Nokia’s delayed E7 isn’t expected to show up until sometime in “early 2011″ according to the Finnish company, but if your Christmas money is burning a hole in your pocket you can already buy the smartphone from Amazon. Priced at $679 unlocked and SIM-free, the E7 is currently out of stock, with no estimates on when that might change.
Billed as the more business-focused cousin of the Nokia N8, the E7 has a 4-inch touchscreen, AMOLED display, QWERTY keyboard and an 8-megapixel camera. It runs Symbian^3 and supports both T-Mobile USA and AT&T 3G data thanks to its pentaband (850/900/1700/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA. More details in our hands-on.
There’s no need to tell you that a lot was (and still is, in a way) riding on Nokia’s N8. It was said to be the outfit’s first dead-serious smartphone to rival the giants of today, and it was also Nokia’s first chance to truly reveal Symbian^3 to the world. We’ve already churned out our two pennies on the matter, but for those of you who bought in, now’s the time to get really real. Are you satisfied with where Nokia’s going with the N8? Do you seriously see a long and lively future when looking at Symbian^3? If someone (read: UPS) accidentally delivered the keys to the Finnish kingdom to you, how would you go about tweaking and / or reshaping the N8? Would you have selected a different operating system? Added a few more hardware buttons? Thrown in a different processor? Made it available on your carrier of choice? Let us know down in comments below, and keep it sensible — it’s Christmas Eve and all.
Like the Verizon iPhone, there are some tech industry rumors that simply refuse to die, and today it’s the turn of Nokia and a potential Windows Phone 7 device that’s getting raked over the coals once more. Notorious insider – and not known for his love of the Finnish cellphone company – Eldar Murtazin claims that Microsoft and Nokia have been holding ongoing talks regarding a Nokia-branded Windows Phone 7 smartphone range.
Updated with Nokia comment after the cut
According to Murtzin, the meetings were at the prompt of newly-instated Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who is the ex-head of Microsoft Business. He suggests that the first Nokia WP7 devices will reach Europe in Q2 2011, with the “characteristic features” of the Finnish company’s products.
The concept has been well raked-over since Elop took over from ex-CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, but Nokia has staunchly denied any such intentions to look to Android or Windows Phone 7 rather than continuing with its two-pronged Symbian and MeeGo approach. The first MeeGo devices are expected in 2011, and while we’d love to see Nokia’s excellent hardware take on other platforms, we can’t help but think that this is another rumor that simply won’t pan out.
Update: Nokia has given us the following statement (and there’s no great surprise as to what it is):
“We have nothing to announce and have a long-standing policy to not comment on rumour or speculation” Nokia
Nokia is looking to significant hardware and software updates in 2011 to keep its smartphone lines competitive, with dual-core CPUs, boosted graphics and a heavily modified Symbian UI all promised for the new year. According to Nokia exec Gunther Kottzieper, the company will look to 1GHz processors in Q2 or Q3 2011, as well as increasing graphics memory, to lessen the gap between current Nokia devices and their high-spec rivals.
Meanwhile Nokia is pencilling in dual-core CPUs in Q4 2011 – though that could slip into Q1 2012 – together with a “true zoom camera”. The latter isn’t detailed, but it could well mean a Nokia handset using a proper optical zoom rather than digital magnification, something few manufacturers have attempted.
As for software, Kottzieper touched on the previously-vaunted Q1 2011 refresh of Nokia’s Symbian platform, which will apparently see over 50 enhancements including the long-awaited browser update. These will be followed in subsequent quarters by ”a new look and feel for the user interface, a more flexible home screen, an updateable HTML5 browser and an easier software update experience.” We’re working on getting hold of the slide deck from the presentation from Nokia.
We don’t have any hard details yet, but Computerworld reports that Nokia’s planning a busy 2011, with four to five updates to the Symbian UI on tap, as well as dual-core phones. The information comes courtesy of Nokia senior manager Gunther Kottzieper, who gave a presentation at the 2010 Internation Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing earlier today — a slide labeled “Nokia Symbian 2011 focus areas” indicated that a Q1 Symbian update will include over 50 features, including a more intuitive browser, while second- and third-quarter updates will add “a new look and feel for the user interface, a more flexible home screen, an updatable HTML5 browser and an easier software update experience.” A hardware-related slide tipped upcoming 1GHz phones with more graphics memory in the second or third quarter, as well as dual-core phones and something called a “true zoom camera” in late 2011 or early 2012. (We’re guessing that means an optical zoom, which would be just wild on a mobile phone.) Ignore this morning’s E7 delay and all of that sounds like evidence of renewed focus at Nokia under new management — and it also sounds like Nokia taking over Symbian development might have lit some serious fires. We’re dying to look at these slides ourselves — we’ll keep digging and let you know.
The Nokia E7 has been delayed until early 2011, missing its December release window. Nokia had been insisting the E7 was on track for retail availability before the end of the year as recently as last month, but unspecified issues have forced the company to postpone that. “To ensure the best possible user experience on the E7 we have decided to begin shipping it in early 2011″ a Nokia spokesperson told Reuters.
Update: Nokia comment after the cut
Announced at Nokia World 2010 back in September, the E7 has a full QWERTY keyboard and a 4-inch touchscreen, and was described by the company as the spiritual successor to the original Nokia Communicator. We’re waiting to hear back from Nokia, hopefully with some more details as to the E7′s untimely release.
Update: Nokia spokesperson Ray Haddow has given us the following statement:
“We are taking corrective actions to the hardware durability issue we discovered. We are committed to provide the best possible user experience on the Nokia E7 and now expect to begin shipping the Nokia E7 shipments in early 2011.”
Ray couldn’t specify which aspect of the hardware was giving Nokia problems, but he did tell us that as far as he’s aware it’s not a major fault and instead something the E7 team were not entirely happy with.
Oh dear. Like the N8 before it, Nokia just confirmed to us that the Symbian-powered E7 slider will be delayed. The official word has it launching in early 2011, not December 2010. We’ve been told that Nokia’s holding up production due to a “minor durability issue” discovered in the E7 hardware. We can’t blame Nokia for wanting to ensure the best possible user experience — it’s just a shame that it will require the holiday shopping season to sort it out.
You know what’s awesome? Versions of Skype’s mobile app that don’t arbitrarily restrict you to WiFi networks. If you’re in the US, you won’t find such an app on Android devices — but you will find it on Symbian, where the company has just released a re-upped build with new features and support for more phones. Specifically, the N8, C7, and E5 are all in the mix now, along with access to Skype’s new SILK codec that offers a potent combo higher voice quality and improved bandwidth efficiency. It’s also got a tweaked UI along with better contact and profile management — so yeah, if you’re a Symbian user, odds are very good you’re going to want to grab this.
After seeing the Symbian-based Nokia X7 leak into the wilds with its quartet of speakers a few weeks ago, you just knew that it was only a matter of time until Eldar Murtazin got his hands on the device for a preview. Last time he did this he burned the then unannounced Nokia N8 to the ground. He’s coy with any details but the “I do not like this device” machine translation is pretty telling as is that AT&T logo. One more pic of the backside 8 megapixel shooter after the break as we brace for things to come.
Update: We’ve been told by a source that only two of the four “speakers” at the corners emit sound. At least that was the case for the unit tested by our contact.
Of course, the month we’re talking about here is October of 2010, but this sort of data takes time to compile, ye know, and The Nielson Company’ve done quite a job doing so. According to this study done by the folks at NC, the smartphone market now covers about 27.7% of the whole pie, the pie being the Total Market Share for phones in the USA. Of that smartphone percentage, three competitors stand out the strongest and are surprisingly close in their race for dominance: RIM BlackBerry OS with 27.4%, Google Android OS with 22.7%, and Apple iPhone OS with 27.9%. After that it goes Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, Linux, and Palm OS, with 14, 3.4, 3.3, and 1.3% respectively. After that, desire sets in, and the numbers get real interesting.
The question NC had for their group of people living in the USA next was what mobile phone users who planned to upgrade to a smartphone next year was desired the most – what would you buy if you got exactly what you wanted? It seems that iPhone is in the lead here for those people who already own a smartphone of some kind, with Android being in second place for that crowd with 28% to Apple’s 35%, and Android beating Apple by 2 percentage points in the category for people who at the moment only have featurephones. After that, you can see the scales tip from iPhone and Android to “Not Sure” as age increases, and “Not Sure” and iPhone winning for females while males have an ever-so-slight preference for Android over iPhone, leaving the rest int he dust.
