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Description:

Nokia World usually throws up an exciting new device every year; the N900, the N97 etc.
However, this year that title went to the Nokia E7, which takes a lot of cues from the oft-seen-but-as-yet-unreleased Nokia N8.
It seems a little underwhelming for a 'headline' phone, but that doesn't mean it's a spec-heavy device, especially one vaguely aimed at the business crew.

Firstly, there's the 4-inch OLED screen to play with - it's big, high contrast and still seems to fit the overall chassis.
The anodised silver frame (although it apparently comes in many colours) is as attractive as the N8, and the depth of the Nokia E7 is more palatable given there's a QWERTY keyboard underneath.

Well connected

The same connections are present with the E7 too, with an HDMI-out, 3.5mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, although the camera is slightly less powerful at 8MP (but still with LED flash).

In both portrait and landscape mode, the Nokia E7 fits nicely in the hand, although smaller palms might suffer somewhat - but that's the price you pay for a screen of this size.

The QWERTY keyboard is released by pushing the screen up in landscape mode up on a hinge, although this is pretty stiff and not easy to do with one hand. However it feels very well made, so fingers crossed you'll never find the screen dangling off after playing with it too much in your pocket.

The operating system of the Nokia E7 is Symbian^3 and will be part of the next wave of Symbian smartphones - this offers multiple home screens, widgets and an overall 'faster' experience.

However, it's the same as before - wiping across the display to move between home screens has a slight delay after every gesture, and although it's consistent, even moving widgets around the screen (which takes a far-too-long press to activate) caused the phone to seize and at one point crash.
Why Nokia can't follow Android's lead and just react to the finger's touch instantly, we don't know.

Take nothing away from the display though - it looks great, despite only being 360 x 640 pixels. The contrast ratios are great, the colours really pop on the screen and it's easy to see the difference between the Nokia E7 and older phones.

Another little feature is the deep Microsoft Exchange on offer here - if you've got a contact that's connected to their office's hub, they can let you know their status and make it easier to share documents between yourselves. Neat, but not one for the mainstream in day to day use.

QWERTY-tastic
One of the big highlights of the Nokia E7 is the QWERTY keyboard though - it's a very well made offering and the keys offer a premium typing experience.

They're a little hard to reach in landscape mode for everyone except the biggest-handed among us though, which prevents reaching any high typing speeds.

But for multi-media the Nokia E7 is surprisingly (for a device that comes from Nokia's E-Series, that is) good.

The 8MP camera takes good quality shots, the HD camera is a nice touch (and the HDMI out port helpful too) and the music player and video playback are both good enough to make this a PMP all on its own - even on top of the Exchange support and separate email accounts etc.

Overall, it's hard to work out how we feel about the Nokia E7 - it's actually a tech-packed device that adds in a QWERTY keyboard to an attractive chassis, so it should be right up there with the best.

But whether it's Nokia's constant failure to deliver a truly industry-leading device or that this the headline phone from an international two day event, we can't help feeling a bit ambivalent towards this E-Series device.