Nokia C7 Review
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } This is going to be me first review of a technical product. And no I won't be foxing everyone with technical brouhaha. It has been a week since I got my hands on the new Nokia C7. One of the latest 3G smart phones to hit the market. Frankly I was a bit sceptical as the Symbian is a very old OS and Nokia has been losing hold on the smart phone market ever since Android entered the arena.
But I was in for a surprise. The new phones launched have Symbian^3 which is a damn good OS and is meant for capacitative/multi-touch/pinch-to-zoom screens.
The overall look of the phone is quite pretty. It is quite sleek and at 10.5mm thickness is pretty easy to slide in the pockets. It has got a 3.5 inch HD AMOLED touch screen with 640 x 360 resolution. The colours are sharp and screen is pretty bright and vibrant. Moreover with an impressive processor the phone runs without any slag and the touch is very responsive. There are three hard keys beneath the touch panel. A pair of red and green keys for call and cancelling options. Another one in between the two to go to the menu and the home screen.
The left edge has a charging port. The right edge contains the volume and zoom keys, the lock/unlock slider and a camera button. The top edge has a power on/off button, a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB port. There is an 8 MP camera with dual LED flash. The clarity of the camera is quite impressive, though it lacks auto focus. It is capable of recording HD videos of 720p at 25fps and playback of 30fps. The body is made of stainless steel and feels solid. A front vga camera for video calling and skype.
The look of the OS is somewhat similar to the other Symbian versions. There are 3 home-screens which can be customised independently. 5 widgets can be added on each screen. That gives a wide range of functions on the users finger or rather thumb tips.
The main features of the C series is social networking options. Nokia's social networking widget ensures that all the facebook and twitter updates are shown on my screen and I can reply to them from it. The mail client is pretty impressive. Other than that there are options for IM, new feed, RSS feed etc. Since the last few days I have hardly opened my laptop and have checked sites, replied to mails, written posts, chatted on GTalk etc using the C7. You can enable social networking on the contact list. That way you can integrate the twitter and facebook account of the contacts in the phone book.
The latest Ovi maps are compatible with capacitative touch and are pretty impressive. The GPS system has various options like tracking your position, weather, travel planner, navigation instructions for walking and driving to a destination. It also has collaboration with events, burp, lonely planet, bookmyshow, time out, expedia etc that gives the information about events, movies, plays, eateries etc in your city. Burp enables you to search for restaurants within a few km radius of your location. The position tracker is quite impressive and I walked some distance yesterday while keeping it on, and the red dot kept step with me.
The webTV application gives excess to channels CNN, Nat Geo, You Tube etc. Other than that there are a number of softwares and games at the Ovi store that can be downloaded to increase your options. The web browser is quite impressive with multi-touch arrangement. Flash, html, xhtml etc all work on it. And the touch input keys are pretty good. The voice is crisp and clear while talking on the phone and their was no problem. FM transmitter enables you to transmit the song you are paying to an external radio set via a dedicated FM bandwidth. Almost all audio and video codecs are supported.
Overall a nifty device that can do a lot. Sumptuous and striking.
But I was in for a surprise. The new phones launched have Symbian^3 which is a damn good OS and is meant for capacitative/multi-touch/pinch-to-zoom screens.
The overall look of the phone is quite pretty. It is quite sleek and at 10.5mm thickness is pretty easy to slide in the pockets. It has got a 3.5 inch HD AMOLED touch screen with 640 x 360 resolution. The colours are sharp and screen is pretty bright and vibrant. Moreover with an impressive processor the phone runs without any slag and the touch is very responsive. There are three hard keys beneath the touch panel. A pair of red and green keys for call and cancelling options. Another one in between the two to go to the menu and the home screen.
The left edge has a charging port. The right edge contains the volume and zoom keys, the lock/unlock slider and a camera button. The top edge has a power on/off button, a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB port. There is an 8 MP camera with dual LED flash. The clarity of the camera is quite impressive, though it lacks auto focus. It is capable of recording HD videos of 720p at 25fps and playback of 30fps. The body is made of stainless steel and feels solid. A front vga camera for video calling and skype.
The look of the OS is somewhat similar to the other Symbian versions. There are 3 home-screens which can be customised independently. 5 widgets can be added on each screen. That gives a wide range of functions on the users finger or rather thumb tips.
The main features of the C series is social networking options. Nokia's social networking widget ensures that all the facebook and twitter updates are shown on my screen and I can reply to them from it. The mail client is pretty impressive. Other than that there are options for IM, new feed, RSS feed etc. Since the last few days I have hardly opened my laptop and have checked sites, replied to mails, written posts, chatted on GTalk etc using the C7. You can enable social networking on the contact list. That way you can integrate the twitter and facebook account of the contacts in the phone book.
The latest Ovi maps are compatible with capacitative touch and are pretty impressive. The GPS system has various options like tracking your position, weather, travel planner, navigation instructions for walking and driving to a destination. It also has collaboration with events, burp, lonely planet, bookmyshow, time out, expedia etc that gives the information about events, movies, plays, eateries etc in your city. Burp enables you to search for restaurants within a few km radius of your location. The position tracker is quite impressive and I walked some distance yesterday while keeping it on, and the red dot kept step with me.
The webTV application gives excess to channels CNN, Nat Geo, You Tube etc. Other than that there are a number of softwares and games at the Ovi store that can be downloaded to increase your options. The web browser is quite impressive with multi-touch arrangement. Flash, html, xhtml etc all work on it. And the touch input keys are pretty good. The voice is crisp and clear while talking on the phone and their was no problem. FM transmitter enables you to transmit the song you are paying to an external radio set via a dedicated FM bandwidth. Almost all audio and video codecs are supported.
Overall a nifty device that can do a lot. Sumptuous and striking.
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