WHAT if the Nokia E7 phone had been launched two years earlier and not two months ago?
I guess today’s smartphone market would’ve been different. People would probably still be hooked to Symbian-powered Nokia devices instead of Apple’s iPhone and the numerous Google Android-powered products.
The Nokia E7 is one of Nokia’s best creations to date, definitely, Nokia’s de facto flagship smartphone and Symbian’s ambassador for the foreseeable future. www.nokia.com.ph
But even if Nokia is no longer the dominant player these days, and is about ready to ditch Symbian for Windows Phone 7, it doesn’t mean the Finnish mobile phone giant has already stopped dishing out attractive Symbian-powered devices.
The E7 is one best example.
In today’s market where smartphones are getting thinner, lighter and packed with more features, Nokia’s E7 comes as a fresh alternative.
Physical keyboard
The E7 features a slide-out physical keyboard that will remind you of the old N97.
With the screen tilted at about 150 degrees, the device is transformed into into a palm-size laptop.
This writer was really impressed with the keyboard. Its 4-row design layout offers one of the best tactile feedback that is fantastic to use despite the short key travel.
It is because of this qwerty keyboard and tilt slide design that Nokia has, quite successfully if I may say, managed to make E7 look “sexier” than any other touchscreen handsets.
You won’t mind showing off this device around: The impeccable all metal construction, rounded edges, thin body (for a side-slide phone) and even the 179-gram weight conspire to turn the E7 into a premium device.
Challenge
While the smooth and silky aluminum body makes the E7 nice to hold, this also makes the device a little difficult to grip.
One also needs some time to master the phone’s opening mechanism otherwise, there’s a big chance that it could slip from your hand (purchasing a protective casing that could secure the device from these sudden drops is a must).
On the bright side, the 4-inch ClearBlack Amoled touchscreen is sharp as well as very responsive.
Launching apps would only require a single tap, and this writer was able to navigate through the various screens and menus with no problem.
There are three home screens in total, which one could customize with various widgets and shortcuts. The main menu of apps is presented in a simple grid format.
Connectors
The E7 has all the connectors one may require for a mobile device. The top features a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, the power/profile key, a mini-HDMI port (behind a plastic cover), and a micro-USB connector with a charge indicator.
The left side of the phone carries a screen lock and unlock slider. While a similar slider, found on the right side is to be used as volume controller.
The device also comes with a dedicated camera key and a hot-swappable SIM card slot, also on the right hand side of the device.
At the bottom of the device is the mouthpiece, as well as microphone and speaker.
The back of the device, on the other hand, lies the fixed focus 8-MP camera, alongside a dual-LED flash, a loudspeaker and a second microphone for active noise-cancellation and stereo sound-recording.
It offers 256 MB of RAM, about 350 MB of phone storage, and 16 GB of internal mass storage.
Latest Symbian
The E7 is poweed by the latest Symbian^3 OS. This touch-centric version of Symbian OS runs much cleaner and is several steps ahead of what users have experienced with the N97.
There was close to no noticeable lag in the E7 operation under usual circumstances, and even during shifting to the slide out keyboard.
The only time this writer noticed any sluggishness was when surfing data-heavy websites.
The culprit must be what’s inside the device: a 680MHz ARM 11 CPU, a Broadcom BCM2727 GPU.
But after spending several weeks with the E7, this writer is convinced that this is one of Nokia’s best creations to date, definitely, Nokia’s de facto flagship smartphone and Symbian’s ambassador for the foreseeable future.
Devoted Symbian fans will likely be unfazed by the official P32,000 asking price for the E7.
Besides they may be getting one of the last few of the best that E-series has to offer on Symbian OS.