Is Nokia E72 a refinement or a reinvention?

Users of the Nokia E72 have been told to ask themselves whether the new handset represents a refinement of the Nokia E71 or the creation of a new model entirely.

Mike writes for the company’s community site, Nokia Conversations, of his experiences as a former Nokia E71 user after a week of playing with the Nokia E72 and its features, both new and improved on previous handsets.

The new model improves on its predecessor in a number of ways, including raising the maximum data networking speed to ten megabits per second.

However, it is the in-built camera that impresses Mike, as it has raised the image resolution from 3.2 megapixels to a maximum of five megapixels.

The Nokia writer says that he spent a happy half-hour of taking photos and checking emails via the handset, all while waiting to enter a journalists’ preview of the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show.

Exhibits in the show each year typically celebrate the creation of entirely new technology that moves into the future from the devices already on the market, he notes.

But, based on his experiences, Mike calls the Nokia E72 "an example of what can be achieved when you refine, rather than rebuild and start from scratch".

While he asks whether substantial refinement represents innovation, he also suggests that the opposite may be true.

In this way, ‘new’ products introduced to the market may often be seen as differently shaped refinements of those that have been released before.

"So is refinement as important as innovation?" Mike asks his readers to contemplate.