Nokia E7: Recommended for business users

Get Ahead reader Rohit Sane reviews Nokia E7 in response to our reader invite (bleow). His verdict: Recommended for business users as they won't mind a steep price tag of Rs 29,999.

Rohit studies information technology at Atharva Institute of Information Technology and runs his own web site www.techfreakstuff.com.

With Apple and Android handsets in the market, Nokia's market share seems to have taken a hit in the smartphones category. But is it so, because Nokia does not manufacture good phones? No! Nokia E7 is a perfect example of an amazing product that Nokia has brought in the market. Being aimed towards business users, E7 packs a lot of features that are required...

Without spending any more time, let us get right to a detailed review of the Nokia E7.

Let me give you a list of some key features first!

• 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, FM transmitter
• 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

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Look and feel

With large 4" display of Gorilla glass and classy looks, the Nokia E7 seems to have very similar slider functionality like the Nokia N97. It has a sturdy design and cleaner looks than its predecessor Nokia N8.

The Micro-USB port (it charges via the Micro-USB and shows a white light when connected to power supply) on the top besides the HDMI out (which is adjacent to the 3.5mm headphone jack), and the camera with dual LED flash stuck inside the Anodised body (unlike the bulge outside the N8) makes E7 a comfortable phone to hold too. Also the centre aligned menu button at the bottom of the screen doesn't force complicated thumb movements.

There are two spring-loaded sliders (one for the keypad unlock function and other for adjusting the volume) are pretty easy to use, but the volume control slider seems pretty small. The SIM card slot is accessible if you can use your fingernail to pull it out!

The slider functionality is very sleek, and when opened makes way for a clean QWERTY keyboard. It seems perfect for typing as well as consuming any content! It is possible to customize the Slider action to perform any functions of your choice. The only problem with the Slider is its difficulty to open!

The QWERTY Keypad is one of the best available on a mobile phone. Proper spacing between the keys as well as the inclusion of special characters makes it very easy-to-use. To top it all even the arrow keys are present! Using the keys is no problem at all, as its soft press is easily distinguishable.

The display is covered with a Gorilla glass which is known for its strength and toughness. There were no scratches observed on the screen even when the phones was placed alongside keys and coins in the pocket. We did not try some real tough things with the screen, as we were pretty satisfied with the toughness!

Armed with a 4 inch (360 x 640 resolution) AMOLED ClearBlack Display, the E7 has clear improvements in contrast ratio over other phones and the colours are brighter. Even in bright sunlight, the display was readable without tension on the eyes!

The resolution of 360 x 640 resolution felt a little underpowered when compared to the Samsung Galaxy S (480 x 800), but it doesn't mean that the E7 is failing in this department. Looking at the overall experience, there is no need to cry over it!

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Hardware

The Nokia E7 comes with a 680MHz ARM 11 CPU and a Broadcom BCM2727 GPU, along with 256 MB of RAM. Even though the CPU may sound underpowered when we hear about dual core CPUs today, the experience is not bad at all.

It comes with 350 MB of phone memory along with 16 GB of internal storage, but the heartbreaking news is that there is no option for expandable memory using a MicroSD card.

The 256 MB of RAM may sound very less, but considering an optimised Symbian 3 OS, it is enough for running multiple applications in the background without any effect on the overall speed. It is true multi-tasking as the applications running behind-the-scenes (in background) are actually running and not just shifting to power-saving mode.

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Software

Powered with Symbian 3 OS, the E7 is a pretty user-friendly phone with a host of features (we are not comparing it to the Android or iOS as they do have some extra features, but they lack a few features too).

The problem comes when we feel the need to use applications. Even though, it comes preloaded with applications like OVI Store (Nokia's online app market), OVI Maps, Quickoffice, F-Secure, etc., we feel the pinch!

The user interface does not seem to be very appealing in terms of looks, but it is pretty user-friendly. The default browser is a real pain and we moved to Opera quite soon!

The mail configurations seem to get confusing at times, but is okay once you get it right! The bluetooth management area seems to be the same and is still appreciated for its ease of use and vast number of options available.

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Camera and other multimedia

The 8MP snapper seems to deliver very good images and videos in bright light but its glory seems to fade away in low light situations. Amazingly sharp and bright images can be expected where adequate light is available!

Even after using the dual-LED flash while taking photos in low light, we were not very pleased with the sharpness.

As auto-focus is absent, we have to do the guess work! Photos taken from very close distances are not clear.

The 720p video recording is brilliant and works like a charm. A small bug appears, as the audio recorded (in the videos) is of very low volume.

It is able to play sound files in the MP3, AAC, WMA and WAV formats while it can play AVI, MKV, FLV, MOV, MP4, WMV, 3GP and RM videos. It is weird that the image gallery shows images as well as videos in the thumbnail view (no separate section for videos). The slide function while moving images works like a charm and pinch-to-zoom function is also great. It sometimes seem to get confused though when we perform multi-touch actions fast!

Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound technology in this phone makes it perfect for music lovers. You can clearly feel the difference when hearing any (Dolby encoded) song with the same bit rate on two different phones. When connected to the home theater system, the Dolby technology will surely take you to a completely new world!

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Battery life

This is undoubtedly the most important point as this phone is aimed at business users and thankfully the E7 does not disappoint us here. It has an amazing battery life (1200mAh Li-Ion Battery) of about 28 to 30 hours when connected to 3G network always. The usage was a lot of SMSes, mail client always updating in the background, frequent phone calls and activity on Twitter using the Gravity application.

The battery does not drain at a very fast rate even under constant use of WiFi. The battery life of about 8 hours when watching HD movies needs praise. We watched 4 Hollywood movies back-to-back in HD!

Considering the size of the screen and our usage, the battery seems perfect to use, even though we are hearing about 1500-1650mAh batteries these days on smartphones.

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The final call

Nokia E7 is the phone which we would really recommend if you are a business user and would not mind sparing some time in getting accustomed to it. Its price tag of Rs 29,999 seems steep but should not matter to a business class person.

Even for a casual user with a lot of multimedia consumption, this is a good buy if you have a big budget.

Considering the features offered and the price, we would have loved this communicator phone for about 25-27 grand. Over overall rating for the E7 would be a 7/10!

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