Sunday, January 16, 2011

NOKIA C7



NOKIA C7
Expected Price: 18,999 Rs.

The phone doesn't just look good. Pick one up and you will tend to like it even more. The phone feels incredibly solid and at the same time it's very thin as well. Much of the way the phone looks and feels is down to the materials it uses. Most of the front is the Gorilla glass, which has a mirror-like finish, especially around the edges of the screen. The front edges are made of solid metal, which curve gracefully. The sides and some portion of the back are made of plastic. The battery cover once again is made of metal, which happens to be stainless steel.


Display

The Nokia C7 has a 3.5-inch 640 x 360 resolution AMOLED display capable of outputting 16 million colors. The display is protected by a highly scratch resistant Gorilla glass. And when they say scratch resistant, they mean scratch resistant. We rubbed keys, screws and whatever sharp object we could find, but nothing could put even a hairline scratch on the C7's display. You can put the C7 in a pocket or bag full of keys and it would come out unscathed.
The picture quality of the display is excellent. Indoors the display put up some vibrant colors with crisp details and deep blacks, typical of AMOLED displays. The good thing about the C7's AMOLED display is that, unlike the one on Samsung phones, they aren't tuned to display outrageously vivid colors. Instead, images look attractive yet natural, just the way we like them.

Software and Applications

The Nokia C7 is the second phone to run on the Symbian ^3 platform after the N8. Even though it is highly improved over its predecessor, it still cannot match other operating systems such as iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7.
It doesn't feel particularly modern and lacks finesse, and although it works well, at the end of the day when the job's done you wish it could have been done better.
The number of applications as of now is limited, and although there is a decent number of them to start off with, you don't have too many to choose from right now, especially when it comes to games. In the end, I wouldn't say the software on the C7 is a complete disappointment, but there is still some room for improvement.

 

Connectivity

The N8 had the most comprehensive list of connectivity features that we have seen on any device and the C7 retains every one of them. First of all, it is a quad band GSM 2G and quint band GSM 3G handset, just like the N8. This gives the C7 the ability work in almost every country in the world. Then it has Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 3.0, A-GPS and USB On-the-Go connectivity. Unfortunately, unlike the N8, the C7 does not come with an adaptor for plugging in your flash drives into the phone and you may have to purchase that separately.
The call quality and network reception both were excellent on the C7. The loudspeaker was pretty loud, so ringtones were heard loud and clear. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS performance too was extremely satisfactory.
Messaging on the C7 has seen an improvement over the N8. This is because of the Swype keyboard that is not available for the C7 on the Ovi Store. Surprisingly, C7 is the only Symbian ^3 device that has got Swype available for it. Unfortunately though, Swype is only available in landscape mode, which kind of defeats the purpose of having it. Swype is most useful when used in portrait mode when you can just use your thumb to input text. In landscape mode, it is inconvenient to hold the phone with one hand while swiping your finger on the other hand. Still, it is better than using either of the default keyboards available in Symbian. We hope that portrait QWERTY keyboard that is rumored to arrive on Symbian comes soon or at least Swype finds a way to make their work in portrait.




















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