Is Nokia E72 worse than its predecessor?

I’ve played recently with the Nokia E72 (sold on Amazon unlocked), the successor to one of the best sold business smartphones on market, the Nokia E71. Even if it isn’t a big upgrade people were waiting for the E72 for quite some time, as they did befor for, you guessed, the E71. Some manufacturing problems got through to E72, that’s why it got delayed over and over again but now it’s in the shops or in carrier’s offers.

Pros and Cons of Nokia E72

So, I’ve got to play with it for a few hours plus gathered some input from my friend and now can make a list of the things I like about it and what not. Here it is:

• it’s speedier than the E71 thanks to the 60% increase in CPU frequency and that shows especially when loading Ovi maps and Opera Mini
• digital camera is better but still not great
• S60 v3.2 with Feature Pack 2 adds some nice menu animations but no core functionality changes here
• body seems to be worse build than the E71, especially the back cover and shortcut keys (you can see some LEDs lit between them because they’re too spaced one from another)
• battery life is a smaller than the E71, but the CPU speed increase is worth it
• the plastic parts of the keyboard seem cheap, but it might be a matter of taste

Nokia E72, black-silver model

Per total I can say I’m cured as I don’t intend to upgrade from my E71 anymore. For me the E72 looses where it predecessor won many fights: build quality and I don’t understand why, as the starting price was similar o the previous model when it arrived. I just hope Nokia does something about this and this problem doesn’t affect my favorite, the N900 Internet tablet.