Nokia N73 Review - Messaging

Alfredo Padilla
Published on May 04, 2007 Comment on this

Supported Email Services (6.0)

The Nokia N73's email client supports both POP3 and IMAP4 email servers, which means it will work with most email services. It does not have built in support for popular email services like Gmail, AOL and Yahoo, although you may be able to access these services via POP3 or IMAP4 if the service supports it.

Push Email (0.0)
The Nokia N73 does not support any push email services like Blackberry or Exchange server. You may be able to add this functionality in with software that is provided for Nokia's E-Series of phones, however we did not test this as we only review phones as they arrive out of the box.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Nokia N73 does support multiple email accounts. We were able to create 5 different accounts on the phone.

HTML and Attachements (4.0)
The Nokia N73 does not support html email, displaying email in text only. It does support viewing of office documents using the view only version of Quickoffice for Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents and an Adobe viewer for PDF documents. It does not include a manager for zip files. Because the Nokia N73 is a Series 60 smart phone you can extend these capabilities with third party software if you choose.

Email Customizations (2.0)
The Nokia N73 has few options for customizing your email interface. You cannot change the font, size or color of the text displayed. You can add signatures to outgoing emails. We were not impressed with the options given that this is a smart phone.

Time to a New Message (3.85)

To test how easy it is to create a new email message we time how long it takes to go from the home screen to a new email dialogue. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Nokia N73 took an average of 5.2 seconds to reach a new email dialogue. This is significantly worse than other smart phone we have reviewed, including the Treo 750 (2.23 seconds) and the Blackberry 8703e (3.04 seconds). The Nokia N73 is hurt by the fact that launching the messaging application took quite awhile and actually launching a new dialogue once in the application also takes quite awhile.

Email Usability (6.0)
Email on the Nokia N73 is integrated into the messaging application, with a separate mailbox for each email account. These mailboxes are listed at the beginning of the messaging application in addition to folders like drafts, sent and outbox. Selecting one of the email folders will take you to a list of your messages. You can move to other folders by moving left or right on the joystick. This is very similar to how Windows Mobile does things and we appreciate that you don't have to go back to the previous menu in order to get to another folder. In this view the right soft key takes you back to the main messaging interface while the left soft key opens a menu where you can access commands like retrieving email for the account or sorting your messages by date, sender or subject.

Once in a message the dialogue is fairly standard with the cursor starting in the To: field with the Cc: and Subject fields below this. Underneath the fields is the area where you enter the text. You can add a Bcc field via the menu. As with many Series 60 applications the right soft key is assigned to close the application while the left soft key opens an options menu. Using the menu you can add recipients, attachments and access other advanced options. Overall we found the email client on the Nokia N73 to be very usable. We found the email clients on the Blackberry 8703e and Treo 750 to be slightly better organized and easier to use. The Nokia N73 is comparable to the T-Mobile Dash in terms of usability.

Supported IM Services (0.0)
The Nokia N73 does not support any instant messaging services out of the box. You can add this support in using third part software such as Agile Messenger.

MMS Support (7.0)
Multimedia messages are integrated into the Nokia N73's messaging client. All MMS messages come into the same inbox that is used for SMS and beamed files. We liked this integration and as such were all the more dissappointed by the fact that you could not turn an SMS message into an MMS message like on the Treo 750 or Treo 700p. We were pleased to see that you can easily send a photo or video via MMS from the camera or gallery applications.

The actual MMS interface looks identical to the SMS interface with To, Subject and text fields. You can add multimedia content to the message by using the left soft key and choosing insert object from the menu. The menu also gives you access to commands like adding a recipient from your contacts and creating a presentation for your MMS message. Overall we found MMS support on the Nokia N73 to be solid, with the inability to turn an SMS into an MMS the only fly in the ointment.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
To test how well the Nokia N73 interprets smiley faces we sent a test SMS to the phone with four standard smileys. We were dissappointed to find that the Nokia N73 did not properly interpret our smileys as graphical representations but rather left them in text format. This is another place where the N73 lags behind other smart phones like the Treo 750 or Treo 700p.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (6.0)

The SMS/MMS interface is very similar to that of email as you would expect given that the two are integrated into the same messaging program. SMS and MMS messages are found in the inbox folder in the main messaging interface. As with email when you are in the inbox you can move to other folders using left/right on the joystick. Messages are organized in a simple list. The right soft key takes you back to the main messaging interface while the left one opens an options menu that has many of the same functions found in the email interface, including sorting your messages, creating a new one or viewing message details. As with email we found the SMS and MMS interface easy to use and intuitive, albeit not as good as the excellent SMS/MMS client found on the Treo 750 or Treo 700p.

Time to a New SMS Message (2.34)

To test how easy it is to create a new SMS message we time how long it takes to go from the home screen to a new SMS message dialogue. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Nokia N73 took an average of 4.28 seconds to get to a new SMS message dialogue. This is a poor time for a phone, slower than the Treo 750's 2.36 seconds and the Sanyo M1's 2.67 seconds. It is about the same as the Razr V3m, which took 4.58 seconds. As with getting to a new email message the Nokia N73 is hurt in this test by the long time it takes to launch the messaging application.

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