User friendliness summary for Nokia E7 review
We love the solid feel of the E7's metal body, but sliding out the QWERTY keyboard takes quite a lot of force. The phone feels very business like, thanks to the Symbian^3 operating system, which is unlike the user-friendly interfaces of Android and iPhone handsets
User friendliness summary for Nokia E7 review
Despite the face that Symbian^3 is a revitalised operating system that is supposed to be optimised for touch-screen handsets, it is neither user friendly or smooth in use - and the out-of-date software makes it frustrating to use many of the handset's features
Feature set summary for Nokia E7 review
There's a long list of features - accurate GPS with free sat-nav from Ovi Maps, excellent email, HSDPA and Wi-Fi for web access, an eight-megapixel snapper offering HD video recording, plus an HDMI port so you can view on a large high-def screen. It's a shame the software doesn't equal it
Performance summary for Nokia E7 review
The E7 is a good multitasker but we did find it would slow to a stop if we had eight programs running. The operating system is clunky and not fun to use, especially if you've experienced Android and iPhone operating systems.
Battery power summary for Nokia E7 review
Unimpressive battery life, even for a smartphone - it hardly managed to last for nine hours
Full Review and Specification for the Nokia E7
Back in the mists of time (which isn't that long ago in mobile phone terms) beloved of the geek squad were Nokia and its range of Communicator mini-PCs. The last device to carry that name was the E90 (in 2007), but Nokia has brought it back to life in the E7 - interestingly just as Nokia has revealed that it is dumping the Symbian OS to partner up with Microsoft to make the Windows Phone 7 smartphones. In terms of closure, it would have been delightful if the E7 had proved to be a wonderful swansong for Symbian, but unfortunately the software just makes the handset really hard and irritating to use.
Looks
On the outside, the E7 looks very professional. It has a smart-looking metal chassis, which feels solid, as well as a four-inch touch-screen with Nokia's Clear Black display and a resolution of 30x640. The touch technology has been well designed - there's a really nice soft haptic blip when your touch is acknowledged. Under the display you'll find the home button, which is also the all-programs button when you're actually home. On the side edges are a dedicated camera button which fires up the camera when you press and hold it, volume button and a lock-screen switch.
An HDMI port will let you watch your HD content on the large screen of an HDTV. All good so far - but when we tried to slide out the QWERTY backyards we found the mechanism really stiff and hard to move. Once you get it going, it flies out with a loud crack, for all the world as if might trap your fingers. We really like typing on the keyboard - although it might be a bit of stretch for smaller hands as the direction keys mean the keyboard's middle is further to the left than normal.
Symbian^3, is supposed to be an update of the old Symbian found on Nokia's more aged smartphones, and gives the handset a business look with its uniform widgets and squared off edges. There are three customisable homescreens, but you can't add app shortcuts directly, which is a bit of a faff - instead you have to first add a shortcut widget, to which you add your chosen apps. Strangely, Nokia has taken away the usual small clock/time at the top corner and replaced it with a large weather widget and clock that can't be taken away.
While the OS looks better than its predecessors, it just can't compete with the usability of iPhone or Android systems, nor prove as efficient as the BlackBerry OS.
Back to basics
There's a comprehensive lineup of features - social networking, sat-nav, camera, email and web. You'll find a preloaded shortcut that lets you set up all your accounts, although before you sort out social network accounts you have to first set up an Ovi account. It's a bit of a faff, but no different to having to set up a Gmail account to activate Android handsets.
The handset is operated via a combination of keyboard and touch-screen, which works pretty well, and the responsive touch-screen means that the virtual keyboards (QWERTY in landscape and T9-style number pad in portrait mode) are very easy to use when typing.
Phone calls are easy - enter the first few letters of a name and their profile will appear - but text messaging is not so simple. To get a recipient, first you have to press on the contacts book, then type in the contacts name, then choose by which method you want to contact them.
The E7's 680MHz processor doesn't live up to the 1GHz chip in the present superphones, but the handset can manage ‘true' multitasking - which the iPhone, for instance, can't do. This means, for instance, that you can check out your emails even while you're waiting for a website to load. Mind you, it all slowed to a halt when we had eight programs running - and an alert popped up tell us to shut something down. This you can achieve through the multitasking menu - something even some Android handsets can't manage.
Battery life is disappointing - maybe because of its multitasking capabilities. We only managed nine hours with Wi-Fi- but no sat-nav or music - on. If you were heading out after work you'd be wise to charge it at your desk before you go.
Internet
The four-inch display offers a decent enough space for browsing the web, but the browser is so clunky that if you bring up the display address bar, the boxes that appear to assist you in navigating to the next page take up at least half the screen. If you want to visit a previous page hit the back button and a carousel of your previously visited pages will appear. It's sort of useful, but very different to the simpler options from other handsets.
The social networking app for Twitter and Facebook feeds suffers from the same problem. There are huge bars at the base and right edge of the screen that covered up the activity feed, while if you want to use Twitter, you won't be able to retweet - only reply and favourite.
Snapper
Things improve with the eight-megapixel snapper, which offers a dual LED flash, auto-focus and face focus. There are lots of pre-and post-production tools for tweaking your images - exposure and contrast settings, preset scene modes, plus rotating, cropping and colour correction. A nifty feature is when you pinch the screen the aspect switches between 4:3 and widescreen.
Daylight images looked good, but zooming in revealed pixelation. The colours are a little darker than in reality, but when we tried to change the exposure the lighter colours were overexposed. While it has a certain artistic element, the camera is by no means the point-and-shoot model found on the N8.
Redeeming features
The E7 has two saving graces - excellent email and sat nav. It is possible to sync up to 10 email accounts, and inbox widgets will automatically appear on your home screen. It is easy to switch between your various accounts and there are keyboard shortcuts for composing, replying to and deleting emails easily. The white text appears on a black background - it may be plain but it is also efficient.
Whether from web mail or Microsoft Exchange server email, we found that new mails appeared immediately - sometimes before they even appeared on the desktop account. If you really only wanted a handset for emailing, the E7 would be your answer. And on the navigation front, there is Nokia's free Ovi Maps, which proves a very decent replacement for sat nav, especially on the E7's display. The GPS proved accurate down to the door number and there are loads of features such as the ability to set a ‘home', and voice directions as well as TripAdvisor and Michelin add-ons that provide information of service nearby.
There are business features too - including QuickOffice, Notes, PDF reader - there's even a zip file maker. Voice Reader can read back text messages - and we found it surprisingly accurate.
The verdict
The shame about the E7 is that it has so many cool features and useful additions - but it's all let down by the Symbian operating system, which is just not intuitive or user-friendly enough compared with the competition. It's confusing, clunky and still suffers from the issues that bugged older versions of the OS. It just proves too frustrating to use, despite its excellent email and sat nav functionality.
We love the solid feel of the E7's metal body, but sliding out the QWERTY keyboard takes quite a lot of force. The phone feels very business like, thanks to the Symbian^3 operating system, which is unlike the user-friendly interfaces of Android and iPhone handsets
User friendliness summary for Nokia E7 review
Despite the face that Symbian^3 is a revitalised operating system that is supposed to be optimised for touch-screen handsets, it is neither user friendly or smooth in use - and the out-of-date software makes it frustrating to use many of the handset's features
Feature set summary for Nokia E7 review
There's a long list of features - accurate GPS with free sat-nav from Ovi Maps, excellent email, HSDPA and Wi-Fi for web access, an eight-megapixel snapper offering HD video recording, plus an HDMI port so you can view on a large high-def screen. It's a shame the software doesn't equal it
Performance summary for Nokia E7 review
The E7 is a good multitasker but we did find it would slow to a stop if we had eight programs running. The operating system is clunky and not fun to use, especially if you've experienced Android and iPhone operating systems.
Battery power summary for Nokia E7 review
Unimpressive battery life, even for a smartphone - it hardly managed to last for nine hours
Full Review and Specification for the Nokia E7
Back in the mists of time (which isn't that long ago in mobile phone terms) beloved of the geek squad were Nokia and its range of Communicator mini-PCs. The last device to carry that name was the E90 (in 2007), but Nokia has brought it back to life in the E7 - interestingly just as Nokia has revealed that it is dumping the Symbian OS to partner up with Microsoft to make the Windows Phone 7 smartphones. In terms of closure, it would have been delightful if the E7 had proved to be a wonderful swansong for Symbian, but unfortunately the software just makes the handset really hard and irritating to use.
Looks
On the outside, the E7 looks very professional. It has a smart-looking metal chassis, which feels solid, as well as a four-inch touch-screen with Nokia's Clear Black display and a resolution of 30x640. The touch technology has been well designed - there's a really nice soft haptic blip when your touch is acknowledged. Under the display you'll find the home button, which is also the all-programs button when you're actually home. On the side edges are a dedicated camera button which fires up the camera when you press and hold it, volume button and a lock-screen switch.
An HDMI port will let you watch your HD content on the large screen of an HDTV. All good so far - but when we tried to slide out the QWERTY backyards we found the mechanism really stiff and hard to move. Once you get it going, it flies out with a loud crack, for all the world as if might trap your fingers. We really like typing on the keyboard - although it might be a bit of stretch for smaller hands as the direction keys mean the keyboard's middle is further to the left than normal.
Symbian^3, is supposed to be an update of the old Symbian found on Nokia's more aged smartphones, and gives the handset a business look with its uniform widgets and squared off edges. There are three customisable homescreens, but you can't add app shortcuts directly, which is a bit of a faff - instead you have to first add a shortcut widget, to which you add your chosen apps. Strangely, Nokia has taken away the usual small clock/time at the top corner and replaced it with a large weather widget and clock that can't be taken away.
While the OS looks better than its predecessors, it just can't compete with the usability of iPhone or Android systems, nor prove as efficient as the BlackBerry OS.
Back to basics
There's a comprehensive lineup of features - social networking, sat-nav, camera, email and web. You'll find a preloaded shortcut that lets you set up all your accounts, although before you sort out social network accounts you have to first set up an Ovi account. It's a bit of a faff, but no different to having to set up a Gmail account to activate Android handsets.
The handset is operated via a combination of keyboard and touch-screen, which works pretty well, and the responsive touch-screen means that the virtual keyboards (QWERTY in landscape and T9-style number pad in portrait mode) are very easy to use when typing.
Phone calls are easy - enter the first few letters of a name and their profile will appear - but text messaging is not so simple. To get a recipient, first you have to press on the contacts book, then type in the contacts name, then choose by which method you want to contact them.
The E7's 680MHz processor doesn't live up to the 1GHz chip in the present superphones, but the handset can manage ‘true' multitasking - which the iPhone, for instance, can't do. This means, for instance, that you can check out your emails even while you're waiting for a website to load. Mind you, it all slowed to a halt when we had eight programs running - and an alert popped up tell us to shut something down. This you can achieve through the multitasking menu - something even some Android handsets can't manage.
Battery life is disappointing - maybe because of its multitasking capabilities. We only managed nine hours with Wi-Fi- but no sat-nav or music - on. If you were heading out after work you'd be wise to charge it at your desk before you go.
Internet
The four-inch display offers a decent enough space for browsing the web, but the browser is so clunky that if you bring up the display address bar, the boxes that appear to assist you in navigating to the next page take up at least half the screen. If you want to visit a previous page hit the back button and a carousel of your previously visited pages will appear. It's sort of useful, but very different to the simpler options from other handsets.
The social networking app for Twitter and Facebook feeds suffers from the same problem. There are huge bars at the base and right edge of the screen that covered up the activity feed, while if you want to use Twitter, you won't be able to retweet - only reply and favourite.
Snapper
Things improve with the eight-megapixel snapper, which offers a dual LED flash, auto-focus and face focus. There are lots of pre-and post-production tools for tweaking your images - exposure and contrast settings, preset scene modes, plus rotating, cropping and colour correction. A nifty feature is when you pinch the screen the aspect switches between 4:3 and widescreen.
Daylight images looked good, but zooming in revealed pixelation. The colours are a little darker than in reality, but when we tried to change the exposure the lighter colours were overexposed. While it has a certain artistic element, the camera is by no means the point-and-shoot model found on the N8.
Redeeming features
The E7 has two saving graces - excellent email and sat nav. It is possible to sync up to 10 email accounts, and inbox widgets will automatically appear on your home screen. It is easy to switch between your various accounts and there are keyboard shortcuts for composing, replying to and deleting emails easily. The white text appears on a black background - it may be plain but it is also efficient.
Whether from web mail or Microsoft Exchange server email, we found that new mails appeared immediately - sometimes before they even appeared on the desktop account. If you really only wanted a handset for emailing, the E7 would be your answer. And on the navigation front, there is Nokia's free Ovi Maps, which proves a very decent replacement for sat nav, especially on the E7's display. The GPS proved accurate down to the door number and there are loads of features such as the ability to set a ‘home', and voice directions as well as TripAdvisor and Michelin add-ons that provide information of service nearby.
There are business features too - including QuickOffice, Notes, PDF reader - there's even a zip file maker. Voice Reader can read back text messages - and we found it surprisingly accurate.
The verdict
The shame about the E7 is that it has so many cool features and useful additions - but it's all let down by the Symbian operating system, which is just not intuitive or user-friendly enough compared with the competition. It's confusing, clunky and still suffers from the issues that bugged older versions of the OS. It just proves too frustrating to use, despite its excellent email and sat nav functionality.
written by : Unknown | published In : Senin, 05 November 2012 | article Title: Nokia E7 | Url : https://doom-mobi.blogspot.com/2012/11/nokia-e7_1656.html | Please like and share this article to support this blog
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Unknown - Senin, 05 November 2012
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