Nokia N8 was targeted purely at consumers looking for a better camera and entertainment purposes. Despite N8 boasting decent business-centric features, it lacked one major feature devoured by business users — physical QWERTY keyboard.
This is where E7 comes into picture. E7 is Nokia’s answer to business users seeking build quality of N8 but want business-centric features. Although Nokia has downgraded E7’s camera to 8MP from N8’s 12MP, E7 does add a larger 4-inch Clear Black AMOLED Display and a physical QWERTY keyboard.
E7 has a very clean design and comes in a metallic body akin to N8 that gives it a very solid feeling. Despite E7 being a tad larger than N8, the phone does feel good in hand. Nokia has also managed to shuffle placement of few keys like the keypad lock has moved to the left-hand side and the volume slider button taking its place on right.
The slider mechanism was also top notch that reveals its keyboard. The keys are spaced out well and has a raised key design, allowing to type better.
As for the phone’s performance, it runs on Symbian^3 and seemed pretty fast and responsive in executing commands. However, there are still a few issues with the phone not having portrait QWERTY keyboard, below par browser and fixed-focus camera.
There’s no word on price or avaialbility of E7 in India but the phone is rumored to launch in few weeks for a price of around Rs. 30,000.
