The Nokia E72 just keeps on impressing us here at ZCJ.
One feature I’m particularly loving, is the built-in A-GPS and Compass features on the E72.
Admittedly, in my first impressions I wasnt sure of the GPS performance on the E72. It seemed to take quite a while to get a lock on. But thankfully, Steve Litchfield told me to check if my A-GPS settings were switched off, and sure enough somehow they were (They are ‘on’ by default, so it might have switched itself ‘off’ because I was on roaming at the time).
Switched it on, and boy what a difference it made. The E72 takes about a minute or two to get a proper lock-on now, with A-GPS enabled (from a cold start). This depends on Weather Conditions and Signal strength though (whether you’re under a clear sky or indoors, etc). From a warm-start it takes just a couple seconds. Very impressive, I must say. Once it gets a lock on, its pretty much stays locked-on strong until you switch it off. It’s worth noting that to use the A-GPS feature, you need to have a wireless Data Plan such as GPRS, Edge or 3G active.
The Built-in Compass really is a God-sent feature. It makes Navigating the Map a lot more easier and less complicated, since Ovi Maps orients itself with the Compass automatically. There is no stand-alone compass application though (its only built into the onboard Ovi Maps v3), just like on the Nokia N97. The compass needs to be calibrated each time you start Ovi Maps, which is a bit of a pain. To add to that, sometimes it ‘loses orientation’ during navigation and then has to re-calibrate itself which can be annoying since it happens often. Not very often, but often enough to mildly annoy you.
Since the E72 uses the same Ovi Maps as other devices we’re not going to go into detail on the Software itself. That being said Ovi Maps itself, has been greatly improved in its version 3 variant, which is what ships with the E72. Our unit had 3 months of free Drive and Walk Navigation included, but it might vary according to your Region. Keep in mind that the included free navigation packs are for the region you bought the device in. So if you, say, bought the E72 in Singapore, you wont be able to use the free Navigation for Indian Maps, or any other country other than Singapore.
Navigation otherwise, is a paid-for service. With Google launching free Google Maps turn-by-turn Navigation on their Android devices, we wish Nokia would make Ovi Maps Drive and Walk Navigation Free (and AllaboutSymbian agrees with us too).
Ovi Maps also has a synchronization feature, so you can view your saved locations (or ‘favorites’) online on the Web Build of Ovi Maps, and add new favorites or edit them and sync them back to the Mobile Client. This can help tremendously, especially if you’ve moved to a new city (like I did) and are trying to find places.
Coming to GPS Specifically, as we said the GPS reception is pretty good on the E72. It has all the usual GPS apps that accompany it, as previous GPS-equipped models in Nokia’s Lineup. One particular thing I noticed had changed, was the GPS Data app no longer allows you to see satellite status, unless you already have a lock-on. Strange, as the only time I personally wanted to see Satellite status was when I couldnt get a lock-on.
Once you go get a lock-on though, you can see your satellite status, along with other things like Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, speed,etc.
Apart from that, the Nokia E72 has basically the same features as Nokia’s other GPS-Enabled Symbian S60 Devices.
Here’s a short video, just to give you a feel of how the Compass and Ovi Maps looks & feels like, on the Nokia E72 :
Are you thinking about getting an E72 ? Have any questions about its GPS or Compass features that we might have missed ? Do let us know in the comments y’all !
Clinton is currently based in New Delhi, India and is executive editor for UnleashThePhones. He is responsible for all editorial decisions, and covers all forms of Mobile things.
Cj is addicted to caffeine, social media, and technology. Always up for a good conversation, you can reach him through the contact form, his website, on Google Plus 
or on Facebook or Twitter: Follow @clintonjeff
Comments (20)
I plan to buy this phone, but a friend who owns it says:
* she needs to restart the phone every single day
* the phone is unable to handle multitasking
* the nav pad and space key often freeze
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks.
We can only really speak for the E72 unit we got to review.
- We honestly did not have any problems that required us to Restart the phone very often (if at all).
- The E72 seems to handle Multitasking very well compared to it's Nseries counterparts (but is admittedly not as good at doing it, as the E71 was, due to it's lesser amount of RAM).
- Our unit didnt have any spacebar problems. That being said, we've heard a lot of people complain about the Space Bar sometimes missing a keypress or two, or stop working completely untill you restarted the device. This seems to be a Software bug on SOME region handsets though. This would probably be fixed in the next firmware update, so if that's a problem we'd advice you wait until that happens to purchase the E72 :)
Hope that helps !
I recently purchased the phone and updated to latest firmware (23.002). Now I have an entirely different issue. I was wondering if you experienced anything like this with your unit.
The problem is as follows:
I use a WLAN connection at home for inernet/data related activities on the phone. I use a WPA2 pre-shared key to connect. I have configured the access point on the phone and am able to use it once in a while. But most of the times I get an "Invalid server name" error message.
Any ideas?
Cheers!