If beauty were only screen deep, the Nokia E7 series would stand a good chance in a Miss Handset competition, even up against the likes of the iPhone 4, HTC Desire S and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.
This QWERTY keyboard phone boasts a four-inch capacitive touchscreen, AMOLED ClearBlack display and sleek brushed aluminium casing that feels great in the hand. It's just under 14mm thick, but fairly lightweight for its size and depth.
A strong double-thumbed push to the tilt and slide mechanism will reveal the well-spaced, rubber-buttoned QWERTY pad. The hinge is a little stiff, but the solidity is appreciated.
The weight is nicely balanced held portrait, landscape or with the keypad out, and the touchscreen isn't overpowered by unwieldy additional keys.
The soft keys it does have are spare and nicely designed, sticking to a keypad lock (which can be easy to accidentally brush with a palm), camera key, volume rocker and menu button.
The colours look brilliant on-screen, despite a fairly low resolution and in all lights. It houses an 8mp LED flash camera and additional front-facing camera for video calling, HDMI-out, and did we mention that gorgeous-for-typing QWERTY keyboard?
This is indeed a sleek handset. A pretty handset. A, dare we say, rather sexy handset. Oh okay, it's pretty much a bigger Nokia N8 with a dab of Nokia N97, but we'll let that slide.
Then you delve a little deeper… and you realise this little pageant contestant probably isn't getting past the swimwear round. You open on a Home screen so cluttered, you're not sure where to look first, in fact, you're not entirely convinced this isn't just the menu for the entire phone.
It's not, and there's even two more Home screens to flick through, each with that pregnant Symbian pause before it finally moves on to the next.
Running Symbian^3, this is supposed to be part of the 'next wave' of Symbian smartphones, but given the announcement that Nokia are pairing with Windows, this handset seems redundant before we even start; like a final attempt to push out a Symbian-powered phone that doesn't drive you insane with its lack of intuitiveness.
It's also having a bit of a personality crisis – is it a PMP? Is it a business phone? It's not really sure what it is and ends up being neither one nor the other… a sort of bland mash of the two.
If you love to see the innards of a phone, tough luck. With a nod to the iPhone, the Nokia E7's battery is hidden away behind the metal casing, with a sliding SIM card tray and few ports. The HDMI-out, micro-USB and 3.5mm multimedia jack are all located at one end of the phone.
Overall it's a well-specced piece of kit, rather let down by the software it runs on, and given that it's debuting at £499 SIM free (you what, Nokia?!) or free on a £35 contract.
Your comments (7) Click to add a new comment
gaz2066
November 5th 2011
7. i got this sent as a replacement to the awfull n8 that kept crashing and locking up and was unable to be cured i was not looking forward despite being assured it was better than the n8 operating system WRONG and after only 2 days this is even worse its going back to vodafone and not touching another nokia again
Alert a moderator
mahipal9
September 13th 2011
6. While the Nokia E7 may be bigger than most devices, both in terms of stature and weight, all in all the extra bulk is well worth it. For a phone that packs this many business and consumer friendly features, there have been relatively few sacrifices- and that’s refreshing in a market where the door policy is often one feature in, one feature out. Few other things it has been mentioned here at :http://techmounal.blogspot.com/2011/09/nokia-e7-class-apart.html
Alert a moderator
beerbash
April 26th 2011
5. I'am a business user. I have had a htc wildfire and a Nokia e72. Symbian is far more superiour than the whole android. The problem is as seen is this review: young reviewers/journalist, as an example; they want contacts for instance connected with facebook etc. Symbian can do that job, but I sure don't want that. I want an easy using multitasking apparatus, easy mailing, easy maps-navigating, easy officedocuments. Multitasking is still a problem in iOS and in Android. Simple menus are also good in iOS, but a problem in android. I hope that Nokia listens to users, not to young gaming journalist, and keeps on using symbian,.
Alert a moderator
noktokdaddy
April 4th 2011
4. @donelt
No, I am not insane- thank you.
But I am not platform-blinkered to see the merits of different OS's. The fact that you are even aware of VM tells me you are way, way above the technical level of a typical smartphone user; You will be able to max out on all that Android can deliver and it may well suit you better than Symbian. I'm guessing you've done your research and I respect your choice.
For most users, the fact that Android still has some App-management and CPU priority issues is important: Some manufacturers have allowed excessive CPU use by what should be background tasks (like scanning for media on startup or when a media card is changed, for example).
Compared to Symbian, Android will not keep the user so informed as to what is open in the background, and will automatically close apps that have been running for longer.
So, if a user runs a twitter app in the background, then opens a game, leaves that in the background, and goes on to leave other apps open, they may well be frustrated when they try return to the twitter app to find it's been closed and they've missed tweets. Or they may want to pick up on that game, but find that Android has closed it and they have to start over.
Automated control of RAM and CPU is fine, but not always desirable or even productive. That's why there are app management apps within Android Market...
And it's certainly not 'real' multitasking as Symbian delivers - although there are issues with that as well, of course.
Alert a moderator
donnelt
April 3rd 2011
3. "unlike Android or iOS, Symbian allows real multitasking
Are you insane?
Android's Dalvik has the most advanced form of multi-tasking yet developed. Complete VIRTUAL MACHINE register-based multitasking.
Alert a moderator
noktokdaddy
April 2nd 2011
2. I noticed the E7 I played the other week was noticeably slower than my N8 - a device that was also a bit laggy at launch. I guess they'll be fixing this with a FW update like the N8 (I believe there has been one already - maybe the review model had not been updated).
Part of what some people perceive as 'lag' is a failure to understand how Symbian works in the first place: unlike Android or iOS, Symbian allows real multitasking, so apps you use routinely should be kept running in the background for immediate, lag-free access. Symbian's superior power-management will ensure you don't drain your battery like other (ahem) more 'modern' OS's will...
And again, like the other two popular OS's Symbian will not decide which background apps should be closed unless really, really pushed - giving you more control of your device.
I have rarely had issues closing apps from the task manager on the N8, so I guess this may be an issue with early-built E7's and will be resolved through FW.
Switching between homescreens on Symbian is not proportional like on, say Android. A swipe will just trigger a switch to the next homescreen using a default transition - you cannot drag between screens in slow-motion. There is also no continuity of background between homescreens or parallax scrolling - this may come later this year with the big PR1.3 update to the whole UI.
I really can't understand why anyone would want more than two screens on any device (iOS excepted, of course - it's just one big homescreen). I'd recommend deleting one and using the central soft-key to fire between screens instantly.
The lack of a portrait qwerty has its roots in Nokia's 16:9 ratio screens - most of which are too narrow for a p/qwert to be useable. This again will be corrected on the next FW update (probably late April - this is Nokia, so who knows!)
Criticism of the native browser is valid, but (again) Nokia will be overhauling this initially in PR1.2 (April) and subsequently on PR1.3 later in the year.
Why waste time complaining about this when not only is a well-publicised update on the way, but Opera and Opera Mini are available now - and for FREE?
Being a Nokia you can even set these as the default browser.
I don't see the logic of relating the E7's built-in battery to that of the iPhone - the two devices are aimed at wholly different user groups. As the review pointed out, the device can go two days one one charge with reasonable use, so the argument for a user-replacable battery is diminished.
Should the device freeze, pressing and holding the power key for 20 seconds will close the device down satisfactorily; I run a lot of Beta software on my N8 and should I suffer a freeze this always gets me out of it.
Alert a moderator
funkmaster
April 2nd 2011
1. why the F would anyone with a choice buy a Nokia ....
Alert a moderator
Tell us what you think
You need to Log in or register to post comments