I had the chance for the last 2 days to experience the Nokia E7. I know that the phone was made for a purpose, the communicator addicts. They demanded it and Nokia heard their cries. To get great raves, Nokia had to dish it to every layabout without much thought whether they will actually do reviews on it or no. But when you are given a phone which costs Ksh 53,000 for free, what do you do? You must just lick some ….mhhhh.
Ok, what are the good, the bad and the ugly on the phone? Let me start by giving you what you already know, the specs. The phone boasts 4-inch Amoled screen made of the scratch resistant gorilla glass. It also comes with the sweet slide-out Qwerty keyboard and the mature feeling sturdy casing. You wont miss to feel this phone whether it is on your waist, back or chest pocket. Symbian^3 operating system software runs this phone which you can in the next few months upgrade to Symbian Anna (they had to call it that because Symbian is getting a bit bitchy).
Seriously, what if this phone was running Android or Windows Phone 7? Ok lets stick with the strong possibility, what if the phone was on Windows Phone 7? Wouldn’t not have been the best enterprise phone out there? But the reason why I say that this phone is like an empty headed beauty is that Symbian is not an OS of the future. It is simply like a hunk who will give a lady great sex but the guy cant pay his own bills. He has on an ICDL cert and so before even thinking of starting to pay the bills, the guy needs to get some education to spice up his thorax.
Why was Nokia the default choice in the smartphone arena sometime back? The UI, the mature sturdy feel, the delivery of great apps and games. Nokia is now not the choice because it makes great devices just like the Humvee makes great cars but the comfort and feel is not there anymore. The interface between human and the hardware is the software and when the software feels like pillow made out of wood-ash, the sleep wont be nice.
The E7 boasts a 8MP camera which can take great still photos and HD (720p) videos. The only problem is that the sharing of these videos becomes very hard. And the 8MP camera brings out photos which looks like they are from a 4MP. If you have an N8, don’t exchange it for this E7. You know the iPhone 4 apps like Twitpic and Yfrog and how you dont need to look the phone phone for folders to get the correct photo to share. It is so hard to share your great moments on Nokia.
The phone has no micro-SD slot so memory cant be expanded but you can download what you have through the USB. The OVI store and Nokia turn-by-turn navigation also looks great. The radio, GPS, accelerometer, digital compass and wi-fi just comes out well. The problem is that what does the current average smartphone user do with a phone? Sharing! That is the key word. With E7, you wont have Seesmic, Tweetdeck or even Ubersocial for great twitter experience.
A great hardware let down by such a lousy software.
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