Over in Europe, Nokia is busy offloading its 3000 Symbian software developers while simultaneously championing Symbian on new devices and assuring customers of ongoing support and software upgrades to the latest Symbian iteration called "Anna".
If timing is the telling factor, you'd say the E7 has as much future as Leyland Australia's infamous gas-guzzling P76 sedan had when the 70s oil crisis hit, especially as it competes against top-of-the-range Android and Apple phones and is priced accordingly.
Nevertheless, the E7 has virtues, even highly competitive ones, and that starts with hardware. Despite its software woes, Nokia still knows how to make phone hardware and the E7, with its slide-out Qwerty keyboard, is a well-engineered and durable handset.
The keys on the Qwerty keyboard are well-spaced and it's solidly hinged to the base unit. But the keypad is harder to slide out, when compared to its closest rival, the HTC Desire Z, an Android phone. You need to get the knack.
The 4-inch 640 x 360 pixel AMOLED display is bright and the colours strong, and Nokia has maintained its reputation as the maker of quality phone cameras. The E7 has a rear-facing eight-megapixel camera with a powerful flash and a front-facing 640 x 480 pixel VGA camera.
But there's no auto-focus. Nokia says its business user base doesn't want auto-focus and the camera instead has an increased depth-of-field and is faster. It's a matter of taste, but I didn't find the photos I took compelling.
And standby time was nothing like the advertised 430 hours. I averaged about 60 hours with light use on the Optus 3G network. Heavy use on the 3G network and multi-tasking will see you charging this phone daily. Nevertheless, battery life is better than many Android competitors.
As for Symbian 3, its case would be helped had Nokia included a really fast processor: 680MHz isn't quick enough to overcome the sluggishness I had mainly when navigating backwards, for example through the Ovi Store.
The E7 comes with three home screens. You press a menu button to access key functions and an applications icon to access your Ovi Store downloads. Using Nokia's widgets, I created a useful home screen showing new mail in multiple email accounts, recent SMSs, and social network updates. But I was struggling with the widget choices by the third screen.
Configuring this phone wasn't easy. Sure, I managed to link in my work's exchange mail server. But I wanted to also import my Gmail contacts, which means linking Gmail in an exchange-style configuration.
But Symbian 3, including, I'm told, the Anna upgrade, won't let you add a second exchange account, so I resorted to Sync ML (Synchronisation Markup Language), which is commonly available on Symbian phones, to get this going. It worked, but the lengthy configuration would be beyond average users.
Using this phone brought back my almost-forgotten major bugbear with Symbian, which is the logic (or lack of it) of the menu system. Getting around an iPhone is exquisitely simple, and Windows Phone 7 is also easy to navigate as like functions are grouped into hubs.
But the Symbian menu system is like a rabbit warren and functions about the one entity (for example, email) can be all over the place. Mail, for example, is an application, but scouring your contacts and messages are not. It wasn't too hard to set up a WiFi network link, but coming back later to change its password saw me reaching to my landline for help.
As for the Ovi Store, I believe you don't need 200,000 apps to have a successful mobile phone store, as most people use a few key ones. The problem for Nokia is that the standard of apps is not as good as iTunes. The Skype app, for example, does not allow video calls. And with Symbian's limited future, there's a reduced incentive for developers to churn out upgrades. Nevertheless, Nokia has included a few great features with the E7. Ovi Maps, with its free walk and drive verbal navigation for 90 countries, is a drawcard, as is the inclusion of Microsoft Communicator for business.
And Nokia's Big Screen app is sensational. You use a supplied HDMI cable to connect your phone to a digital screen and suddenly your phone is a remote handset beaming full-screen home entertainment. That includes photos, videos, and music.
Equally sensational is the E7's USB On-The-Go, a USB port link that lets you connect a regular flash drive and USB keyboard or mouse to your phone. I didn't find using a mouse so useful, as you have a touch screen, but linking to a full keyboard is a great idea.
Being able to read PDF, text files and list to music and watch video stored on a USB flash drive also is mightily useful. Linking a flash drive overcomes the E7's lack of a MicroSD slot. The E7 has 16GB of internal memory.
Despite these valiant attempts, the very presentable E7 is still a victim of its time and faces a tough battle in a market against more acclaimed rivals.
RATING: 7.5/10
