Nokia X7 - Superb looks

If you have Rs 20k to spend on a touchscreen smartphone, the choices are just endless. A gamut of solid Android phones - Samsung Galaxy S (S-LCD version), Samsung Google Nexus S and the LG Optimus Black, are available. Plus, let us not forget that the ageing Apple iPhone 3GS is now available for around Rs 19k after the recent price reduction. The Nokia N8 is hovering in the vicinity, but age seems to be catching up with it. The Samsung Wave II with the updated Bada OS is yet another option. As you can see, the X7 has no dearth of competition.

However, Nokia has a lot riding on the X7, particularly after the focus on updating Symbian^3 OS.

Look and Feel

The Nokia X7 looks superb. It has edgy looks, with the corners angling inwards giving it quite a futuristic look. The sides are also at an angle – curved inwards towards the rear panel. It seems like there are speakers hidden away on all four angled corners, but actually, there are only two the other two are evidently for uniformity. The mixture of plastic and aluminum does give the phone a classy look. The 4-inch display at the front is paired up with 1 hardware key, essentially the Menu button. The area around the display, including the key is all completely glossy black. The right side panel has the volume rocker and the dedicated camera key. The left side panel is where the interesting bit is. Carrying forward from the trend set by the Nokia N8, the SIM card slot is on the left side, and so is the microSD card slot. Push them in from one side, and once the other end emerges out, immediately focus all your energy and precision on pulling out the slot. The slide out mechanism isn't very smooth either, and it tends to get slightly stuck.

Now, once the slots are outside, put the SIM card or the microSD card (depending on what slot you have just pulled out) into it, and send it back in the way it came out! The rear panel doesn't open, and just like the N8, you cannot access the battery. What we don't really understand is the point of such a design. Because Apple does it with the iPhone doesn't really mean that it is the correct thing to do, and that Nokia should copy that! In a nutshell, the X7 looks very good, and the aggressive and edgy design tones do suit it well. The build quality is excellent, and the phone feels like a lot more expensive than it actually is. However, a couple of issues with ergonomics do sully the otherwise good package.

Features

Symbian Anna is the much-awaited update to the otherwise mediocre Symbian^3 OS that we first saw with the Nokia N8 towards the end of 2010. Nokia have been quite aggressive with how they are pitching the "new" OS as a real competition for Android. We saw it first with the Nokia E6 (where it incidentally is competing with the Blackberry 6 OS), and the rejigged icon set, improved performance and the updated web browser impressed. What is missing, still, is that the ability to have widgets in different sizes. If our memory serves us correctly, Nokia had been severely criticized for the widget size limitation in Symbian 3. But that hasn't been corrected yet. While this limitation wasn't very visible on the smaller display of the E6, the 4-inch display on the X7 does bring that to the fore.

With more powerful processors powering the rivals, the 680MHz, ARM11 processor does feel a bit lightweight. 256MB of RAM isn't a lot either, making us wonder if Nokia were focusing more on specs – manufacturing price bit, rather than the actual performance. Even a year and a half old HTC Legend smartphone has 384MB of RAM. While people may argue that the OS is different, but the reality is that the difference can only take a phone so far. When multiple apps are opened in the background, the load on the system is pretty much the same.

While the E6 had 8GB of built-in storage (with a microSD slot as well), the X7 has literally no built-in storage. The microSD slot is there, and Nokia ships an 8GB card with the phone though.

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Sateesh.smart