Nokia World 2010
Sep 14, 2010, 10:29 AM by Philip Berne
We hit the floor at Nokia World 2010 in London, where Nokia launched a trio of Symbian^3 touchscreen phones.
The Nokia E7, like the Nokia N8, is a serious design departure for Nokia from the sharp Eseries and milquetoast Nseries phones of the past couple years, bringing the two families closer in alignment. At once, I liked the design of the new Nokia E7. It has Nokia's famous build quality, with tight fitting edges and a very solid feel. Maybe too solid, as I had trouble opening the slide with only one hand, but that's a minor complaint.
A bigger complaint is Nokia's unibody construction, which means the battery is not replaceable by the buyer. If your battery dies, you'll have to take the phone in for service. That also means no spare battery on the road. Nokia learned the wrong lesson from Apple on these phones.
The new ClearBlack display is great. It doesn't have the knock-you-off-your-feet pop of Samsung Super AMOLED screens on the Galaxy S Android phones, but it is a fantastic display, and it looked great under the bright lights of the Nokia World show floor. The new display technology basically uses a different placement for the polarizer so that it reflects light and glare better than older displays. Nokia says this helps create deeper blacks and better color contrast.
The keyboard on the Nokia E7 was good. I didn't spend much time typing, but it seemed large and comfortable in my hands-on experience. It didn't blow me away the first time, like HTC's Touch Pro 2 phones, but I don't foresee any problem spending quality time with this QWERTY.
I'm still not impressed with the Symbian^3 interface. Of course, I'll need to spend some serious time with the phone before I make my judgment, but the interface doesn't seem to live up to the promise of the excellent hardware. Even in my brief tour of the phone, it was tough to find simple features, like the dialer or even the camera. Lots of menu digging was required.
Overall, from a hardware perspective, the Nokia E7 seems like a great step forward. If the interface can hold its own for a while, it would be great to see this new flagship device upgradeable to the more contemporary Symbian^4 OS that's just around the corner.
Check out my hands-on video preview of the Nokia E7:
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Comments
X3 is feature phone
"Please stop reviewing our phones based on what you see"
Thank you.
-Nokia
What's with the hate for S^3?
Seriously... the points made against S^3 in the article are very weak:
1) Widgets aren't as customizable as Android:
I wouldn't say that... having widgets that fit on the screen at a uniform size and shape, I'd call that clean and organized. Sure, you can litter your homescreen(s) with every widget under the sun in Android (heck, I've done it with Maemo on my n900), but I actually like having some built-in constraints to make things easier. Point is, the info presented on the widgets is there, in the widget....
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Nokia used to be...
looks nice, but not too different...
I personally like and enjoy S60, and so I am glad to see that Symbian^3 doesn't seem all too different from S60, but I know there are alot of people who, unlike me, will be disappointed.
Also, the battery on the E7, like the N8, is not user-interchangeable. This is one of the worst features of the iPhone... who at Nokia decided this was the way to go?
Just a couple of thoughts to get the discussion started... anyone agree or disagree?
As for S60...I personally like it. I've had my 5800 for over a year now and have come to love S60. It may be plain and minima...
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