In which two E75s go head-to-head, one running on Telecom XT, the other on Vodafone 3G.

Nokia’s E75 is a top-notch smartphone.

If you prefer physical keys to an iPhone-style touchscreen, and like a full Qwerty keyboard at that, this is your phone.

Closed, it looks like a relatively snug little 3G phone with a conventional keypad. But slide down the full keyboard, and let the screen auto-reorientate (as it does, quickly) and you’ve got one serious smartphone.

The E75 ($999) even stands a rough chance at peeling away a few BlackBerry aficionados, thanks to the bundled Nokia Mail, which provides real-time, push email that synchronises in real-time with up to 10 email boxes (be they your ISP’s webmail, the likes of Gmail or Hotmail or - thanks to free bundled client software - tied to an office Microsoft Exchange/Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes account).

I’ve tried it setting up Gmail, while a colleague used it to set up a Telecom Broadband email account. In both instances it took only a couple of minutes, as advertised. Assuming your ISP’s participating, you only need to know your email user name and password. If you do, it’s all DIY.

The E-series is more business focussed than the more multimedia-friendly, more expensive N-series (shortly to be upgraded with the N97, which looks something like the E75 - and nothing like the N96 or N95 - but with a hinge, and the addition of a touchscreen keyboard).

But while in my experience N-series phones always take a frustrating beat to refresh any screen, and have shameful shutter lag (their delay recalling early digital cameras) the E75 has snappy menus and, very commendably, takes photos - excellent, 3.2mP photos - instantly.

Audio, video both look crisp, and audio is excellent (a pity then, that Nokia’s iTunes rival, the all-you-can-eat Comes With Music has only made it as far as Australia).

All the 3G mod-cons you’d expect are present and correct including GPS (backed by Nokia’s own Maps software), Bluetooth, and wi-fi.

The E75 feels heavy for its size, and well constructed. The metal edging gives it a pleasingly solid feel, and it’s easily survived a couple of inadvertent spills onto concrete. The Qwerty keyboard is well spaced, and tactile. If you email a lot on the move, or aren’t of the “can txt without looking at the keypad” generation, it’s a breath of fresh air.

All of the above hardware and software features are available for the Telecom iteration of the Nokia E75 (which was released May 29, for $999), and the version you can buy from a Vodafone retailer (due by the end of June; I used a preview model).

In fact, you have to open the cover then remove the battery to see any indication of the difference. Specifically, a brief serial note that the version sold by Vodafone is the E75-1 (which operates on the 900MHz band) and Telecom’s model the E75-2 (which operates on 850MHz). So: no swapping Sim cards with this model.

After using both the E75-1 and E75-2 for a week, I’ve found both handsets offer excellent call quality and volume.
In terms of mobile data, I’ve consistently found Telecom’s version of the E75 faster.

Before we get into the speed charts, the usual provisos: for now Telecom’s new 3G network is mostly empty, giving early XT users that first-people-on-the-new motorway experience. Telecom will turn up the power as more people sign on, but bandwidth is still likely to suffer as it gets shared among more and more traffic (Vodafone already has 500,000 or around a quarter of its customers on its 3G network).

And mobile data speed depends on a bunch of variables, including how close you are to the nearest Telecom (or Vodafone) cell site, the physical obstacles in between, the weather, the state of local backhaul, and traffic loading on either carrier’s network, or the site or service you’re trying to access, at any given time of day.

That notwithstanding, Telecom’s E75 was faster at the three different locations I tested over four days, all around central Auckland.

I tested both E75’s in the phone’s 3G USB modem mode, tethering them to my Lenovo S10 Ideapad netbook, then connected to a local server on SpeedTest.net. I didn’t turn off Skype and every other web app before testing, then carefully hone my comms settings, because that’s not how people roll in real-life.

At NBR Towers in the downtown CBD, the Telecom E75 clocked a 1.31Mbit/s download speed; respectable, if slower than the XT data card I tested the other week (which clocked up to 2.76Mbit/s; see report here).

The Vodafone E75 managed a modest 0.37Mbit/s.

At home in Mt Eden - where I live in a dip and have always struggled with mobile data - the Vodafone E75 crawled during an early afternoon session, barely loading websites (see screen grab above), while the Telecom version of the phone blazed, frequently topping 2Mbit/s than 3Mbit/s - or the fastest I’ve ever achieved from a wireless device, full stop (as a point of comparison, my landline ADSL2+ connection, which sits in a netherworld about 2km equidistant from the nearest exchange and cabinet, usually clocks 7Mbit/s to 8Mbit/s at the same time of day. Technologically, there’s zero comparison of course, but in economic terms, mobile will have to catch DSL, and at a near-ish price, to gain serious traction. Pre-Xmas upgrades will take both XT and Vodafone 3G - both of which currently have a theoretical maximum download speed of 7Mbit/s, to 21Mbit/s by Christmas. As ever, divide by two to allow for environmental factors and get the real-life top speed; by three to get a real-life average speed.)

Obviously, I live closer to a Telecom XT site than a Vodafone 3G one; or at least in a better line-of-site.

Driving up the road to Eden Terrance, I tried again.

XT again impressed, hitting 2.77Mbit/s download (see screen grab above) or enough juice to download an MP3 in 15 seconds.

And Vodafone 3G was gain so-so, hitting 0.35Mbit/s (see screen grab below).

So far, the top speed I’ve achieved on a Vodafone 3G device - albeit back in September - remains 1.9Mbit/s, on a Vodem.