• Technology

If you have been following the news about Nokia, you would not have missed the announcement last month that it is going to adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary software of choice on smartphones this year.

In my opinion, Nokia has done the right thing by moving away from Symbian and heading to a new platform. Is WP7 the platform it should have gone with? I am not so sure. The E7 is perhaps one of the last Nokia smartphones that will sport a Symbian platform. And it’s definitely one of the last communicator-like devices, one would think. The really ironic bit is that for the first time in a very long time, I have been really impressed with a Nokia handset.

The E7 is built like the N8, albeit with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Build-wise, it is one of the sweetest Nokia phones ever made. The anodized silver body makes this phone look like a sort of mini MacBook Pro. No kidding. It does crack the same first impression. It is also very easy to hold in your hands, both in portrait and landscape mode. Unless you have baby hands, of course.

The slide-out mechanism of the E7 is also not a finger breaker by any stretch of the imagination, but it is still heavy on just one hand. A sturdy upward touch, and the foldable hinge on the back of the screen helps it slide upwards. I’m a little skeptical about how tough that hinge is, but the folks at Nokia claim it is hard as nails.

The screen is a winner, in my opinion. What we have on the E7 is a 640 x 360 pixels, 4-inch AMOLED HD screen. And it works like a charm. Take any Nokia phone from the older lines and you will see how the colors come out much better on the E7.

The keyboard itself is another piece of art. In comparison to other QWERTY keyboards on slide-out phones like the Motorola Milestone and the Nokia N900, this is by far the best keyboard my fat fingers have typed on. The keyboard is ergonomically placed deeper than the phone’s profile and there are well spaced out keys that are responsive to minimal pressure—you could so ace a speed typing test.

The E7 sports an 8-megapixel camera that takes some killer shots and great videos in HD, too. There is also a HDMI out port on the E7, which kind of ups the ante on the personal media player front. The average music and media player on the E7, though, balances it out.

Perhaps one of the biggest failings of the Symbian platform has been its inability to innovate as new and better competitors like the Android have come through the gates. In terms of user interface, the Symbian can claim the last spot on the platform hierarchy, even though it still has its loyalists.

I expected the E7 to disappoint me as much as any other Symbian phone has in the recent past. I am happy to say here that I was a little surprised how some minor tweaks have boosted the usability of this phone. These are little things that used to bother me earlier, but were perhaps not too large in profile to get the designers’ attention.

For example, when I would want to compose a new message earlier on a Nokia phone, I would have to keep the cursor on the ‘To’ field, go to ‘Options’, select ‘Add Contact’, scroll through the contacts, click on the needed one, and then press ‘OK’ to come back to the message screen. That is a total of six clicks to add one contact. In the E7, however, on the new message layout, there is an ‘Add Contact’ icon to the right that takes me directly to the contacts, where I can scroll by alphabet, and click ‘OK’ to add the contact to the ‘To’ field. That is a total of three clicks—exactly half the pain.

Another improvement is the notifications bit. Earlier, missed calls and unread message notifications were pop-ups that were displayed separately and without any indication of whom they were from. Clicking on either one took you to that call or message, ultimately forcing you to take the long, winding road back to the exact call or message that you were looking for. The homescreen on the E7 fixes that well. There is a tray for notifications that displays all of the calls and messages and lets you know from whom they are. You can choose to open and respond to the one desired and clear the ones you do not want to waste your time on. Simple tweak. A lot of pain lessened.

However, the Symbianˆ3 OS is still not a Froyo. As far as touch phones go, there is a still a lot to catch up on. The lag in response to touch gestures is one big negative for the E7 and kind of messes up the good karma the QWERTY brings to the game. Also, the widgets cannot make up for the customization by apps that you can do on an Android phone and the Ovi store cannot compete with its peers.

Also, there is the little question of price. The E7 retails at 30k in India and that, I feel, is too high for a phone that cannot lay claim to any sort of leadership position. A figure around 20k would make it much more palatable.

Final take? I think the E7 is a step up from any other Nokia smartphone in the market right now, and if it were around 10k lesser, it would be eaten up like free cake at school. The design, in terms of both build and user interface, is impressive to say the least; the former more than the latter. If the designers behind the E7 can continue on this path and integrate WP7 to churn out smart, easy-to-use, and classy smartphones, I would warn other handset makers to watch their backs.

For the entrepreneur
As said earlier, the keyboard on the E7 is fantastic. It makes typing out messages and e-mails a breeze. No pained thumbs or fingers, I can assure you. The E7 lets you get e-mail via Yahoo, Gmail, Windows Live, Hotmail and Mail for Exchange, which is pretty much standard. Push e-mail and messaging are supported through Nokia Messaging, which is free for now, and thus a big cost saving on BlackBerry devices. Although there seemed to be a slight delay in receiving e-mails when compared to other phones, it was not something I would light a fire against.

A good suggestion here for buyers of the E7 would be to download the WhatsApp application, which is a sort of BlackBerry messenger service for people not wanting to use the BlackBerry messenger service. It is as good, easier to use, and more importantly, free of cost.

There is also this nifty little offering integrated in the Microsoft Exchange on the E7 where if you have a contact that’s connected to the office hub, you can basically drag and drop to share documents between yourselves. Pretty spiffy, if you ask me.

Specs – Nokia E7 :
Price: Rs.29,999
Dimensions: 123.7 x 62.4 x 13.6 mm
Weight: 176 g
Screen Size: 640 x 360 pixels, 4 inches, AMOLED HD
Camera: 8 MP, LED flash
Messaging: SMS,MMS, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, POP3, IMAP4, Mail for Exchange
Battery: 430 hrs standby, 9 hrs talktime

©Entrepreneur April 2011

Tags:
Nokia E7, smartphone