Nokia C7 Review

Nokia’s handsets get very little buzz nowadays compared to more lustrous offerings  from Samsung and HTC, the majority of which run the Android operating system which, compared to Nokia’s Symbian, is a modern and fun to use OS with numerous benefits over the latter.

One Nokia handset however certainly stands out from the crowd and that is our latest review model, the Nokia C7. In case you weren’t aware, the Nokia C7 is a cut down version (pretty much) of the Nokia N8, Nokia’s current highest specification smartphone available in store.

So is the Nokia C7 a genuine substitute for lower specification Android models copied from their larger cousins, a la HTC Wildfire & LG Optimus One? Well, we aim to find out. Read on to see what’s what.

Hardware

The Nokia C7 is a fantastic looking handset, and it is also fantastically shiny, clearly taking some inspiration from the Nokia 6700 Chrome Edition. On the front you’ll find a 3.5 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with an output of 16m colours, two perfectly placed recieve / end call buttons and a menu button in between the two.

Moving up the phone towards the top, you’ll see Nokia branding and a little C7 logo in the the top left corner, which looks rather nice. Just to the right of the Nokia branding you see a front facing VGA camera.

On the right hand side of the Nokia C7 there are two volume buttons and a pause / play button, a locking scoll (like the 5800) and a dedicated camera key. On the top of the phone is your power on switch, and micro USB port which Nokia has used a cover for (no dust particles building up for you).

When you finally get around to moving on to the back of the handset you are greeted with a rather serious looking 8MP camera lens, dual LED flash and your external speakers surrounding them. It does have to be said that the C7 feels lovely in the hand, and the addition of a brushed metal battery cover certainly helps with this.

If we were to genuinely sum up the build quality of the C7 in one sentence, then it would go like this; amazing. You wouldn’t be wrong to say that we have fallen in love with this mini smartphones looks, just check out the images we have taken to see why (mmm, shiny.)

The Nokia C7 also features 8GB of internal memory, which is plenty of space for your music and photos. There is also a microSD card slot that will expand your phone’s memory to 40GB (which is huge.)

The greatest thing about the C7 though is definately the screen, which is beautifully bright and crisp. Text shows up perfectly and the display produces colours on par with the iPhone 4.

Software

The Nokia C7 sports the latest version of Symbian, and like all Symbian^3 devices so far, the Nokia C7 makes use of three (no room for more) homescreens and each can have six widgets that are fully customisable i.e. you can go to the Ovi Store and download Facebook. Symbian 3 also includes news RSS feeds, weather apps and other useful things that you can add to your home screen.

In light of an increasingly brilliant messaging system from Android, Nokia has just thrown us a brand spanking new threaded messaging system in to the mix, a feature which is available on the more expensive Nokia N8. The virtual keyboard was a genuine pleasure to use on the 3.5 inch touchscreen, and I can happily report that it was just as responsive as the iPhone 4′s. One thing you should note with the Nokia C7 is that the keyboard is alphanumeric when in portrait, while in landscape mode, it’s Qwerty.

The browser on the C7 is not the most advanced out there, and it is nowhere near in the same league as the iPhone’s or Android stock version, however it does support Flash and multi touch.

Wrap Up

The Nokia C7 is a nice handset for anybody who wants something shiny, great looking and can be used as a personal mirror whilst texting at the same time. The inclusion of a microSD slot also brings seriousness to this handset, where the looks of it could sway some to think of it as a novelty.

Overall we liked the Nokia C7, however as always with Symbian couldn’t help but feel that we had stepped back a year in time with the likes of Android Gingerbread just around the corner.

Verdict: 6.5/10

With thanks to Three: http://blog.three.co.uk/