Nokia E7 Smartphone: A First Look

With the Nokia N8 finally arriving in shops, Nokia used Nokia World to unleash its next design: the E7. A smartphone with a qwerty keyboard, it has a tricky job – to convince Nokia traditionalists, and convert those who have gone over to other platforms.

This phone has a heavy responsibility. While the N8 emerges into the real world, the E7 has to take its place as the “announced” phone, the coming attraction, the Messianic device which will resurrect the company’s fortunes. It’s not going to be in the shops till next year, and till then, its job is to be drooled over, to keep you me and the gadget blogs excited.

Nokia provided several units at the Nokia World show, with expert demonstrators to help it do just that.

“Nothing beats a real keyboard”

There are two ways to look at the E7. You could see it as an N8 with a sliding keyboard, or you could, like Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki, claim it is the rightful successor to the throne of the much-loved – at least, much-loved amongst a particular group of gadget lovers – Nokia Communicator series.

From 1996 to 2007, the Communicator provided a bulky-but-practical device, with a big informative screen (and the slightly-obscure Symbian S40 interface), a keyboard large enough and well-designed enough to use with more than just your thumbs, and a tendency to make your pockets sag.

Is this the return of the Communicator? Not really. But it’s immediately apparent when you handle the E7, that it has great build quality, and good design. Like the N8 (read our N8 review) it has a solid anodised aluminium body. The sliding keyboard mechanism has a very positive action, no exposed cables, and folds away into a space no thicker than the N8.

I found it quite hard to get the knack of sliding the screen aside, but a colleague found it easy, and I’m sure it becomes easier with practice.

The phone has a bigger (4-inch) screen than the N8, and the overall phone is longer and a bit wider. That and the keyboard mechanism must add to the weight a bit, but the effect is not noticeable when you hold one phone in each hand.

It has a lower-resolution (8 megapixel) camera than the 12 megapixel camera in the N8, but this does not signify with me. The N8 costs more than the combined price of a decent phone and a camera. The E7 still does most of the fancy media play that the N8 does. It 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.