The Running Commentary

Nokia e7 – business and multimedia in one…..

I received the Nokia E7 at the beginning of April for evaluation and, as usual, my approach is to look at the device from a man in the street point of view:

Out of the box – well, everything that you have come to expect from Nokia. Slick, shiny (or rather nice matt metallic look) and comfortable in the hand. I like the aluminium look and feel and believe it is available in black, which I think would be awesome.

Phone functionality – I have not bothered to use it as a phone as it will work as well as any other device. Instead I have used it with WIFI service only. (Now I am sure that the team at Nokia will smack me for this, but I really expect a phone to deliver the phone functionality at the very least.) I have a very simple philosophy here, if it doesn’t work as a phone Nokia wouldn’t send it to market.

First Impressions – My first impression of the phone is that it looks like the N8 with a slide out keyboard (I forgot to mention this earlier) but yes it has a slide out keyboard.  As far as slide out keyboard devices go, this is very user friendly. The keyboard feels natural and the fact that Nokia have stuck to the way they done things in the past in terms of layout means that within a few seconds you are operating like a pro (this may be due to my past, very positive experiences with the Nokia e90).  The screen, like that of the N8 struggles to be as responsive as my iPhone 4, but it still provides a really good experience.

Toys – The camera is a robust 8mb with flash and delivers an awesome experience. This will be a great tool for the multimedia pundits out there.  It comes with the same ports for displaying to HD devices, as the N8 and as with the N8 has a great video recorder.  There are a tonne of preloaded things to play with and the free navigation is probably one of Nokia’s best selling points.  The quality of video’s on this device is also really good and with the screen size it more than holds it own against many of the other devices out there.

The positioning of this device intrigues me as it feels like Nokia have tried to merge a business device with a multimedia device, I may be wrong in this view, but as this is my opinion I guess it is okay ;-).  This is a clear indication of bringing these markets together as opposed to developing devices to suite each segment. I think that it also speaks to the fact that many people are looking to have one device that meets their needs while at work or at play.  As per my previous reviews on the N8, I am not sure that Nokia have got the user experience sorted out yet and too be quite honest I could not see any difference between the E7 and N8 in this regard.  I do think though, as I said about the Nokia N8 that the user experience is not a bad one, it just doesn’t stack up to the iPhone.

I am not sure that the price point will be all that palatable, at around R 6000.00 the device is more expensive that the 16gb iPhone 4, which ultimately is where I would place this phone from a rivalry point of view.

Some big points for Nokia though are that you do not need to have a PC to activate or register the phone! The E7 certainly fits well in the business/multimedia space.  I think that the OVI store is improving all of the time, although I don’t operate much in the store (I have however app’ed my blog for OVI – a few quick steps – big up Nokia for pulling this off). If you are a Nokia user already then the move from your current device to this one will be slick and painless.

apple iPhoneiPhone 4mobilenokiaNokia e7OVI

Mike • May 13, 2011


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