Nokia is an old hand at Qwerty keyboard-packing smartphones, what with its Communicator series stretching back a dozen or so years. With the E75 though, Nokia has added a neat side-sliding keyboard to a candybar-style business device, enhancing some pretty powerful messaging muscle in a smart, sharp and slim S60 smartphone handset.

The E75, one of Nokia's enterprise range, has the classy look of the attractive but businesslike E51 candybar about it but the slider Qwerty offers a text-tapping alternative to the BlackBerry-alike keyboard of the E71 and E63.

It's loaded with plenty of smartphone functionality, including Wi-Fi and HSDPA connectivity, A-GPS satellite location technology (with Nokia Maps Sat Nav software available), support for internet calling using VoIP, media player functionality, plus extensive email, web-based apps, and other business-orientated features. There's room too for a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash, plus a front-mounted low-res camera for 3G video calling.

Design

Even with its 39-button Qwerty keyboard the E75 is still a trim 14.4mm slim device (the E51 is 12mm thin). It has a 111.8(h) x 50(w) mm footprint closed, extending to 80mm wide when the slider's open, and weighs a reasonable 139g – not bad for such a slide-packing device.

The front panel is tidily arranged, with glossy plastic numberpad keys that are sensibly sized for non-fiddly, responsive manipulation. The screen is a 2.4-inch QVGA (320x240 pixels) 16 million-colour display – OK-sized for a candybar phone, and it looks crisp and bright in action.

An accelerometer is built in, which can be activated so the screen auto-rotates in certain functions to suit the way you're holding the phone. Slipping out the slider numberpad automatically switches the screen to landscape orientation too., ready for typing action.

The main controls are focused around the navigation D-pad, which is slightly raised for firm directional control. Flanking it are four typical Eseries icon-labelled buttons, three of which offer fast access to key functions - Home, Calendar, and Email – plus a Backspace key. With a long press, the three shortcuts can also open up a list of running apps, initiate new emails, or pull up a new calendar entry.

Our only concern would be the proximity of the two softkeys to the Backspace and Home buttons (they're on the same strip of plastic), though in our test period we had few mis-pressing incidents.

Typically for an S60 device the display is set up with a row of shortcut feature icons in a row towards the top of the screen. These six can be user-customised to cater for practically every feature on the phone or to access online sites. The screen also displays rows of information, including messages and calendar entries, Wi-Fi and VoIP status, plus a Search box option.

Like other recent Eseries models, the E75 geared up for downtime use as well as work, with optional customisable 'Business' and more consumer-orientated 'Personal' home screens - featuring different shortcuts, etc. - which you can flick between with a quick button press.

The well-heeled build quality of the metal-edged design extends to the robust but smooth-action, softly sprung slider – it feels very solid and stable in-hand.

The characters on the Qwerty keypad are adequately sized for thumb typing, and arranged in four rows. The rubber feel keys are flat against the surface, though, so they don't stand out individually like some BlackBerrys and other similar devices that have sloping moulded keys – so you need to be precise about where you're pressing.

Keys are clearly labelled, and it's easy handle the Shift button and much used keys like the @ button are among the first tier Qwerty characters.