Alright, so people are buying Android, wasting money on Apple iPhone and following the herd, trying to corner Nokia especially Symbian. And what does Nokia do? It releases Nokia E7 running a cleaner, smoother version of Symbian viz. Symbian^3. And guess what….. It kicks ass!
You might take this as a way of exaggerating but trust me I don’t need to. Nokia E7 speaks for itself. Now what made me get so excited about Nokia E7 running Symbian which Nokia plans to phase out eventually?
Well in one line the answer is, the awesomeness that it provides in terms of software and hardware combined. In my previous article titled “Planning To Buy A Symbian^3 Running Mobile? Things You Should Expect As A User” I already shared as to what made me, a Symbian^1 user, incline to Symbian^3. In this article, I’ll be further discussing about Symbian^3 and more importantly Nokia E7.
Love At First Sight
A sleek design with scratch resistant Gorilla glass display; Nokia ClearBlack display with huge screen of size 4.0 inches (360 x 640 pixels) and just 1 visible key on the face, Nokia E7 steals your heart the instant you unpack it. The limited number of keys gives you almost a full touch experience. Moreover the less the number of keys means more will the space for screen.
What attracts the eye-balls is the sliding QWERTY keyboard. Just slide the screen gently and you see a full fledged beautifully lit QWERTY keyboard. The combination of alphabets with white backlight and keys/symbols with yellow backlight is just plain elegant. And when it lights up in the dark, that is the moment when you forget about your girlfriend and fall in love with Nokia E7 😉
I’d say Nokia E7 is one mobile phone I have come across which truly gives the pleasure of a 4 inches touch screen as well as a full fledged QWERTY keyboard. We know Nokia is good with hardware and it reflects in Nokia E7.
Initial Thoughts
Soon after unpacking it, I couldn’t resist using it. Instead of putting it to charge, I started exploring it! Been waiting to use Symbian^3 for a long time 🙂
The first impression was of touchscreen. It’s sensitive, really sensitive to your fingers. Unlike S60v5 devices which came with resistive touchscreen, Nokia E7 comes with AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. Something Nokia users have been waiting for a long time. Had Nokia come up with S60v5 devices with capacitive touchscreens then phone models like 5230, 5800, etc would have been hit sales beyond imagination. Anyway that didn’t happen and I am happy Nokia did include it in Nokia E7.
Setting Up E7
Moving on, setting up the device for use is easy. Using Nokia Transfer I transferred all the contacts, pictures, settings, etc to E7 and was using it as the primary phone in no time. So all those who think it is easy to setup an Android, Apple or blackberry device, well Nokia is easy to setup as well. No qualms in this area.
Using Symbian^3
Having used Symbian^1 for some time, it was very easy for me to navigate and use Symbian^3 OS. The new OS has a lot of improvements, which I shared in my previous article but if you have used Symbian before you will find Symbian^3 fairly similar and easy to use. The structure of menu is almost the same. Menu’s, sub-menu’s, etc are all the way they are in earlier version of Symbian. The focus has been “the looks”.
This being said, there are lot many new “taps”, force feedback options, etc which will keep you busy for some time 😉
Apart from the revamped UI, what I really appreciated what the widgetized home-screen. You are allowed to add widgets to home-screen which, if the app supports, are automatically updated using Internet connectivity and latest info is displayed right on the home-screen, eliminating the need to open that app. One tap less is One second saved!
Nokia E7 Performance
Nokia E7 comes with a 256 MB Ram. Although this is something not to boast about but it’s definitely better than what S60v5 devices had to offer. I had a bunch of applications running in the background including Gravity, Nokia Email Client, Music Player, Opera Mobile (which are categorized as “Memory Hog”) and didn’t notice any lag with normal functioning of the device.
The part wherein Nokia E7 lags is the processor. It has a 680 Mhz processor which is pretty much oudated in a time when mobile phone’s are coming with 1 Ghz processors. Remember the better the processor the more responsive your phone is.
This being said the 2 functionalities that make Nokia E7 stand out are:
- A dedicated 3D graphics accelerator which allows you to run graphic intensive games like Angry Birds on your mobile. It is a pleasure to play games on Nokia E7.
- USB On-the-go support allowing you to attach a USB device with your phone and transfer data to and fro with needing a computer!
Technical Specifications For The Geeks!
There are some features that Nokia E7 brings along. I believe they are worth mentioning to those who look for more than just what appears on the outside. Here’s the list:
- Dimensions – 123.7 x 62.4 x 13.6 mm
- Multi-touch input method
- Pinch to zoom
- 3.5mm jack
- 16 GB storage (No slot for external memory card)
- 256 MB RAM
- 3G – HSDPA (10.2 Mbps), HSUPA (2 Mbps)
- WLAN
- Bluetooth – v3.0 with A2DP
- Comes with USB v2.0
- Supports USB charging
- Camera
- Primary: 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, fixed focus, dual-LED flash
- Secondary: VGA
- 720p video recording @ 25 fps
- TV-out (720p video) via HDMI and composite
- Li-Ion 1200 mAh (BL-4D) battery
- Symbian Anna OS (Upgrade is available)
- USB On-the-go Support
Final Say
I have been using Nokia devices for a long time now. From Nokia N72 to Nokia 5800. There haven’t been much changes in symbian releases besides the basic performance tweaks however with Symbian^3 OS, Nokia has finally given it’s users something new, something better, something the users should have got a long time back. But It’s never too late to be who you might have been, Nokia E7 has hit the market, comes with a lot of potential and I hope that those who have left Nokia come back to the den and see a lot has changed, improved.
Pictures Say A Thousand Words
Check out the pictures of Nokia E7 I clicked. Seeing these you’ll get an idea as what it look like.
I hate symbian.