The Nokia E72 has been a long time coming, and fortunately, it did eventually arrive late November. Nevertheless, the heavily anticipated successor to the infinitely popular Nokia E71 has quite a legacy to live up to, both in terms of its functionality, features, and performance. So, with this in mind we thought we’d look at what the press has said about the Nokia E72 since its release. Read on after the jump for more details

QWERTY Keyboard

The Nokia E72 features a distinctly different keyboard to its predecessor, the E71. While both have full QWERTY functionality, making them perfect devices for email and document processing, the E72 does have a much more accomplished and well designed keyboard. Nokia has clearly taken customer feedback into account, as the E72’s keyboard is far superior, offering more tactility and ease of use.

According to Slashgear: “The keys are small – around the size of a tictac, in fact – but their pronounced domed pads and practically perfect tactile feel add up to a ‘board that’s incredibly satisfying to use. We’ve been switching between using the E72 and the Nokia N97 mini, and the key layout of the Eseries device is far preferable.”

Design

The E72 is composed of a solid mat-black plastic body and is edged in a metallic silver - overall, the Nokia E72 is quite a looker, and it certainly picks up a few points, in this department, over its predecessor. We love the way the Nokia E72 looks, it’s kind of like an attractive Blackberry Bold, just with much more functionality and a better QWERTY.

Commenting on the E72’s aesthetics, GSMarena said: “The E72 is bold and impressive, but manages to keep its cool too, as befits a conservative business handset. Armed and dangerous or polite and elaborate - the E72 will be whatever you want it to be.”

Functionality

The Nokia E72 has business and professional users’ in its sights, and judging by the alarming amount of built-in features, functionality, and connectivity it looks like they’ll be scrambling over one another to get their hands on the device.

“The Nokia E72 seems like a space craft communicator. It handles just about every means of communication available today - from voice calls, through video calls, VoIP to texting, email and IM,” concluded the GSMarena review.

Camera

One of the key aspects of the E72 has been the upgrading of the camera to 5 Megapixel. Obviously, cameras aren’t the most important aspect of a mobile, far from it, but they do add certain something that users tend to go for, and we found the E72’s camera a welcome addition - who ever said professionals don’t like taking snaps anyway?

ZOMGitsCJ said: “While it’s not the best camera optics available on a device, the results are pretty impressive, and a heck of a lot better than any Eseries Device before it.”

Overall then, it looks the Nokia E72 is a resounding success. We know a lot of people were very disappointed by how long they had to wait for the device to surface - but, judgig from these reviews, it was obviously worth the wait. In short, whether you’re looking for a professional tool, or just simply a good smartphone, the Nokia E72 is the device for you.