Technology News: First Look: Nokia E7

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

First Look: Nokia E7

We’ve had a chance to get a look at Nokia’s exciting new E7 – the flagship Enterprise-series phone that brings back the original ‘Communicator’ to the Nokia family.
The screen is amazing, with a polarised filter that helps reduce glare from bright sunlight. Although we couldn’t take it outdoors to check, we can certainly say that it is incredibly bright and clear – so much so that it really made our camera struggle to focus.
The keyboard is also easy to use, with a nicely spaced layout made possible by it’s larger form factor – but the clever design means that when you ‘fold’ the keyboard away, the phone remains incredibly thin – just 13.6mm in total.
Software wise, the E7 we saw was effectively the same as the N8 – featuring the same apps and content. However, we couldn’t help but notice that there were a number of lagging issues with the screen. Pressing a dialogue could take a second or two to respond, while so menu options didn’t work at all.
Although we were warned that the E7 is still a prototype (it’s not likely to hit stores until after Christmas), we’re unsure what else needs to be done to the basic user interface. Swap the camera, remove the Xenon flash and add support for the hardware keyboard and that’s about it, right?
Okay, we don’t need a developer to tell us why that’s being rather too simplistic, and we’re confident that such issues will be fixed by the time the phone is released.
And if Nokia can get things working nicely with all the Enterprise applications, as well as supporting Microsoft Office documents, then it seems hard to believe that the E7 won’t be a success.