Nokia X7 review

Nokia's X7 looks great. But does it end up being too much of a compromise?

The definitive Nokia X7 review
The definitive Nokia X7 review

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The Nokia X7 offers HSDPA and Wi-Fi connections, the former with a top download speed of 10.2Mbps, so internet access on the fly should be no problem.

Nokia x7

The web browser in Symbian Anna loads pages quickly. The TechRadar home page loaded in under 10 seconds for an overview and around 25 seconds for the full home page. Bookmarks can be put onto a home screen for quick access, which is another boost to fast use.

Nokia x7

There's a little on-screen icon you tap to call up a huge set of options that help you make the most of web browsing, including providing quick access to bookmarks.

Nokia x7

There's pinch to zoom support, and text reflowing works well for nearly every website we encountered, keeping the X7 in the same league as the Galaxy S2 in such scenarios.

Flash is supported on the Nokia X7, and we were able to stream content from websites such as BBC iPlayer. It's only Flash Lite 4.0 on offer, so many sites won't load up too well - but it hits the main options nicely, and is a cut above Apple's Flash hatred.

Nokia x7

And there's good back tracking support, with a Back button on the home screen and windows showing your browsing history so you can page through them and flick about.

But all is not quite rosy. Pinching to zoom wasn't always smooth, and Flash video was a bit jerky too thanks to only being the Lite version. Sometimes sound and vision didn't synchronise as a result.

There's a screen resolution issue on the Nokia X7 too – at 360 x 640 nHD it's not the sharpest. Generally we were surprised to find this not a problem, but we did notice it most when web browsing, and in particular when zooming in, because text was a bit on the fuzzy side.

There was also an issue with some web pages sticking themselves in a constant reload loop, something which seems to be a little bit of leftover clunk from the Symbian phones of old.

We also noticed that the Nokia X7 handset got a bit hot when web browsing, and we wonder how good that is for the long-term life of the phone - but then again, that's an issue with plenty of smartphones when the processors get stressed loading a ton of content, so we're pointing our fingers far and wide here.

We think some of these problems are down to software bugs, which might be ironed out over time, but obviously there's nothing that Nokia can do about the screen resolution.