Nokia E7 Smartphone: A First Look

The micro-USB also handles charging – and there seemed to be no old-fashioned Nokia charging socket on the device.

There is 16GB of build in storage, and no microSD-card slot, so users may find themselves using the USB-on-the-go interface quite a lot.

Symbian^3 remains a slight disappointment. While Vanjoki can say “don’t judge a car by the dashboard”, most users will want easy-to-manage widgets and apps, and something which looks substantially like an Apple or Android interface. On first acquaintance, this still isn’t it – but any user interface will take a while to get used to.

What about the keyboard?

To a large extent this is the whole raison d’etre of the phone, so how good is it? Well, the sliding mechanism is good, as I said, although it fails a little in providing as much of a “real” keyboard as Vanjoki promised. Somewhat like a Danger device, the ends of the keyboard half of the phone curve upwards, so there is less space available for the keyboard than there might be if it was a clamshell (like the first Nokia Communicators), or if the device split in half along a straight plane, like last year’s disappointment, the N97.

The result is a keyboard that I couldn’t get more than two thumbs onto. However, the keys have a nice physical presence, and a very positive click which makes it a nice experience to type on.

By the time it finally arrives, however, the majority of smartphone users will probably be happily tapping on soft keyboards. The experience may be inferior, but familiarity counts for a lot in phones. Next year, physical keyboards may have become a minority sport, no matter how much better they are.

Keeping us waiting…

From a first look, this phone seems well set-up to do its job of keeping our excitement up. We are as keen to get our hands on it as we have been to experience any other phone of recent times, including all the Androids and Apples around.

I’m not sure if it merits the heir-to-the-Communicator title – but I’m not sure how valuable that segment would be to Nokia, if the company really does go all-out to revive it.