Review: Nokia E7…

– the Businessman/woman’s phone

Nokia E7

Let me set the record straight. I thought after my first Nokia review [Nokia N8], the guys would refuse to send me another phone to review, but I guess they like my honesty.

So here are my thoughts on the Nokia E7.

I was a little hesitant to test out the phone after my horrible review of the N8 but surely Nokia had something up their sleeves. Right?! Yes they did. They added a QWERTY keyboard and removed the bulky camera back that they had on the N8. No more worries about injuring the phone while just trying to fit it into your pocket.

Overall in terms of look and feel, the E7 is an improvement on the N8 any day. Though a little on the heavy side, I give it the benefit of the doubt due to the QWERTY keyboard. Smooth feel as well. Aluminium all around as well as glass Amoled screen which did with stand a few urr falls. No cover this time around, so no idea how that would fit in. One slight problem, if you didn’t see the instructions on how to slide the phone up to display the keyboard you may get a youngling [meaning my younger family members] trying to push open the wrong side of the phone. Wonder if in time that would be a problem with the slide mechanism. [Or in my fidgety state if I slide it open once too often would I break it?!]

I fell in love with the feel of the QWERTY keyboard. No idea why as I have been using a touch screen phone recently but the keyboard just felt so smooth. The top row of keys [Q-P] may be a problem with ‘big fingered’ people as your thumbs tend to hit against the top half of the phone. But its something you can work around.

Sadly though the E7 still runs Nokia’s Symbian^3. This for me is a no-no. Especially if I want the phone to keep up with everything that I do. Symbian in all honesty is old, even though it has been updated over the years. It sadly shys away from the current competition that of Android, RIM and Apple. Something that the guys at Nokia must be really worried about. It also makes the phone ‘difficult’ to work with. Reason for inverted commas, is that with time or a few days [like me at least a week] people learn to adapt and learn to use what the phone has to offer.

Setting up the phone is easy enough, but every time you want to connect to the Ovi store it asks for your password and if your phone completely switches off or reboots it asks for your email password. Can be really painful and tiresome.

Saying that though, one needs to remember this is a business phone and the email set-up is easy to use and pretty functional for those people who are attached to working all the time.

The social integration programme they have for the phone started of as something pretty neat but ended up also failing. Being able to connect Twitter, Facebook and other Social Networks on one application is an instant key to success, but the application continously asked to be signed in and there was no notifications when people tweeted you etc. Pretty bothersome for a person like me always socially connected.

But again it is a business phone and most probably that really is not an important feature to the target market.

The camera was beautiful and Nokia has not stepped down on that one leading from the N8.

Another little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the free navigation on the Nokia.Without a doubt Ovi maps has to be one of the nest navigation apps on a smartphone.

Overall the E7 rates: 7/10

Some major room for improvement still from Nokia if they want to compete with the likes of the smart phones.

Nokia E7