Nokia E7 review: Open for business

Business as usual for the Eseries is a cliché – thank you very much. But the kind that makes the world feel right. The Nokia E7 could’ve been just another Eseries phone. Oh well, that wasn’t meant to be. The latest is implicitly the greatest but, in the case of the E7, the latest may simply be the last.

   
Nokia E7 official photos

Symbian is just about to be knocked off the top-spot as the market-leading smartphone platform. Worse yet, while loyal users are still sitting on a fence about replacing their E71/E72s Nokia is deciding whether to euthanize Symbian. Question marks have been hanging over the platform’s approach to touchscreen since day one. And now it’s got WP7 at its very doorstep. It’s the worst of times for the Nokia E7. But it’s up to it to show that the Eseries are still open for business.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Penta-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA
• Anodized aluminum unibody
• 4" 16M-color ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
• Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display
• 8 megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash
• 720p video recording @ 25fps
• Symbian^3 OS
• 680 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 256 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• microHDMI port 720p TV-out functionality
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
• Digital compass
• 16GB of on-board storage
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
• DivX and XviD video support
• Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port with USB On-the-go
• Flash and Java support for the web browser
• Stereo Bluetooth 3.0
• Good quality audio
• Smart and voice dialing
• Office document editor preinstalled

Main disadvantages

• Symbian^3 is still behind Android and iOS usability standards
• Ovi store content is inferior to Android market and App Store
• Fixed-focus on an 8 megapixel camera is just wrong
• Camera interface is decidedly outdated
• Battery is not user-replaceable
• No microSD card slot

Now, Nokia reconfirmed their commitment to Symbian in the short-term, but that doesn’t mean much. If the platform is to be scrapped, users will learn it the hard way when regular updates stop coming in. Occasional bug-fixes is the best they can hope to get. And good software support is among of the main reasons why people still choose Nokia.

However, how much short-term can stretch depends on the success of the current Symbian^3 devices. So if the Nokia E7 does at least as well on the market as the N8, it might as well buy the platform a few extra years.

  
Nokia E7 at ours

As you can see from the lists above, the Nokia E7 is basically a larger N8, trading the camera bulk for a a larger and better display and a full QWERTY keyboard. To be honest though, when we reviewed the N8 it was mostly the camera we were delighted with. Then, that was five months ago and the bar is set higher now.

Well-stuffed box

Nokia made it a habit of delivering their high-end smartphones in well stuffed boxes and we were happy to find that the E7 is no exception. All the cables you might possibly need are supplied so you will need to spend on nothing extra, except perhaps a carrying case.

You have the mandatory charger, manual and data cable, which can also be used for charging.

 
The box is brimming with content

Next on the list is the cable to use the USB-on-the-go feature on your Nokia N8. It’s a slightly modified microUSB jack on one end and a regular female USB port on the other. By the way Nokia has widely improved the range of supported devices compared to the N8, but more on that later.

You also get a miniHDMI cable, which you can plug directly into your HDTV and start streaming content from your E7.

Finally, there’s the one-piece headset and some leaflets. There’s no microSD card, of course as the E7 has no memory slot.

Nokia E7 360-degree spin

The E7 is a big phone and no one ever tried to keep it secret. Even Nokia chose to be casual and relaxed about it in their official announcement. In our books, 123.7 x 62.4 x 13.6 mm and 104.9 cc of volume is certainly big but in the communicator form factor actual handling is more important than size. And the E7 has nothing to be ashamed of in that department.

Big is big but thin is thin. The slim waistline is remarkable for a side slider and a boost to pocketability.

   
The Nokia E7 sized up against the Nokia N8 and the Apple iPhone 4

Quite understandably, the Nokia E7 is also a pretty heavy device, at 176 g, but that’s a price we’d gladly pay for the metal chassis and excellent build quality.

Design and construction

Above the display is a centrally placed earpiece, with a video-call camera on its right side. On the left are the ambient light and the proximity sensors.

The video-call camera and a bunch of sensors above the display

Below the display is the solitary menu key. There was no room for hardware call keys and a back button here, which is a bit of a pity. A proper back key is a great boost to usability, especially given the multi-layer UI of Symbian^3. We guess, you get used to that eventually.

The menu key is the only button on the front

The top of the Nokia E7 features the power key, which also handles screen lock and the ringing profiles. The HDMI port, the charging microUSB port and the 3.5mm audio jack are here too. Of the three apertures only the HDMI port is hidden under a small plastic lid to keep dust and dirt away.

The microUSB on the other hand is complemented by a tiny LED that indicates charging.

 
There are three jacks on the Nokia E7 top

The Nokia E7 HDMI port supports 720p TV-output which – combined with DivX and XviD support and the Nokia big screen app - allow the E7 to rival your home media entertainment center.

The Nokia E7 left-hand side packs the screen lock/unlock slider, which is reasonably large and comfortable to use.

 
The screen lock slider is pretty decent

However, we can’t say the same about the slider on the right that’s supposed to replace the volume rocker. We found that way too small and generally pretty uncomfortable to use.

The dedicated camera key and the SIM card slot are also on the right.

 
The SIM card slot, the camera key and the awkward volume slider are on the right

The bottom of the Nokia E7 features nothing but the mouthpiece. Unlike the N8, there’s no support for legacy Nokia chargers on this one.

There’s not much to see on the bottom

The back panel of the E7 is where most of the downgrade took place. The 12 megapixel autofocus camera had to go in exchange for an 8 megapixel fixed-focus unit and the powerful xenon flash was replaced by a far less impressive dual LED.

 
The E7 8 megapixel fixed focus camera lens and dual LED flash

The sacrifice seems justified. It’s the Eseries flagship meaning it’s targeting a different set of users. And Nokia didn’t obviously want two of their finest killing each other.

The loudspeaker is also at the back, along with the second microphone used for active noise cancelation and stereo sound recording.

The Nokia E7 has the same 1200 mAh LI-Ion BL-4D battery as the N8. However the quoted battery times are different here: you get up to 480 hours (compared to 400 hours) of standby and up to 9 hours of talk time (vs 12h 30 min). Real-life performance is actually lower than what the N8 offers. The E7 lasted only two days of fairly heavy use.

In our dedicated video playback test, the Nokia E7 lasted 5:40h of constant video playback in our dedicated battery life test. The N8 managed 6:20h but the E7 battery has a bigger screen to worry about.

Once again, the battery isn’t user-replaceable (well, not easily, anyway) so carrying a second one in your pocket for longer spells without a charger is not an option.

ClearBlack display is impressive

If you have been keeping track you would know we like the Nokia N8 for its design too. With an all-metal unibody, nice curvy lines and large ClearBlack AMOLED screen there’s little that can possibly go wrong with the E7 too.

And even though there’s a full keyboard folding below the display, the Nokia E7 still looks nearly as thin as the N8. We cannot give it anything but excellent marks on exterior.

Much like the N8, the Nokia E7 will be available in a few bright colors, in addition to the regular silver and dark grey versions. With Blue, Orange and Green, Nokia will be looking beyond the usual corporate demand.

The Nokia E7 has a 4” ClearBlackAMOLED display of nHD resolution. The bezel around it is on the wide side, but the screen is still impressive enough to get all the attention.

 
The 4” ClearBlack AMOLED screen

Not only does the Nokia E7 4” screen represent a size upgrade over the 3.5” unit on the N8, but it also packs the new ClearBlack technology that we appreciated so much on the Nokia C6-01.

  
The ClearBlack technology makes a great display even more impressive

And just as the C6-01, the E7’s CB AMOLED display is keen to impress with image quality. Class-leading black levels, ultra-wide viewing angles and good color rendering are its strongest assets. There’s a noticeable warm cast to the whites, but we can’t say it’s too bothersome. Still thanks to that you won’t see any pure white on the screen – it’s rendered more like beige so if color accuracy matters to you, you’d better scratch E7 from the shopping list.

  
The E7 screen even has a slight edge over Super AMOLED in terms of viewing angles and contrast

Sunlight legibility is top-notch so you won’t have any trouble using the Nokia E7 under direct sunlight. It was the last frontier for AMOLED to conquer.

  
The Samsung I9003 Super Clear LCD stands no chance against the E7 display

And for Nokia, the last limitation to overcome is screen resolution. Just like the rest of the Symbian^3 gang, the Nokia E7 screen has nHD resolution, 360 x 640 pixels. You won’t notice pixels going around the UI, but the difference to FWVGA droids and the iPhone 4 Retina screen is noticeable when viewing images/documents or browsing the web.

  
Nokia N8 vs. Nokia E7 (right)

As we’ve come to expect from a Nokia capacitive screen, the sensitivity and vibration are pretty impressive. Now there are hardly any capacitive units to have response issues, but Nokia has a certain edge over competitors as far as haptics are concerned.

  
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S vs. Nokia E7 (right)

The thing is so well tweaked that it brings a notable improvement in user experience. It almost feels as if vibration is always coming from right under your finger, instead of being sourced from the same place every time.

  
Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL (left) vs. Nokia E7 (right)

Slider and keyboard

As customers demand slimmer and slimmer phones with every new generation, designing side sliders becomes and increasingly difficult task. In the Nokia E7, you just can’t help but admire the fact that the phone is nearly as slim as the N8.

That and the actual form factor make sliding the Nokia E7 open a tricky task. It’s roughly the same construction used on the N97: the sliding bit has a massive hinge that allows it to pop open, tilted for comfortable use.

You don’t slide up as in most other phones but rather push down the side of the screen. When the upper part lifts up enough, the spring assisted hinge will take over and complete the move.

It takes a pretty strong push and the first few times we tried, we had the feeling that we are going to catapult the phone with our thumbs so be careful here.

  
Operating the stiff E7 slider mechanism takes some time getting used to

It’s about the same experience you get with the Desire Z, but the hinge feels a lot more solid and less likely to get damaged with use.

  
The hinge seems fit to last

But once you are past the tricky slide-up you get yourself a nice comfy keyboard with four rows of rubbery, tactile and well-spaced keys. The keys have a rather short stroke but that’s probably the only thing to dislike. The backlighting is impressive, so is craftsmanship.

  
The QWERTY keyboard is a joy to use

With so much space available it was probably easy for the Nokia designers to create such a good keyboard but that doesn’t take away anything from the E7.

The general build quality of the Nokia E7 is excellent. With reinforced glass on the front and extremely durable aluminum casing the phone is built to last. Numerous tests have proven that getting the thing scratched isn’t an easy thing to do.

  
Handling the Nokia E7

The ergonomics of the device are commendable too. The slider takes some time getting used to but the hinge feels durable and the screen tilt is quite comfortable.

The Symbian^3 user interface

Symbian^3 is a much needed Spring-cleaning and polishing of the Symbian touch interface. Most of that has been left behind and the Symbian that the Nokia E7 uses is pretty touch-centric. Text input with a virtual keyboard is still a pain, but the E7 has a great physical keyboard so that’s not a big issue.

We put the Nokia E7 through its paces on video and here it is:.

Changes in Symbian^3 are both visual and functional and the homescreen is the most evident change. It consists of three panes, which you can fill up with widgets and reshuffle as you see fit. You can delete panes you don’t need but you can’t add more than three.

   
Symbian^3 comes with a new homescreen

You might notice that the homescreen panes start scrolling only after you have completed your swipe across the screen but that’s how it was designed to be and not some lag. Some of the widgets are side-scrollable and the phone waits to see if you want to use them or skip to the next screen.

We’re hearing that Nokia is working on an update for the Symbian^3 interface, so things might get even better soon.

  
The widget catalogue • re-ordering widgets

Anyway, if you want immediate response you can scroll them by tapping the three dot symbol at the bottom of the screen.

The main menu structure is unchanged, retaining the hierarchical folder structure. This comes in contrast to Android, and mostly iOS, where you get a flat menu structure with all icons located on scrollable screens.

Now you are free to rearrange icons as you see fit so you might go for placing them all in the main folder and get a flat-ish menu system from Symbian^3 too. A list view mode is also available but that involves much more scrolling and that’s why we preferred to leave things in grid.

  
Not much has changed in the main menu

The task manager shows screenshots of the running apps, instead of just icons. You also need only a single click to kill them this time. As a downside, the task manager manages to fit only three apps on the screen and you often have to scroll to the one you want.

 
The refreshed Task manager • only three apps at a time fit on the screen

The slide can be set to lock the screen or just go back to the homescreen when you close it and to open an app (e.g. the message editor) when you open it.

The performance of the Symbian has also been taken up a notch with the ^3 version. The Nokia E7 feels snappy most of the time, with lags noticeable only when dealing with heavy apps or when there are a lot of apps running in the background.

And even though heavy multi-taskers will frown at the 256MB of RAM, the only time we got an “Out of memory” error was when browsing a heavy web page with Flash on it (and we’re inclined to blame it on the plug-in).

Unfortunately, creaking old bits of software (like the browser) are not befitting a modern platform.

Finally, we have to point out that Symbian^3 is less inclined to skimp on the eye-candy as opposed to its predecessors. There are icons bumping and revolving, menus being opened with a zoom in and out effects and the occasional fading in and out.

That’s again not quite up with the best, but considering that after some time too much effects become a nuisance we won’t be taking too many points away here.

Phonebook is pretty good

The Nokia E7 comes with a fully functional phonebook, which can easily be synced with your exchange account. Symbian has been offering users virtually unlimited phonebook capacity and excellent contact management for quite some time but has been revamped with some social networking integration.

  
The E7 phonebook is pretty good

Contact details are displayed in two tabs. The first gives a summary of the contact info – a quick shortcut to call the primary number and then several lines, each of which groups similar info (e.g. tapping the “Message – 5 numbers” line lets you pick which number to send the message to).

The second tab just lists all available info sorted by type (names, phone numbers, email and so on). This tab isn't structured so it takes a bit more scrolling to find what you need.

  
Viewing a contact

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name. You can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

Searching is quite clever – an incomplete keyboard lets you type out the contact name and unneeded letters disappear (e.g. “X” is hidden if all contacts with “X” have been filtered out already).

Selecting some of your contacts as favorites moves them to the top of the displayed list. This saves you quite a lot of scrolling.

 
Marking a contact as favorite moves it on top of the list

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like.

You can assign personal ringtones and videos to individual contacts. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

  
Editing Dexter's details

A really nice touch when editing a contact’s details is the option to enter their address by locating it on a map.

The social network integration includes Facebook and Twitter, which should be fine for the vast majority of users. However you will need to go an extra step to check out your contact’s status and then another one to see their profile. We agree it might have created a mess if that was all added to the already lengthy phonebook profile but one of those extra steps is probably redundant.

 
Checking out the Silver Surfer Facebook profile through the phonebook

Excellent telephony

Making and receiving calls is vital for a business phone and the Nokia E7 is a champ at it. We took it to a place with very poor reception (the signal strength indicator was at one bar) yet the E7 didn’t miss a beat – no disconnected calls, not even gaps in the audio.

  
The in-call screen • Nokia E7 supports smart dialing • There’s well tuned voice dialing too

The audio was loud enough and clear at both ends – thanks to the noise-cancelling mic of course.

Smart dialing is available on the E7 and is practical as ever. You just punch in a few letters from the desired contact’s name and select it from the list that comes up to initiate a call.

Another option that the E7 offers is voice dialing. It’s activated by pressing and holding the call key on the home screen and is fully speaker-independent. As far as we can tell performs greatly, recognizing all the names we threw at it.

In noisier environments though, its effectiveness might suffer. Bear in mind too, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, the system will dial either the default number or the first in the list.

The final option for starting a call is via the Favorites widget on your homescreen.

Thanks to the proximity sensor the screen turns off automatically when you hold the phone next to your cheek during a call. The E7 also has the neat accelerometer-based feature that lets you mute the ringer by turning the phone face down.

The Nokia E7 sat our traditional loudspeaker test. The phone managed an Average result, which while not perfect for a business phone, still puts it ahead of some of the high-end competition. More info on the test, as well as other results can be found here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Apple iPhone 4	65.1	60.3	66.2	Below Average
BlackBerry Torch 9800	65.9	65.8	65.5	Below Average
Motorola MILESTONE 2	66.5	63.6	74.9	Average
Nokia E7	66.6	62.0	75.7	Average
Nokia C7	66.6	65.8	75.9	Good
HTC Desire HD	69.7	66.6	78.3	Good
Nokia N8	75.8	66.2	82.7	Very Good
HTC Desire	76.6	75.7	84.6	Excellent

Messaging king

Nokia E7 is the new business flagship from the Finns and as such it’s all about messaging. Unlike the trio of Symbian^3 phones that we reviewed before it, the E7 has an excellent hardware QWERTY keyboard and will tackle all your messaging needs with ease.

The Nokia E7 messaging app

All your incoming messages arrive in a common inbox. If you like, you can also get them sorted as conversations, in threaded view. The Nokia E7 uses a common editor for all types of messages too.

Stuff like a character counter in SMS goes without saying.

   
Sending Dexter a message

Insert some multimedia content the message is automatically transformed into an MMS. In that case, the character counter turns into a data counter showing kilobytes.

The Nokia E7 email client allowed us to setup our Gmail account quite easily, while getting it to sync with an Exchange ActiveSync server required entering some manual settings. In most cases though, all you need is to enter a username and a password and you will be good to go in no time.

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia E7.

Messages can be ordered by various criteria such as date, sender, subject, priority or even by attachments, searching is available as well.

   
The email client

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. You can set it to check only on given days and have it check more regularly than usual during peak time (which you can define).

There is also support for attachments, signatures and everything you would normally need on a mobile device.

File manager can talk to thumb drives, card readers

The File manager on board the E7 is a capable app that can do anything you can think of with your files - moving, copying renaming, sorting or sending - you name it. You can also password-protect your memory card if you see fit. You can also search for a specific file or directory.

   
The file manager

With USB On-the-go enabled on the Nokia E7, you can also use the file manger to access USB flash drives and even other phones connected over the provided USB OTG cable. Of all the USB flash drives we tried to connect, the E7 only failed with only one.

We tried several card readers too – and they worked! We tried to dazzle with by putting two cards at once (a microSD card and a CF card) and it recognized them both without a hitch. Now that’s a huge improvement over what the N8 can do.

The situation with slaving phones is more of a hit or miss – Nokia phones (both S40 and S60) worked and we even managed to get the Samsung Galaxy S to connect (the Nokia’s own N8 failed here). Other Androids and an iPhone 4, however, couldn’t connect so while you can work with thumb drives reliably, you shouldn’t depend on connecting to phones.

The gallery saw no changes

As you might know the Symbian^3 offers virtually the same image browsing software as its predecessors and honestly, it only qualifies as passable by modern standards. The Nokia E7’s gallery is the same as in the N8.

The sweep gestures and getting pinch-zooming are here, but still there is nothing eye-candy inside.

  
The E7 image gallery

The N8 lacks kinetic scrolling and panning and so is the E7. Almost six months later and Nokia is still on the same page. That’s definitely not in its favor.

On the positive side opting between portrait and landscape mode is automatic, thanks to the built-in accelerometer.

In addition to the familiar pinch gesture you can also zoom in by double taping, the volume slider or even the on-screen slider.

 
Zooming in on a single photo

Selection of multiple photos for deleting or sharing is available straight from the gallery. There are plenty of sharing options – you can send the image via MMS, email or Bluetooth or you can share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. To do the latter you should configure your social accounts first.

The final features of the image gallery include the image tagging system for easier image sorting, the slide show and the albums system (again helping you sort your image database).

Overall, picture browsing is relatively fast even with 12 MP pics, but zooming is somewhat slow. You need to wait for a second or two every time you start zooming in on a photo.

Standard Symbian music player

Symbian never had trouble with the music player features and but its looks were far from impressive. With Symbian^3 however Nokia introduces a new Cover Flow-like interface, which adds the much needed eye-candy.

  
The music player got a visual upgrade too • the Cover Flow-like interface

There’s automatic sorting by artist, album, genre and the option to create custom playlists straight on the phone. The music player supports a huge number of formats and it has an equalizer plus a stereo widening feature.

There are five equalizer presets, including Bass booster, but you can’t create your own.

   
The Now playing interface • Equalizer and stereo widening are available

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case you can control it through the music player widget on the homescreen, which also displays the currently running track.

Great audio quality

The Nokia E7 multimedia prowess wouldn't be complete without high quality audio output. Fortunately, the handset managed to deliver on that one too, achieving some excellent scores in our traditional test. And the thing is nicely loud too.

When attached to an active external amplifier (i.e. your car stereo or your home audio system) the Nokia E7 does marvelously with no weak points whatsoever.

There wasn't much quality deterioration when we plugged in headphones either. Sure, the stereo crosstalk got a bit worse and we recorded some intermodulation distortion but those are rather hard to detect in anything but lab conditions.

And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia E7	+0.07, -0.36	-88.3	88.2	0.0081	0.017	-89.3
Nokia E7 (headphones attached)	+0.49, -0.22	-88.2	85.4	0.017	0.371	-68.6
Motorola Milestone 2	+0.15, -0.04	-88.2	86.4	0.0043	0.015	-90.2
Motorola Milestone 2 (headphones attached)	+0.80, -0.27	-86.2	80.9	0.038	0.526	-53.5
HTC Desire Z	+0.11, -0.09	-90.1	90.1	0.012	0.037	-90.7
HTC Desire Z (headphones attached)	+0.70, -0.17	-90.2	84.5	0.015	0.430	-64.2
Nokia N8	+0.07 -0.33	-89.9	90.0	0.0059	0.015	-90.9
Nokia N8 (headphones attached)	+0.50 -0.18	-89.9	89.9	0.016	0.300	-55.6

Nokia E7 frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

FM radio comes with RDS

The FM radio on Nokia E7 has a simple UI and supports RDS and alternative frequencies. RDS displays the station name and some extra info (say, their website URL) and the alternative frequencies feature automatically re-tunes the radio to another frequency broadcasting the same station when the first signal is weak.

  
The FM radio app is nice to look at and easy to use

Capable video player lacks subtitle support

The E7’s video player is the same as the one on N8 (prior to the update). It comes with DivX and XviD support out of the box and is quite capable.

The playback was silky smooth on all files with a resolution up to and including 720p, which is quite impressive. Combined with the HDMI port this can easily turn the Nokia E7 into a portable big-screen video player.

 
Nokia E7 video player

The media player app itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode but, since anything else would have made the widescreen display useless, this is understandable. When in fullscreen, a press on the screen shows the controls, which are normally hidden. The amply sized high-contrast screen is also more than welcome for truly enjoying your clips.

 
Watching a video on the E7

Some restrictions do apply, though. For one the handset cannot play any file that is larger than 2GB, it also couldn’t handle none of the 720p MKV files we tried. If you manage to keep your files below that limit (which basically excludes full-length 720p HD movies) you will be fine.

The other problem with the video player is the lack of any kind of subtitles support. The N8 was also released without subtitles support, but later Nokia fixed that with an update. We hope the same will happen with the E7.

At least the E7 didn’t inherit the N8’s incapability to fast forward and rewind videos larger than 1.5GB.

When the battery life is concerned, the Nokia E7 lasted 5:40 h of constant video playback in our dedicated battery life test. The N8 managed 6:20 h but the E7 battery has a bigger screen to worry about. Still, it’s a nice achievement.

As a comparison, the iPhone 4 clocked the whopping 9:40 h, while the Galaxy S managed 7:30 h.

8 megapixels photos but without the autofocus

The Nokia E7 is equipped with an 8 megapixel camera for a maximum image resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels and it’s accompanied by a dual-LED flash. However, this is Nokia’s 8MP fixed-focus camera module, which trails behind in the 8MP shooter race.

The user interface is far from friendly - there are only three shortcuts available in the viewfinder. Those allow you to toggle camcorder and still camera, set the flash and access the rest of the customizable settings.

Since the viewfinder fills only the central part of the screen, there are two black strips that could have been filled with easy to reach buttons, but Nokia’s engineers decided to shove most things into submenus.

 
 
The E7 camera user interface

The remainder of shooting options is put in another menu. If you think having to go through an extra menu just to change the scene mode is bad, just you wait until you try to change the white balance, ISO or some of the other settings – you’ll have to do the tap-to-select, tap-to-activate tango like it’s 2007.

On the other hand, the basic functionality is mostly there. On the E7 you’re in charge of white balance, color tone, exposure, ISO, contrast and sharpness. You can also go for one of the preset scene modes and there is an option for creating a custom scene.

Face detection is also available on the Nokia E7. As for geo-tagging, it lets you record your current location in the EXIF information of the photos, using the built-in GPS.

Since we had an unfortunate experience with the C7 camera, which applied too much sharpening, effectively ruining all shots, with the E7 we snapped photos both with normal and lowered sharpness.

Generally, the images lack detail after the noise reduction algorithms are done taking the noise down to an acceptable level. So the next step, sharpening, tries to bring back some of the detail but it’s too strong (even on Normal), which results in artifacts.

We recommend you use the Soft setting as that introduces fewer artifacts and results are generally more pleasing. That setting gets reset every time you close the camera so you have to remember to enable it each time. Bummer!

That aside colors and exposition are good and resulting photos should be OK for the casual user, even though the camera falls short of 8MP expectations.

Our unit (a retail one) had lens issues in the right side of the image. That’s unacceptable on such an expensive device.

  
  
Nokia E7 camera samples (Normal sharpness)

   
A few more Nokia E7 camera samples (Soft)

We tried a close-up shot – a known weakness of fixed-focus cameras and we weren’t surprised at the results. Anything closer than 50 cm and you can kiss any semblance of sharpness goodbye.

Nokia E7 is not really good at close-ups

Video recording is actually worthwhile

Still imaging is not the E7’s strong suit but the video recording helps the camera save face. The Nokia E7 shoots in 720p resolution at 25 fps and offers digital image stabilization. Clips are stored as MP4 files.

To sum it up, the videos shot with the Nokia E7 did manage to impress us just like they did on the C7. The amount of resolved detail is good, colors look nice, noise levels are kept low. Most videos stayed very closely to the 25fps mark and were very smooth. Few videos did have a choppy look though.

The price of the lower compression affects the file size – 15 seconds of video take about 20 MB.

The Nokia E7 camera uses the clever zooming technique that Nokia first used on the N8. It allows you to zoom up to 3x while shooting 720p video without loosing sharpness or detail as you normally would and generally works very well.

The video-recording capabilities of the E7 make up big time for the poor still imaging. We do miss the smart digital zoom of the N8 but that’s probably the only gripe with the E7 camcorder.

 
 
Video recorder interface

Connectivity is has it all

Nokia spared no expense when it comes to the connectivity of the Nokia E7.

For starters, all kinds of network connectivity options are at your disposal - GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSPA (10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2.0 Mbps HSUPA). The GSM/EDGE networking comes in quad-band flavor and the 3G covers all the five bands available worldwide – 850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz.

Bluetooth connectivity is version 3.0 with stereo support and there's a WirelessN-enabled Wi-Fi radio.

USB is version 2.0, with the standard microUSB port capable of charging the phones besides transferring data. We already covered the USB on-the-go functionality and we were very pleased with it – it worked much better than when we tested the N8.

A miniHDMI port rounds off the wired connectivity and there’s a miniHDMI to normal HDMI provided in the box.

Web browser is frustrating to use

Unfortunately, Symbian^3 didn’t deliver the browser overhaul that the platform needs desperately. Despite the added multi-touch and FlashLite 4.0 support, the E7 can just watch helplessly as the Android speeds away.

Update, 24.08.2011: We installed Symbian Anna, which does offer a better browser. Check out our impressions over here.

   
The Symbian^3 web browser is functional but its UI needs polishing

To give you an idea of how bad the situation is, the web browser won’t let you open a new tab unless you hit a pop-up link. Entering an URL is as bad as it used to be (you enter text in a separate window), but that’s offset somewhat by the physical keyboard.

Still, the Nokia E7 browser has good page rendering and offers some nice features such as different font sizes (5 options), auto fill-in of web forms and a password manager. Double tapping on a chunk of text zooms it in on screen, but the text doesn't auto fit to the smaller viewport and you still need to scroll sideways.

The Find-on-page feature enables keyword search. The visual history is a nice bonus that can help you find a page you've visited more easily. There's also a popup blocker.

  
Going landscape • Watching a Flash video at 240p

The Flash Lite 4.0 support is enough for playing flash videos, but YouTube plays only 240p videos so you might as well be using the mobile site. Also, Flash games don’t work so it seems like a good idea to use the option to switch Flash off to cut down on loading times and save some yourself some data traffic.

  
Digging deeper into the settings menu

Office document editor is capable but has poor UI

The Nokia E7 comes with an Office document editor out of the box (Quickoffice). It has plenty of features and it even doubles as a file manager. The Recent files option is the fastest way to go back to some of the documents you’ve worked on lately.

   
Quickoffice comes preinstalled • it works as a file manager too

Quickoffice can view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. The viewers work pretty fast and they support pinch zooming.

  
Viewing Office docs

Editors have plenty of features – advanced formatting, editing tables, full list of Excel functions and so on, but their menu/submenu based interface is less than user friendly and while it’s not a deal-breaker, it certainly detracts from the ease of use.

   
Editing Word and Excel docs with Quickoffice

The PowerPoint editor was the worst offender here – it can’t edit when you zoom in and once you do start editing, you need several clicks just to change the text in a label.

Editing documents is generally fast enough unless you’re working on an Office 2007 doc, which slows things down to an unusable level.

As for the file managing functions of Quickoffice, it’s not better than the standard File browser and we did notice slight (but annoying) lag when scrolling.

For viewing PDF files, there’s the standard Adobe app, which works sluggishly and lacks pinch-zooming support.

 
The Adobe PDF viewer

Organizer is great

The E7 is Nokia’s business flagship and they’ve made sure that the phone comes with a very capable organizer out of the box.

The calendar has four different view modes - monthly, weekly, daily and a to-do list, which allows you to check all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are three types of events available for setting up - Meeting, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has some specific fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

   
The calendar has seen some further touch optimization

The Nokia E7 comes with a Zip Manager and a mobile antivirus program (F-Secure) preinstalled, which along with the Office package make for a very well-rounded productivity suite.

   
There's also a ZIP manager and an antivirus program on board

The calculator application is very familiar but it lacks the functionality of some of its competitors. The square root is the most advanced function it handles and this is hardly an achievement. If all you do with it is split the bill at the bar though, you're more than good to go.

The organizer package also includes a dictionary, voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. The good unit converter we’ve come to know from Symbian^1 is strangely gone but you can grab one yourselves from the Ovi store.

   
The dictionary, the voice recorder and the notes app continue the organizer marathon

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, set-off day and repeat pattern. As we already mentioned, thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone over.

  
You can set an unlimited number of alarms on the E7

Ovi Store for Symbian

Symbian is in a tough spot – now that Microsoft and Nokia have partnered up, Symbian devs are pretty unhappy. It just may be that the Ovi Store will never catch up to the Android Market and the Apple App Store, at least as far as its Symbian section is concerned.

Still, there are already a few thousand apps in the store and big companies have enough resources to publish their apps for Symbian along with the other platforms. But smaller companies and indie devs might decide it’s not worth the extra effort to port their apps and games to Symbian – and if that happens, new content in the Ovi Store will be pretty limited.

   
Ovi store UI got refreshed

Anyway, with the refreshed UI the Ovi Store looks quite good. You can browse the apps available in the Ovi Store by categories – Applications, Games, Audio and Video content, Personalization; or by collections – Go Green, Tools for Professionals, Homescreen Apps, Highly Addictive Games and Web TV.

  
Checking out an app • downloading an app

Your account profile keeps record of all the apps you have installed under My stuff. You can now also select where games and apps should be installed and where audio and video should go. That’s nice – we wish Android had that right from the start.

Free navigation with Ovi Maps and just the screen for the job

The Nokia E7 comes with a built-in GPS receiver, which managed to get a satellite lock from a cold start (A-GPS turned off) in a little under two minutes. You also have A-GPS for getting a faster lock or use Cell-ID/Wi-Fi positioning if you don’t need the accuracy.

That along with the large 4” screen with excellent sunlight legibility makes the Nokia E7 a great alternative to dedicated SatNav units.

As you probably know since the start of the year Nokia made their Ovi Maps navigation free for all their smartphones, which naturally includes the E7. The voice guidance is currently available in over 70 countries and over 40 different languages, with even traffic information for more than 10 of those.

In addition, Nokia did a pretty decent job of the Ovi Maps application itself, blessing it with a cool, touch-friendly interface, as well as nice features such as the Lonely Planet city guide, HRS hotels and the Michelin restaurant guide. There's also an Event guide that lists all that’s happening within a 3km range of your position.

With Ovi Maps 3.04 you get three different view modes including satellite and terrain maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand and can be used with preloaded maps. What version 3.04 lacks is pinch zoom, but that’s available in v3.06 (that one can download maps straight on the phone too, no need for Ovi Suite).

Updating Ovi Maps if it doesn’t come with the latest version out of the box is quite worthwhile.

   
Ovi Maps gives you free lifetime voice-guided navigation over the excellent Navteq maps

The route planning algorithm is also rather easy to customize to best suit your preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Routes can be set to either fastest or shortest.

Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map.

Final words

The Nokia E7 is either the best Symbian^3 smartphone on the market or the second best. This just can’t be bad news – whether you’re a brand-loyal upgrader or an unbiased user shopping for a premium smartphone.

Symbian has been questioned and doubted but Nokia are giving users something to hang on to, something to use in their defense. The E7 has all the latest and most advanced ingredients: a ClearBlack AMOLED screen, USB-on-the-go, an HDMI port, penta-band 3G. HD video, the anodized unibody and a lifetime sat-nav license are also massive points in favor.

But are we simply delaying the inevitable here? Even the best Symbian^3 devices aren’t quite on par with the competition. It’s not about the specs, nor is it about the power or performance. It’s that bit of touchscreen magic that has so far eluded Nokia and Symbian. Frustrated to the point of giving up, Nokia are looking to Windows Phone 7 to get their inspiration back.

It obviously isn’t the E7’s fault but – just as obvious – the Nokia E7 will have to suffer the consequences. Politics aside, the E7 is having another thing to worry about. It seems a little overpriced at the moment and, we are afraid, by the time its price settles down Symbian will be a few months closer to its inevitable demise.

The two major Android competitors – having been released earlier – cost less than the E7.

The HTC Desire Z has a higher-res screen, albeit of inferior quality. Android offers better touchscreen experience and a vastly superior number of apps. With the Desire Z, you’d be sacrificing the metal body but getting an autofocus camera in return.

The Motorola MILESTONE 2 boasts a FWVGA screen though, again, LCD. Motorola’s after-market support has been pretty poor recently, but the MILESTONE 2, being their flagship might make it to Gingerbread.

 
HTC Desire Z • Motorola MILESTONE 2

You might also want to consider some of the WP7 alternatives, like the HTC 7 Pro or LG Optimus 7Q. With the first major WP7 update around the corner, their business appeal might get a boost. But you know, Windows Phone 7 will no longer be competition. It will take time for the Nokia WP7 offerings to hit the shelves but there are interesting times ahead.

 
HTC 7 Pro • LG Optimus 7Q

That’s the curse the Nokia E7 has to live with. Last time we checked, Eseries were the easiest phones to recommend to anyone looking for a handsome, sensible and powerful business phone. And they didn’t even have to be die-hard Symbian fans. But things look different for the E7 – its timing just couldn’t have been worse. This may not be the end of an era – but the Nokia E7 certainly is on the wrong end of a generation gap.

Symbian Anna update

symbian Anna debuted a while ago with the Nokia X7 and the E6 but the original quartet of new generation Nokia phones that initially launched with Symbian^3 now gets to join in on the fun as well.

We put a Nokia N8 through the update process and fiddled with it - then we decided you might be interested in a quick Symbian^3 vs. Symbian Anna comparison. X7 and E6 owners might not, but if you have a Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 or E7 you should check this out.

We'll start off with how your phone to update to Anna. And while it's going through the process, you can read through the rest of this article to see what changes you can expect.

Getting Symbian Anna

Before we start comparing Anna to its ^3 predecessor, we'll go over how to update to Anna first. If you've bought an X7 or an E6, you're all set, but those who have the Symbian^3 Nokias need to do this.

Now that Anna is officially out, the simplest way to update is straight on the phone. Get to the Device updates screen (either from Settings or by entering *#0000# into the dialer). Hit Options and choose Check for updates. After the phone confirms there is new software available, hit accept and enjoy Anna after the update process finishes.

Yet another way is to use the SW update app, which can be set to check for new update automatically.

Another option is to use Ovi Suite. After connecting your phone, Ovi Suite will check for updates (you can do it manually too) and will show a notification on the top row of buttons. It's a good idea to do a backup of your phone before you start - you have Ovi Suite connected anyhow, best to be safe.

If you're on a Mac, you have Nokia Software Updater at your disposal. It works just like Ovi Suite - connect the phone, app will check for updates and apply them if it finds any.

User interface changes - better text input, little else

It may not be immediately apparent to the untrained eye just what exactly Anna does to the homescreen to give it a nudge in the direction of usability. But after using it for a bit, you start to notice things.

We shot a new video of the user interface - check out Anna running on the N8:.

The new style icons might be the first thing that hits you - the simple, rounded icons are a god new look for Symbian - or it could be that scrolling the homescreen is much more tangible. You "push" the homescreen sideways and it moves, instead of the old homescreen that moved only after you've finished with your swipe.

The Symbian Anna homescreen is not very different from the Symbian^3 homescreen

Other things haven’t changed however - the hierarchical menu that is a throwback to a past era is still here. You can rearrange your icons, but the flat menu structure that iOS and Android have popularized is hard to achieve.

Same old same old menu

The task manager that only fits three apps at a time hasn’t changed either - landscape mode offers much more space but it still only fits three. If you're not in the habit of closing your apps, you'll have to do quite a bit of scrolling to switch between them.

The one UI change that really makes Anna a must-have for Nokia owners is the new text input - lo and behold the split screen keyboard.

In previous versions of Symbian you had two options - go to a new screen to enter your text on a full-screen landscape QWERTY and then go back or use that tiny, movable QWERTY keyboard that was basically a pain in the butt.

Anna however enables the portrait QWERTY, which overlays the bottom half of the screen and lets you stay in the app and type simultaneously. Besides letting you enter text without flipping the phone to its side and without going back and forth in the UI, it enables more subtle changes - like autosuggestion in the web browser that actually works.

The keys on the portrait QWERTY are a bit small, despite the available screen estate. Still, you can activate word prediction, which will fix the word you're trying to type and show a small popup with the word you actually typed, in case you're trying to enter something like a user name (which doesn’t have to be a valid word, in fact word prediction in this case gets in the way).

The new portrait QWERTY doing the split-screen • old keypad-style keyboard

The landscape QWERTY keyboard is also available in split-screen mode and it offers bigger, easier to hit keys, making it the preferred option for entering long text.

Still, it's not perfect - several apps would popup the old text edit screen, covering the app screen even though we were using the portrait QWERTY. The Ovi store app is an example of where that happens, which was a little disappointing.

The landscape keyboard does split-screen too

So, while Symbian Anna isn't a huge change in the interface department, it does sand away some of the rough edges of Nokia's aging OS.

However, some of the native apps also received an update, which improved the general functionality of the phone.

Native Symbian apps were updated too

The most noticeable change is in the web browser - it's a lot user friendlier now, with its proper URL bar (thanks split-screen QWERTY!), the always visible back button (vital for navigating web pages) and things like manually opening new tabs (before Anna the only way to open a new tab was to set a link open in a new tab).

Those are changes we've been expecting for ages and we cheered when Nokia put them in the X7 and E6. And now, Nokia's first wave of new Symbians can enjoy it too.

The new browser has improved user interface

But Anna is not Froyo - Flash is still pretty much no-go on Symbian, with only Flash Lite 4 supported. So, no watching YouTube videos in-browser or playing Flash games. And the new interface, as much as it improves on the old one, is still miles behind Mobile Safari and the Android browser.

Another native Symbian app that got a major improvement is Nokia Maps, which went up to version 3.06. That's the version you get with the new OS update, but v3.06 is available for older Symbian versions and older phones too, so you'll only see a difference if you haven't updated Maps separately.

Ovi Maps gives you free lifetime voice-guided navigation over the excellent Navteq maps

Still, the new version brings a redesigned menu and improved search functionality. Also, public transport lines are available on the maps with the new version and you can download country maps directly on the phone (you no longer need a computer to do that). Social network check-ins are also part of the new package.

Speaking of SNS skills, Anna adds a few niceties here too - you can check out the latest status updates by your friends in their contact cards in the phonebook, you can upload high-res images and add captions to them too. Retweeting has also been added as an option.

Reading the latest status updates from a contact

Finally, the Store has been updated and can now download bigger apps over Wi-Fi but there are no visual changes.

Impressions of Symbian Anna

Symbian hasn’t seen any groundbreaking changes in its recent history and Anna isn't one either - like the jump from ^1 to ^3, it's an incremental update that improves things but leaves some rough edges untouched.

Don't get us wrong - Anna is the best that Symbian has to offer right now (until Belle arrives anyway) and people with an N8, a C7, C6-01 or E7 should update as soon as possible - the browser alone is a good enough reason.

N8 owners have a special incentive too - with Anna installed, they can apply the camera update and enjoy 30fps videos with continuous autofocus (and a slightly better UI). Let's face it, people bought N8s chiefly for its camera, so Nokia continuing to improve it is commendable. We've covered that in another post.

Still, the number of things left that need changing is much longer than the list of things that havechanged. On the other hand, after Nokia announced they'll be focusing on Windows Phone 7, we were worried about Symbian's future.

It turns out those worries were unfounded - with Anna out now and Belle just around the corner (and there are 1GHz Symbian devices out too), Symbian seems more alive now than it was a year ago.

There's a long way to go before it catches up to Android, but we'll be following it (and reviewing it) every step of the way.

What are your impressions - is there still fight left in Symbian or are these updates just a stopgap measure while we're waiting for the Nokia-made WP7 phones to show up?