Introduction:
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The Nokia X7 first leaked out in November 2010, but since then it's been through a bumpy ride to the market. In December, it appeared with AT&T branding and seemed set for a Stateside release, but only a month later either the carrier or the phone maker decided to cancel that partnership, so the device wouldn't appear subisdized in the States, at least initially. The Nokia X7 however was finally made official in April heralding the all-new Symbian Anna, previously known as PR 2.0.
Design:
But it's not just the new interface – the Nokia X7 is coming with a rather unique angular design with four grills on each of its corners, but only the bottom two hold speakers. A 4-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels dominates the front. It doesn't come with Nokia's ClearBlack enhancement for nearly perfect blacks and better anti-reflection for outdoor visibility, but we found the colors to be very vivid, with blacks still very deep. Add to that Gorilla Glass scratch protection, and you're looking at a delicious screen, corrupted slightly only by the average sunlight legibility. Oh, and we do understand Nokia's wish to keep its ecosystem consistent, but that nHD 360 x 640 pixel resolution seems dated now.
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The Nokia X7 is coming with a rather unique angular design with four grills on each of its corners | ||
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Interface and Functionality:
The traditional Symbian^3 interface has been given an overhaul in Anna including a brand new set of icons which freshen up the platform and real-time switching between home screens, which basically means that you can gradually scroll to the next home pane with the content moving along with your finger. In previous editions of Symbian, scrolling left or right in the home screen also brought up a transitional animation, but you couldn't only gradually scroll to peek at the next screen for example without actually completing that transition.
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The traditional Symbian^3 interface has been given an overhaul in Anna including a brand new set of icons | |||
That's just eye candy, but its not only the visuals that have been improved. Code optimization in Anna brings faster performance, along with novelties like a portrait QWERTY keyboard and an improved browser. The portrait QWERTY is simple yet convenient with the only major difference with other platforms being the positioning of the numbers which appear in three rows instead of just one upper row. To our relief, typing on the full portrait QWERTY in Anna is much faster than using the numeric keypad in previous Symbian editions, so finally, the portrait QWERTY is a welcome addition, but one long overdue.
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Anna brings novelties like a portrait QWERTY keyboard | |
Under the hood, the Nokia X7 runs on a 680 MHz ARM 11 processor, Broadcom BCM2727 GPU with only 256MB of RAM. This is enough for the interface to run fairly smoothly, but occasionally it stutters and you can definitely notice how that lag affects the overall performance.
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Messaging |
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Mail | Calendar |
Organizer apps of the Nokia X7 | |
Camera and Multimedia:
The Nokia X7 comes with an 8-megapixel fixed-focus camera with dual-LED flash. You can easily operate it with the physical shutter key on the right and if we have to sum up its performance in one word, that would be speed. The shutter button however is located on a slope on the back making it hard to reach, but once you do reach it, the camera reacts extremely quickly. That's mostly due to the fact that it doesn't take those extra fractions of a second to focus, which in turn allows you to fire the camera right away when you feel like it. But at the same time, fixed-focus means no macro shots as the sensor automatically puts everything further away then 20 inches in focus, but the rest within that range appears blurry.
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Camera interface | |||
Overall, however, we find the quality of the image stills on the Nokia X7 below average - decently detailed and moderately sharpened, but colors seemed washed out and in most (if not all) cases the sensor picked up side light and ended up with pale images. When it comes to the camera interface, you're treated with plenty of options including scene modes, face detection, self-timer and color tones. You can even set the white balance and ISO light sensitivity, as well as the contrast and sharpness of pictures. The X7 supports up to 2x digital zoom. Unfortunately, the handset comes with no front-facing camera.
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Outdoor samples made with the Nokia X7 | |||
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Strong | Medium | Low light | Darkness with flash |
Indoor samples | |||
Performance:
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The call quality is a key feature for any handset and that's why we were particularly careful when examining the audio quality on the Nokia X7. The handset comes with active noise cancellation with a dedicated microphone, which does an excellent job of bringing side noise to an absolute minimum. We were also happy with the volume on both the mic and the earpiece, but when it comes to the sound quality, we noticed an audible digitalization of voices, so our callers reported hearing our voices with unnatural tones.
Under the back cover, there is a 1300 mAh battery providing you with an above average talk time of up to 6 hours 30 minutes and 6 hours of continuous video playback at 720p (for H.264 files at 30fps). Keep in mind that the battery is not removable.
Conclusion:
The Nokia X7 brings a much anticipated overhaul of the Symbian platform, but even with Anna, Nokia's platform UI and performance seems a year or even more behind rivals like Android and iOS. The Finns also fail to deliver contemporary hardware with a sub-par 680MHz CPU and only 256MB of RAM on the Nokia X7, which seem to be the main reasons behind its sometimes slightly laggy performance. The handset ships with Nokia's EDoF camera, a fixed-focus 8-megapixel unit, that brings great speed and below average photo quality, but no macro capabilities.
At the same time, the price of this package is hard to swallow – set at the whopping $650 (460 euro) off-contract in Europe, it seems inadequate when compared to dual-core heavyweights like the LG Optimus 2X, which actually undercuts it by a hefty margin. On the positive side, the Nokia X7 is well-crafted with premium materials and unique angular design. If you feel nostalgic about the glorious past of Nokia, there's certainly something that will feed your nostalgia in the X7. But if you factor in any other sane reasons, the current dual-core offerings on the market blow the Nokia X7 out of the water easily.
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