Oct 12, 2011 09:56 AM
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(Updated Oct 12, 2011 09:59 AM)
The good: Premium design; Fantastic QWERTY keyboard; 8-megapixel camera takes excellent pictures and video; Good battery life.The bad: Symbian platform falls short of the competition; Sluggish performance; Low-resolution display; No expansion slot.
The bottom line:** The Nokia E7 has some wonderful qualities, like great hardware and excellent battery life, but ultimately its inferior software trips up this business-oriented smartphone.
Review:*
If you've been a cell phone fan for a while, you might remember the days when theNokia Communicator series was the status symbol of a powerful businessperson. Nokia eventually developed the line into the E series, and its latest flagship model, the Nokia E7, is available now . The company has done a lot to refine the design, and it's running the revamped Symbian 3 operating system. However, a lot has changed since the days of the Communicator.
Design
The Nokia E7 takes a number of style cues from the Nokia N8, which isn't a bad thing in our view since we loved the N8's hardware. The E7 is made of the same high-quality materials-aluminum body and glass AMOLED display-giving it a very premium feel. It's slightly bigger and heavier than the N8 at 123.7mm tall by 62.4mm wide by 13.6mm thick and 176g, but considering that the E7 also manages to fit in a full QWERTY keyboard, it's actually pretty amazing that it's only 0.76mm thicker and 2.54mm longer than the N8.
The E7's glass touch screen measures 4 inches diagonally and has a 640 x 360-pixel resolution. In general, it's clear and bright and you'll have no problem reading what's on the screen. However, with a lower-resolution screen, you're not going to get the same sharpness or definition as on today's qHD, Super AMOLED, and retina displays. The pixels are more visible on the E7, so images and text don't look quite as smooth.
On the bright side, the touch screen is very responsive. Launching apps only required a single tap, and we were able to navigate through the various screens and menus with no problem. There are three home screens in total, which you can customize with various widgets and shortcuts, and the main menu of apps is presented in a simple grid format.
Of course, as we've stated before in our reviews of the N8 and the Nokia C7 Astound, Symbian 3 brings a one-touch user interface that makes it much easier to navigate these phones than previous versions of the operating system. However, it still feels clunky in some parts compared with platforms like iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, so Symbian certainly isn't leapfrogging the competition.
FeaturesAs we noted at the beginning, the Nokia E7 was built with business users in mind. The smartphone supports multiple e-mail protocols, including Exchange ActiveSync, Lotus Notes, and POP3/IMAP accounts, and also offers Cisco AnyConnect SSL VPN support and security solutions for device management, remote wipe, and the like. The smartphone also comes preloaded with a handful of business apps, such as the Quickoffice suite, F-Secure Anti-Theft, and Psiloc World Traveler, a program that helps you manage upcoming trips and provides travel tools like a currency converter and flight tracker.
Speakerphone quality was good. Audio sounded rich, and there wasn't any of the hollowness or echoing that often plagues speakerphones. There was also enough volume that we could hear calls in a noisier environment. We were able to pair the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones for making calls and listening to music.
Conclusions
The Nokia E7 is just another example in a long line of Nokia smartphones in which an amazing piece of hardware is held back by inferior software. Coupled with a high price tag, the E7's appeal will most likely be limited to Symbian fans. For everyone else looking for a business-class device with a QWERTY keyboard, we recommend checking out one of these smartphones instead.
