3UK Signs Up Opera Mini, Prepares E7 Launch

3 will be the first mobile operator to sell Nokia’s business-oriented E7 smartphone in the UK, the company has announced.

The network also said it has signed a deal to make the popular Opera Mini browser available on its handsets. The browser can cut data costs because Opera compresses web pages before sending them across to the handset.

Big phone

3 didn’t give an exact launch date for the E7, but said the handset will be available in the first quarter of 2011.

Carphone Warehouse is giving customers the opportunity to register interest and said it would ship the device some time in March. Pricing hasn’t yet been revealed.

Nokia launched the E7 in September, partly as a successor to the Communicator line, which predated most smartphones and ended in 2007.

The E7 reproduces a lot of the Communicator’s features, and is essentially a version of the N8 with a sliding keyboard.

It runs the Symbian^3 operating system, with which some have expressed disappointment.

In testing, eWeek Europe UK found the phone has a bigger (4-inch) screen than the N8, and the overall phone is longer and a bit wider.

Features

It has a lower-resolution (8 megapixel) camera than the 12 megapixel camera in the N8. The E7 has an HDMI-out port hidden at the top, and it does USB-on-the-go, allowing users with the right cable to plug a USB disk into the micro-USB slot.

It will support video and multi-party conference calling and remote lock and wipe. Users can sync corporate email and social networking accounts with it and view Microsoft Office documents via Quickoffice Dynamic Premium, included with the phone. Adobe Reader and free lifetime usage of Nokia Ovi Maps voice navigation will also be preloaded, Nokia has said.

Competitors include the iPhone 4 and the Android-based HTC Desire HD.

Opera Mini will be available for download from 3’s website and supports 3,000 mobile devices of various sorts, including iOS, Symbian and Android.

“We want to bring the benefits of a great mobile Internet experience to all handsets, whether smartphones or not,” said Charlotte Blanchard, 3 UK’s Director of Products and Services, in a statement. “Opera Mini helps us extend that experience to an even greater range of devices.”