Nokia E7 Review

Introduction:

Nokia basically invented the QWERTY-laden business phone with its Communicator Series way back in 1996. Fast forward fifteen years, and we now have the anodized aluminum chassis of the Nokia E7 waving at us, claiming to be an honorable heir of Nokia's enterprise series phones with physical keyboards.

Retaining most of the wonderful features and design cues from the Nokia N8, the E7 just might have the perfect mix of ingredients, with its peculiar looking keyboard, to consider itself as being the next big smartphone from Nokia's camp. Is that really the case? Read on to find out...

Design:

The Nokia E7 is essentially a longer and wider version of the Nokia N8, but manages to pack on a landscape keyboard to its 0.54” (13.6mm) sleek anodized aluminum casing. Just grasping it in the hand, there is this enveloping feeling that occurs because it's meticulously well built all around; not to mention resilient in battling normal wear and tear. Furthermore, you can find the Nokia E7 in a variety of colors, from silver to flashy orange.



You can compare the Nokia E7 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

However, there is still that noticeable weight of 6.21 oz (176 g) that it's carrying around, and the anodized aluminum is more slippery than plastic, so it takes some getting used to at the beginning how to handle the elliptic handset. The weight is actually quite decent for a handset with a large screen, physical keyboard, and a metal shell. Even more impressive is the fact that the handset is just slightly thicker than the Nokia N8, not even counting the elevated area around the latter’s huge image sensor. Thus the Nokia E7 is one magnificently designed smartphone that is easily recognizable, and showing the kind of talent that Nokia has in the design department.

What's equally impressive about the E7 versus other Nokia smartphones is that it sizes up with an ample 4” AMOLED ClearBlack Display with 360 x 640 resolution, and support for 16.7 million colors. In addition to the roomy real estate, which our fingers find more than adequate at this point, we adore how the AMOLED panel is capable of displaying some distinctive and deep colors, as well as almost infinite contrast. And even though it might not contend in the same space as other handsets with higher resolution displays, it doesn't particularly detract from its still distinguishable visuals and excellent viewing angles. And, hey, this is the largest screen ever on a contemporary Nokia phone.

Underneath the display, there is a single menu button that also acts as the notification system that will light up or pulsate when receiving calls or text messages. Its location in the middle is much better than the home button on the Nokia N8, which you almost drop the phone to reach. Plus, it is equally accessible in the middle for both left-handed and right-handed users.


On the left edge, we find nothing but an unlock switch, while the volume switch, shutter key, and SIM card slot are all found on the right side of the phone. For the most part, we didn't have any problems feeling out either the volume and unlock switches. You can slot-load your SIM card into the tray that pulls out of the SIM slot, and then plug it back in, covering the slot entirely – something that was absent on both the prototype, and the Nokia N8.


Taking a quick peek at the handset's flat top side, we find its 3.5mm headset jack and dedicated power button perched on their usual spots. Although it's flush to the surface, the power button's size enables us to press it down without much falter. Next to it, there is a plastic flap that covers both the HDMI port, and at the left end of the top side is the exposed microUSB port, which offers USB-on-the-go capabilities with the supplied connector.

In the rear, we're greeted to the handset's 8-megapixel camera and its dual LED flash, probably the same one we have on the Nokia C7. At first, some might be content with the large resolution, but knowing that it's nothing more than a fixed focus camera that can't focus well on objects closer than 20 inches, others might be deterred from it. Then again, the E7 is classified as a business oriented device, as opposed to the camera-centric Nokia N8. And towards the bottom portion of the rear, we find a single notch for the phone's speaker.


Not to be forgotten, there is also a front-facing camera found next to the handset's earpiece – along with the light and proximity sensors close by.

Without much hesitation, our natural instinct instructed us to open the handset like any other device we've used with a landscape style keyboard. But when we began using that normal sliding routine with our thumbs, we're greeted to nothing more than a baffling resistance. In fact, you'll need to push down and into the handset to get the mechanism to activate and expose the Nokia E7's keyboard, which can be tricky with the slippery anodized aluminum case, but that will probably wear in with use.

It all stems from the fact that the two hinges are designed to lift and tilt the screen half in a somewhat diagonal manner, as opposed to first rolling the screen part up, and then tilting it, or pushing the screen down and then sliding it downwards to cover the keyboard, which is commonplace with screen-tilting phones. Once adjusted, we found the mechanism to be extremely satisfying, as it clicks into place solidly, and tilts the display at an angle. Once completely open, the phone hides the ribbon cable that is used to connect the display with the motherboard behind the larger hinge, so no worries it can be damaged somehow.


As for the keyboard itself, we find it satisfyingly comfortable to use, while remaining stylishly chic with its chiclet style buttons. Medium in size, we didn't have too much problems in getting a feel for the somewhat flushed buttons, but they still offered a reasonable amount of feedback, without much force required in pressing down on them. Overall, we quickly got a handle for its layout, and found ourselves quickly typing up messages at a steady rate without that many mistakes along the way. Moreover, we have arrow keys, which are the grand blessing of having a physical keyboard, since we find it a pain to move the cursor on a touchscreen, no matter what trickery the mobile OS uses for that.


In short, we were more than satisfied with the unibody aluminum beauty that Nokia has crafted with the E7, as it exemplifies all of the elements you'd consider finding in a high-end smartphone. From its solid construction, to sturdy choice of materials, the Nokia E7 will instantly capture the hearts and minds of Nokia fans all around.

Interface and Functionality:

The Nokia E7 shares the same 680MHz ARM 11 processor and 256MB of RAM that's found with the N8, but it increases its ROM to 1024MB. For most basic tasks, we found the Nokia E7 powered well enough to move at a swift rate, with very few instances of lag or slowdown.

The phone runs the latest version of the Symbian^3 firmware, which the Nokia N8 was recently updated to as well. We cross fingers the PR 2.0 update hits soon, with its new browser and portrait QWERTY keyboard.

There is a high learning curve with Symbian^3, if you're using the platform for the very first time. However, users of previous versions of Symbian will quickly adapt to its quirks and menu layout structure. There are three homescreens, which can be populated with up to six rectangular widgets, unlike Android, where you can freely move ones of different size and shape around. Meaning, here they're simply blocks that are primarily stacked one on top of each other. Still, it's better than not having any at all.


For a more detailed and comprehensive look at what the platform experience is all about with Symbian^3, you can read about it in our in-depth Nokia N8 Review. Naturally, the E7's outcome experience is mostly identical, save for a few differences. The screensaver when the phone is locked, which shows date and time without draining battery, thanks to the AMOLED technology, is off by default on the Nokia E7, but you can easily call it back from the Themes settings, which are a bit different than what Nokia N8 shipped with, and bring different icons with them.

Other minor differences are brought on by the need for landscape orientation of the UI when the keyboard is open, and the fact that the whole screen is visible, as opposed to being taken by the virtual keyboard in landscape, a welcome change, especially in the browser. Thankfully Symbian^3 has landscape versions of all its apps, which are consistent across the board.

As we've already mentioned, the best messaging experience is found with the handset's fantastic physical keyboard, but Symbian^3 boasts a couple of on-screen options for your pleasure. In portrait, we find the usual looking numeric keypad that offers plenty of room to move around with our fingers, but it can be a painstaking process unless predictive text is enabled.


Conversely, the full QWERTY keyboard found in landscape is a decent offering, but since buttons are slightly smaller, we found ourselves making some mistakes along the way. Nonetheless, both options are still decent in their own regard, but without hesitation, we'd prefer sticking it out with the physical one.


These are mostly cosmetic changes, though; the real software focus has been zoomed on the enterprise-friendly abilities of the Nokia E7. The icon for the Office suite of apps now has a prominent place in the main menu.

Mail for Exchange is Nokia’s feature to help you stay in sync with your corporate email account, and it will also support Lotus Notes Traveler, which is still widespread in the business environment. With the recently announced Microsoft-Nokia alliance, you can bet Nokia devices will receive first dibs in accessing Outlook, SharePoint and other enterprise software connectivity updates.

Speaking of Microsoft Office, we have Quickoffice Premier preinstalled on the Nokia E7, which means you can not only view, but also edit documents on the go now, free of charge.


Overall, if you haven’t been lured to Symbian until now, the Nokia E7’s software is unlikely to change that. For long-time users, though, it provides a familiar working environment, and still remains one of the most functional mobile operating systems out there, under the outdated graphics, font, and navigational concepts it uses. We’ll just mention the real multitasking experience, and leave it at that.

Internet and Connectivity:

Seeing that the Nokia E7 is much like any other GSM phone out there in the market, which means you can place voice calls just about anywhere in the world, its pentaband UMTS radio is a rarity in itself, since you can even manage to get 3G connection through T-Mobile USA's AWS band. Even though it wouldn't be very difficult to find 3G connectivity with this device, it still packs 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi to get you plugged in when you're in a spotty location.

Furthermore, the handset features aGPS, which can be used with Ovi Maps, and Bluetooth 3.0 to get that useful wireless headset connected. The free offline navigation of Ovi Maps is one of the great advantages of Nokia's handsets lately, and it works in almost all countries worldwide, with about 78 of them having the offline navigation voice-guided. The most recent version 3.06 allows you to download country maps directly from the phone, has public transport lines, and check-in with the most popular location-based services, like Facebook’s Places and Foursquare.

The Nokia E7 doesn't have the FM transmitter that the Nokia N8 has, so you can't blast music from it through your car's radio, but it keeps the HDMI port for streaming content to your TV, and also has the USB-on-the-go function to connect USB sticks directly with the phone. This is handy, since it keeps the 16GB storage from the Nokia N8, but disposes of the microSD card slot, so you are stuck with the internal storage size.

The default browser is the same cumbersome affair, present on the Nokia N8, but the next Symbian update is around the corner, so hopefully this browser will be a thing of the past fairly soon, since it is otherwise a joy to browse on a 4” AMOLED display. Additionally, we found some Flash content loading as well, since it has support for Flash Lite 4.0. However, we did experience some slowdown when navigating sites that have heavy Flash content, but aside from that, it's a decent offering on its own.


We noticed that it takes a little bit of time for the phone to render content if you scroll too quickly – but it's nothing that adversely affects the experience. In the end, the web browsing experience with Symbian^3 is improved versus the challenging performance of previous iterations, except for the clunky interface, which, we hope, will be updated very soon.

Camera and Multimedia:

Alright, if you're looking for a great photo taking experience with a Nokia phone, it's clear your best bet will be the N8 with its 12-megapixel auto-focus camera with Carl Zeiss lens. Granted that we still have an 8-megapixel camera in tow with the Nokia E7, but we're saddened to see it's nothing more than a fixed focused one. That means it focuses on everything beyond 20 inches or so, but for a macro shot you'll need a magnifying glass.

The lack of moving parts and need to prefocus means the camera is incredibly fast, though, you can just snap and snap without delay with the dedicated shutter key. Here is what Nokia’s camera guru Damian Dinning has to say about the company’s Full Focus (as he calls it) cameras, as found on the E7:

1. “With a Nokia Full Focus camera you can simply grab moments without the fear of images or videos ever being out of focus for subjects from around 50cm through to infinity, regardless of lighting conditions or subject position in the frame etc.
2. No shooting lag waiting for autofocus. Despite the Nokia N8 featuring the fastest autofocus of any mobile at just 350ms (average), it’s still a delay.
3. Everything from approximately 50cm to infinity in the same picture/video appears in focus. Hence the name ‘Full Focus’ cameras. Conventional cameras have less ‘depth of field’ than Full Focus cameras and therefore, distant objects will appear blurred. Those more experienced photographers may – of course – prefer the reduced depth of field look. However, those less involved (the vast majority of those who take pictures) find the “everything in focus” look very appealing.
4. Slimmer camera modules – leading to slimmer product designs.”

Fixed focus cam does make sense, since the E7 is positioned to be a business class handset first. Furthermore, the huge camera sensor on the Nokia N8, coupled with the added volume from a physical keyboard would have made it impossible to keep the thickness in check. We're not going to go into detail about the camera interface, since it follows accordingly to what we see with the N8, with plenty of settings and scene modes, albeit not very touch-friendly.

The camera captures plenty of detail outdoors, and the color representation is rather accurate, but the pictures turned out a bit soft, and lacking on contrast. The indoor shots were decent, with the noise-suppression algorithms blurring the image a little when the light was low, but the dual-LED flash illuminated the scene sufficiently up to ten feet or so.



Not necessarily the first thing that stands out for most business oriented users, but the Nokia E7 has the ability to shoot fluid video in 720p with 25fps. We are again observing good amount of detail and accurate colors in the clips, but, again, we wish the image was a tad sharper.

Nokia E7 Sample Video:



Running the music player, it combines the customary elements we'd expect out of any other player out there, but sprinkles a dash of visual appeal in the form of its 3D carousel for browsing albums. Although it follows in fashion to the iPhone's Cover Flow mode, we're amazed to see its buttery smooth responsiveness in browsing albums, but nonetheless, its energetic radiance is quite appealing to the eye. Dolby Digital Plus is available on the handset, for some surround sound trickery when watching movies via the HDMI port. The loudspeaker is surprisingly powerful for a mobile phone, and manages to produce a rather crisp sound to boot.



Playing high definition videos is no problem for the Nokia E7, as we managed to load a video encoded in MPEG-4 1280 x 720 resolution. Naturally, its AMOLED display and relatively larger size makes for the perfect combination in watching videos in their full fidelity, but its smooth and lag-free playback complements its already premier status in this department.

The Nokia E7 comes with the same picture and video editors that Nokia N8 has preinstalled, which have plenty of settings, and are actually quite useful for rough editing on the go, like cutting, stitching, adding text and background music to your videos, or doing basic image adjustments to your photos.

Thus, it might not be advertised as a multimedia device, but the Nokia E7 has everything the Nokia N8 offers in terms of music and video performance, lacking only its stellar camera for the still shots.

Performance and Conclusion:

The Nokia E7 exhibits a top-notch call quality, which we are used to with the Finnish handsets, both in the earpiece, and on the receiving end, thanks to the noise-canceling mikes.

The 1200mAh battery is rated for 5 hours of talk time in 3G mode, which is not all that impressive, so you'll probably have to charge it daily.

Nevertheless, we were thrilled by the Nokia E7's boutique design, rock solid construction, and its choice of employing the most premium of materials. Despite the ho-hum for today's standards processor speeds, it is more than enough to run Symbian, and it offers many additional functionalities like an HDMI port, and USB-on-the-go. The 8MP camera quality is very far from the one on the Nokia N8, but it is decent to say the least, and the ability to record HD video is of course a good treat.

On the software front the Nokia E7 shines with its enterprise orientation - wide support for corporate email and remote IT management capabilities for locking and wiping it from afar.  Push open that nice physical keyboard, and you will be dishing out work emails in no time at enviable speeds.

Add to this Ovi Maps with its free offline voice-guided navigation in most countries, and the only things of dire need for update are the browser and the interface, which should be coming further down the road. As an additional drawback, we can add the unimpressive number of apps found in the Ovi Store.

In short, if you are a Nokia fan, you won't be disappointed with the Nokia E7. If you have left the camp, or never been lured into it, the HTC 7 Pro with Windows Phone 7, and the HTC Desire Z with Android are both excellent choices with physical slide-out QWERTY keyboards.

Software version of the reviewed unit: PR1.0 - 013.016

Nokia E7 Video Review: