't accustomed to the keyboard layout on an E71, he will find the E72's a total headache to use. But just how crowded is this keyboard? We dug out for our calculator to help us do the math:
10 different keys have 4 symbols on each of them
11 different keys have 3 symbols on each of them
14 different keys have 2 symbols on each of them
4 different keys have 1 symbol on each of them.
That totals into 39 keys with 105 symbols! Just imagine looking at a 5.3cm x 2.8cm rectangle with 105 symbols printed on it. We tend to believe there's a threshold of 80-90 characters that our brain and eyes can process, and the E72 certainly goes above that threshold. The only way the E72's Arabic keyboard could have been more crowded is if it also had the numbers in Arabic.
By looking for the places where this keyboard went wrong, we found these issues:
- Un-intuitive text entry mechanism: for a regular user, looking at this keyboard will be like a 2-year old trying to understand how a spaceship works. Take for example the keys with 4 symbols on them. The lower right one is for the Latin text entry. The lower left one is for Arabic text entry. Still simple. The upper right symbol can be inserted by tapping and holding the key, or by pressing Fn followed by the corresponding key, it works both in Arabic and in Latin modes.The upper left symbol can be inserted only by tapping Shift followed by the corresponding key, and it only works in the Arabic mode. Complicated? We thought so. But wait, there's more, the ؛ key which is on the upper right is the only key in its position that works only in Arabic mode.
- Punctuation duplicates: we don't need a separate key for the question mark in Arabic and Latin (? and ؟) or the comma (, and ،). One key and symbol for them is enough for a mobile phone's keyboard.
- Lack of organization: if you're going to make a crowded keyboard, at least try to organize it, for example put the ي and ى on the same key, and the ت and ة on the same one.
- Non-necessary Arabic letters: while we do understand the need for there to be a separation between ة and ت , we can't understand why there are dedicated keys for لا , لإ , لأ , لآ , which are simply the combination of two letters. And while we're at it, we don't get the point of having the أ , إ , ؤ , ئ , آ , characters either: it's not like we're Qays Ibn Al Mulawwah and we're writing Majnoun And Layla on the E72! All of these could have easily been removed and added in the software under a symbol category or intelligently inserted by a combination instead of having their dedicated keys. We would explain their presence on a full computer keyboard, but on a small mobile phone, instead of improving the usability, they're making it incredibly impossible to find the letter you're looking for.
Conclusion
Despite how much we have liked everything that the E72 offers, we can't bring ourselves to like its keyboard. Our own advice, if you're looking for an E72 unit to buy in Lebanon would be to try to find one with a Latin-only keyboard if you don't type in Arabic (which we're sure most of the Lebanese population doesn't need anyway). Below is a comparison image between the E71 with a French Latin-only keyboard and the E72 with its Arabic keyboard. We'll let you be the judge of which one is easier to use.
Along with the N900 and the N97 Mini, the Nokia E72 is definitely one of the most anticipated handsets from Nokia at the end of this year. This new mobile device represents the pinnacle of Nokia's Eseries expertize and builds on the amazingly large success that its predecessor, the Nokia E71, gathered both in the business and the everyday user crowd. So it is with great eagerness that we welcomed the E72 review unit that Nokia Lebanon sent us to have a detailed look at. Before covering the E72 in intricate details in its complete review, we wanted to highlight today just one issue with it that is easily its most important letdown in our opinion: the Arabic keyboard on it is a mess.
Color Issues
E72 Keyboard 4 IMAGE
The unit we received is a topaz E72, with golden highlights and a beautiful metallic look. It oozes elegance and style and has been attracting eye glances from everyone around us. The only thing hampering this classy feel is the light green color of the Latin letters on the keyboard: we're not the fashion police, but we can't find anyone to agree that light green and topaz are two colors that fit together. Other than the style annoyance, these green Latin letters light up very weakly compared to the white ones and are almost invisible and impossible to differentiate from the white Arabic ones in broad daylight.
E72 Keyboard 2 IMAGE
Given that this is an E72 unit intended for use in the Lebanese market, we understand the inclusion of an Arabic qwerty keyboard on it. What we don't understand is why it is designed as the primary one, whereas the Latin keyboard is just a secondary add-on. As far as experience has showed us, there is a small minority in Lebanon that sends SMS in Arabic or uses their phone in Arabic. The general population tends to either use the phone in English or French, and send SMS in one of those languages or in Latin-letters transliterated Arabic.
Our first suggestion would have been to use the white color for the Latin letters, making them more prominent and visible given that they're the most widely used in Lebanon. The Arabic letters could have been colored in orange or yellow to fit the Topaz color scheme, or maybe blue to create more contrast. In fact, any color of the rainbow would probably look better than this light green one. |
Comments
I would never again buy a local version of a nokia device.
In all honestly, I totally agree! My ex girlfriend bought a Middle Eastern N97 and although it was a real Nokia, it was manufactured in China when mine came from Finland!
Now we have two issues, one is when - if - we had an English keypad mobile, it shouldn't be the firmware of the Arabic language, either a UK copy mobile or not.
Another thing, this should reach Nokia somehow.
Wish if anybody could post a link to website that sells a European version of Nokia E72 that could work in the Middle East networks?
Thanks.
You can buy European Nokias at Khoury Home, if you order them to be European versions. There are also commercial links on the right that link to sites selling E72s
Yep you can do it but it takes a bit of work. The easiest way is to use NSS to change the product code and update. Otherwise you'll have to go down the path of loading custom firmware using Phoenix
2nd China or Finland its the same both are Nokia factories operated and supervised and any faulty device will be replaced under warranty from Nokia Care immediately that taking into consideration that readers didn't take ur advise here and bought an authentic Nokia package.
pathetic really!
2) Faulty devices are replaced, the problem is that Chinese Nokia phones don't have the same built quality as the Finnish ones, no matter what you say
3) The only pathetic thing is you posting comments here, if you're unhappy just pass your way
No, no matter what you delusionally think, they are the same now.
Chill...
well said!!!!!
Quoting vader_lebanon@y ahoo.com:
To return to the E72 keyboard, Rita was absolutely right about some un-necessary Arabic characters that could have been moved to the "CHR" key or other means to un-clutter the keyboard. The second issue is the colour combination on the topaz E72. I have tried the device here in this colour in Cairo and was not able to use it without my eye-glasses, contrary to the ME edition of the E71 or the E75 I'm currently using. I have not been able to find the Zodium Black Middle East Edition of the E72 yet, but tried it few days ago in France. It was really easy to use with the white letters on black keys, a world of difference. Shame about France that only offers the AZERTY model...
It's funny you mentioned Ovi Maps because we were talking about the same thing with Rita, Lebanese Maps are also a bit weird on this as some names are written differently in English (like Dora for the highway exit and Dawra for the city).
But make sure you have a GPRS subscription or it won't work. Note that it doesn't work with WAP
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