Swipe the beauty, my thoughts on N9.

When Nokia N9 was launched it blew everyone's mind and made one say 'wow what a phone', an easy to use Harmattan UI on top of MeeGo OS married to a stunning, beautifully crafted, uni-body polycarbonate shell, N9 is a man-made marvel of a mobile phone. What you basically do is swipe left, right, top, bottom from the edge of the phone's screen to navigate to different screens such as Menu, app-switching/Multi-tasking, Notifications. It is revolutionary, unique and well thought out Menu system I've ever used, UI grows on you well and I bet one will accidentally swipe any other phone atleast once after using N9. In this post I share my thoughts about N9.

Swipe..swipe...swipe all over.

Menu screen.

Notifications screen.

One of the cool features on N9 is swipe, there is also Swype(text input) but we'll come to that later. Swipe actions across the screen is all you do to switch between Menu, Open applications and Notifications screens.

N9 has flat menu structure, all applications you download is on the menu screen, there is no support for folders within Menu(Update: with PR1.2 you can create folders), you may have a very long menu screen when you stuff it up with applications. You can re-arrange applications by tapping and holding a particular icon and drag it anywhere in the Menu screen. Notifications screen does what it says by showing Missed calls, e-mails, messages etc. It doesn't notify you for unread tweets, replies, Facebook messages/ unread comments instead it shows your entire Twitter timeline and Facebook news feed. Status bar, on top, is visible all time showing battery status, Operator name and signal, date and also it shows your Gtalk, Facebook and Skype online status with a green icon notification. Phone wouldn't connect me with Gtalk saying 'incorrect password', this seems to be a common problem with N9, work-around is to go 'all offline' and then go 'all online' which works for me.
 

Status bar showing online status

There is, what I call, a drop down utility which pops down when you hit status bar portion, containing Profile switcher, Volume control, shortcut to Bluetooth, Data connection and Transfer(photo upload/download).

Drop down menu with controls

Multi-tasking/open apps screen

Twitter timeline in Notifications screen

Social networking, online services and wi-fi hotspot out of the box:

Coming from Symbian devices I was very much happy to see N9 has built-in, decent, social networking support. Phone comes with Accounts application where you can set N9 to talk with Google, Twitter, Facebook and other online services. Native twitter app has pretty much all features one expect on a twitter client, picture upload support was added to it with PR1.1 update, it uses Twitter's own picture upload service. Adding few more features like sound notification, setting to change refresh intervals, integration with Gallery application would make it near perfect. For some reason app won't tag my location to tweets. Twitter application on N9 does the job very well and it is light years better than pathetic Nokia Social in Symbian devices. Hope Nokia adds few more features to it.

Facebook client, with Facebook chat, is basic but it is nicely integrated with the OS, photos from Gallery can be uploaded directly to Facebook albums. There is no Check-in support but again it does the job well for a normal Facebook user(like me). As an alternative you can download Fmobi from Nokia store, which is a full-fledged Facebook client, it is available as 7 days trial after which you have to purchase the application. For hardcore Facebook users Fmobi ticks all the boxes. Not to be forgotten, with excellent html5 support in the web browser http://touch.facebook.com works beautifully, without any hiccups and slow-downs. There seems to be a bug in N9's web browser with Facebook's touch site, which I came across recently, adding new comments to posts won't work, comments won't appear when posted. This problem seems to be only in N9's browser, I tested same on Nokia 5800's web browser and on Sony Ericsson Xperia mini running Gingerbread there was no such problems with both the phones.

N9 comes with Wi-fi hotspot feature as well, with WEP encryption. 

Photos from Gallery can be posted directly to Flickr and Picasa albums. Other options in Gallery includes favorites, tags and Edit. Recently, Nokia beta labs came up with a plugin called "Photo map plugin' for N9. Once selected photo map plugin shows the location tagged to that photo on Nokia maps on the phone, photos must be Geo-tagged for this('Use GPS' and 'Use geotags' option must be enabled under camera settings), nothing earth-shattering but a nice little feature to show-off to your friends.

Web browser:

N9

.

Xperia mini.

Web browser on N9 shines in rendering web pages. I ran html5 test and Acid3 test on web browser on N9 and compared it with my SE Xperia mini running Android 2.3.4,  N9's web browser scored more in both the tests, results clearly shows what it is capable of. Coming the real world performance, browsing web on N9 is an enjoyable experience, not even once browser crashed or slowed down when opening websites, you can share web links to Twitter from web browser. One thing I was highly impressed with the browser is it displays websites in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam(BTW they are South-Indian languages, excluding Hindi) content well, when I say well it is on par with how it gets rendered on a Desktop browser, flawless it is. I no need to open my laptop for reading Tamizh news websites(which is my mother tongue language) hereafter, N9 does it well. Playing YouTube videos via http://YouTube.com/html5 works well too. With future of web content being html5(here's hoping) I see N9 is all equipped to excel in any operation in regards to web browsing.

On the other hand web browser on N9 is one of the less featured ones around, no bookmarks support, no automatic text re-flow, no copy & paste, inability to store passwords, no flash support(well is that a drawback hereafter?) to name a few. Overall Web browser seems like a unfinished application on N9, lacking basic features.

Text input:

Any touchscreen phone should have a good on-screen keypad to give a better typing experience compared to phones having physical keypad. N9's on-screen keypad is excellent, I always feel I can type faster on this keypad both in portrait and landscape, not with great accuracy though. Word prediction is there but I didn't find it of much use to me. With PR1.1, Nokia added Swype text input for N9. Text prediction and auto-correction works excellently here. Swipe across to get swype keyboard implementation is a clear stroke of a genius, it is one the coolest way to toggle text inputs I've seen on ANY phone, N9 users will agree with me here, enough said.

Swipe to get Swype

Swype in action.

NFC, only for content sharing.

Nokia is talking big about NFC(Near field communications), their newer Symbian devices(err.. in what name should I call them now?) have built-in NFC. N9 is the only MeeGo device with NFC. Photos, videos, music files, documents, contacts etc. can be shared to another Nokia device with NFC, Nokia call it as tap to share. I couldn't test tap to share as I don't have a Symbian device with NFC support. Nokia also have good range of NFC audio accessories like Nokia play 360 speakers, MD310 music receiver etc. NFC is one technology which could take-off in 2012, at present there is nothing much can be done with it than content sharing.

Games:

N9 comes pre-loaded with Angry birds magic(levels need to be unlocked using NFC), Real Golf HD, NFS Shift and Galaxy on fire. I'm not a mobile gamer so couldn't give a pro comment on frame rates, gameplay etc., but I can say all games played buttery smooth with no noticeable lags. There are no big games titles nor you can expect it to come, whatever you see on Nokia store is a bonus. I got addicted this game called 'Incredible Circus', liked the gameplay and levels get interesting and tougher when you advance. Worth giving a try, atleast you won't get bored in a train or bus journey.
  
Music, Video player and Camera.

Music player has a nice look and feel to it, recently added albums art are displayed on top, music files are sorted automatically in artists and albums. Music player in another application with minimalistic features, you can't create a new playlist but can add songs as favorites. With no equalizer support you have to hear how the device plays it. Ovi music(Music on Ovi) is integrated with Music player, only service under the name Ovi you can see on the phone. Recommended albums are displayed within the player using this service. I don't see the point in Ovi music as a service now, you can't purchase music, there are no 'comes with music' phones by Nokia, I don't know one they launched recently. It works for those people with existing subscription which I believe won't work for longer time from now.

Music player screen

 

Ovi music

I am not much impressed with video playback, videos played laggy (DVD quality movies which my E7 played well) and at times audio not synchronized properly. Phone didn't play any 720p HD video well, worst case it won't even open it. XVID encoded .avi format videos played well though. More codecs support needed, maybe with an update or two.

I don't know what to talk about the camera, mobile photography is one thing which Nokia is good at. A person as inept as me in photography all I can say phone takes pictures very fast and camera UI is good. Though, results are not what I expected from a 8 Megapixel camera phone from Nokia.

Before I decide to conclude my thoughts, Push notifications in N9 don't work with any application on the phone. There is an option to enable to Push notification under settings > Notifications, only Nokia pulse application, which was released for N9 recently, makes use of it. Nokia should seriously consider enabling push notification for Twitter, Facebook with next update, if at all they've planned to do so.

Nokia pulse notification on Lock screen

N9 one-off device.

Nokia is committed to WindowsPhone7 for all right reasons and one can see why a Lumia800 is much talked about and not the N9. It is all about support, good applications, developers attention and nifty marketing which N9 hasn't received to a great extent. That doesn't imply it is all over or did Nokia say they are going to wash their hands off. There are some really good utilities available in Nokia store and I find new apps every time I open the store. I'm very lucky to have got a N9 and I enjoy using it everyday with no regrets. With all good hope, let the year 2012 bring new improvements and features to this beauty.


On that note I wish a very happy and gadget filled new year 2012. Hope this year bring more new toys to you.

Scribbled using 'Bord' application for N9.

Me at Nokia world, London.

This diwali turned out to be a memorable one for me, I was invited as guest to attend Nokia world in London along with other top contributors, namely Psychomania, CJLim, Carman58 of Nokia support discussions, see my profile on Nokia support discussions here. Invite was from Nokia discussions forum administrators Vandelay and MichealS( I think picking me was choice of both after two others, invited first, couldn't make it). Names mentioned are their alias on the forum, not real names. I received the invite from Vandelay on 6th October, I was excited after reading the invitation, for a moment thought is this for real. The event was for two days 26th(Diwali day) and 27th and I had already availed leave for Diwali holidays. This being my 'Thala deepavali'( first deepavali after marriage) I was ready to celebrate it in a grand way, Nokia world invite came in as a surprise and suddenly my excitement shifted to it, my spouse was excited as well and encouraged me to attend it. Diwali comes every year but this is one chance I will ever get in my lifetime, I decided not to miss it. Visa procedures were hectic but it is a story for another day, on 21st Oct afternoon I received visa imprinted on my passport delivered at doorstep, I was mighty happy.

Flight journey from Hyderabad to London was not that exciting but for British airways gave me two seats(one window seat), food was OK. Other than my sleeping hours it was a boring flight journey. By visiting this website http://www.tfl.gov.uk/modalpages/2625.aspx and conversations with Psychomania and Carman58 on twitter I was able to get a fair idea how to get to hotel from Heathrow terminal 5 through London Tube service. We were booked to stay in Marriot, West india quay. I accidently met Carman58 and Mr. Mania after I reached Canary Wharf station, hotel was fairly close so we three walked all along. It was so nice of Psychomania who lend me his spare SIM card, it was very helpful for me to check e-mails and post few pictures on twitter while I was there at the event. Not to forget CjLim's cool Guinnes key chain to each one of us.

Got all my keys on this, Thanks CJLim :)

After checking in and resting for few hours in the hotel I met Vandelay, Paul, Jimmy lee(@jjklee on twitter) and Richard dorman who blogs at http://onlyfoolsandmobiles.com/ in the hotel bar down. A special dinner was arranged for that night at La Tascas restaurant and we were joined by Alf Noto, Vice-president Nokia care globally and Adam Fraser who posts at http://conversations.nokia.com, you can read Adam's post on Nokia conversations here. Ambiance at La Tascas restaurant was cool, we talked about phones and community a lot. There were different phones to play with ;-). Later Cjlim joined us. After that, we had a little session back in hotel for sometime, next day was going to be big.

 Day one at Nokia world.

Keynote proceedings started with Colin Giles, head of sales, welcoming all on stage. We were dumbfounded when we four got a mention, that was unprecedented, you can watch the keynote video in this link http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld/ seek to 3:25th min in the keynote video, later I came to know that CEO of Nokia, Stephen Elop himself has told him to give a special mention about us. In the event Nokia launched their WindowsPhone7 devices Lumia800 and Lumia710 and Asha series phones Asha303, Asha300, Asha201 and Asha200. After launch event was over, we were all given a Nokia Lumia 800 for use, they gave it along with an O2 sim card with 10£ credit on it, which is a nice touch, FYI Nokia Lumia phones works only with micro-Sim. Party time started at around 5p.m, probably I might be the only person who didn't drink beer there(bad boy?), there was after party too, I didn't have enough energy to attend so went back to the hotel, anyway I was going to have only coke. 

Evening party on Day one, taken with Lumia800

Evening party on Day one, taken with Lumia800

Day two at Nokia world.

Day two started with a dance show from a crew who performed in 'Britain's got talent' dance show, we attended Q&A sessions from product managers of Lumia 800, Nokia accessories, Nokia music, Nokia store etc. Those who attended Nokia accessories Q&A were given a Nokia MD-310 music receiver, excellent gesture. We were asked to give back Nokia Lumia 800 which we did with regret, phone was awesome to use despite some problems in creating new Windows live account. There was also London sight seeing organized for guests after things got over but I couldn't join them, I stayed for two more days in London, after attending Nokia world, with my high school friend who is living along with his uncle in London. You can see photos of places I visited in London here.

Is Nokia back on track?

Yes in my opinion. Nokia world surely has brought enthusiasm and interest in Nokia phones. There were mixed opinions about Nokia's decision to make WindowsPhone7 as their primary smartphone platform but after using one of the Lumia phones launched I feel they are heading in a right direction and I hope they will prove their decision worth. Nokia world did blow my mind over and this is THE best honour I could get for making mildest of contributions on their support forums compared to others who attended. I thank Nokia for all entertainment and hospitality provided at Excel London. Best event I have attended so far, will remain one of the best for ever. When at Nokia world I didn't miss Diwali at all it was such a wonderful and neatly organised event.

Hyderabad once was a wonderful place to live.

I apologise to all as I don't have any right to talk about separate statehood of Telangana. For those who don't have an idea about what is turning Hyderabad into a furnace(meh..) read on this link . This post is a voice from a common man who is, needlessly, put into trouble for a cause which he/she is not associated with. First, I don't give donkey's if the Govt of India decide to form Telangana or defy it, I work in Hyderabad and I started to love this place just after a month I came here but now, I'm afraid, I regret living here mainly because of these agitations for a seperate statehood of Telangana. I've seen mobs vandalise shops just opposite to apartment I stay and there is no one to control them, forcing people to change their vehicle's number plate to TG(Telangana) instead of AP(Andhra pradesh), destroying statues of iconic leaders etc... Don't take this is as another rant, my question is why, but why, one need to follow only this route to acheive a goal. When there are people like Anna Hazare who came out of no where and brought people's minds together why to go berserk for a cause, being in a country which stands as epitome of non-violence movements, proved once again by Anna Hazare, hooliganism only put people in trouble, why not re-think on the strategy.

People rushing to petrol stations and super-markets have become a common scene in Hyderabad, just when you think the bandhs are over they start again, day in day out one has to prepare himself to face bandhs. Schools and colleges are shut and there comes Rail rokos which put thousands of people to hardships. I have to cancel my trip to Mantralayam because of Rail roko and my colleague twice has to re-schedule his journey. People who want Telangana madly, why can't they spare a thought for others not associated with this agitation. In a city where local transportation is a hit and miss affair even on a fine day how one can commute to places, or even go to work, when bus and train services go on strike? Auto wallas are charging people insanely, people going to hospitals give more money to auto wallas than doctor consultation fees, people waiting in bus stands putting their hands in front of other vehicles for a lift. Do I need to talk about AP govt & Govt of India's swift actions to control the situation (no sarcasm), don't get me started on that, they are utter disgrace. These agitations reflect badly to parents and relatives in other states, their phone conversation starts with 'How are things there?' Unless or otherwise some consensus comes out for this political issue, in simple words, Hyderabad is one hell of place to live, yes there I said.

Make hay while the sun shines.

Since the inception of 3G service in Hyderabad I have been using 3G on my phone and when I want to browse on my laptop I tether my phone to it as a modem. I was using BSNL 3G and was pretty much happy with the quality and speed, they were the first to launch 3G here, and their data plans were nominally priced. Few months later Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone etc. followed, I was never bothered about it as I knew their prices will be complete rip-off  considering humongous money they paid to get 3G licenses. As I rightly guessed, I simply laughed at the data plans of Airtel which read '1.2Gb for 799Rs', I was getting four times the data they offered with lesser price with BSNL(6gb for 606Rs).

Since one fine day, not sure what happened, BSNL 3G speeds were dropping, on few occasions it wouldn't connect after all. Things went from bad to worse, even my Airtel GPRS was faster than BSNL 3G, I thought I've had enough with all this. I decided to bite the bullet and activated 3G on my Airtel SIM card, their data plans aren't economical but still I wanted to have 3G on my phone. After activation, I streamed a video on youtube to check the transfer speeds, data transfer speed was very good and higher than BSNL 3G. I was very much astounded to see that I wasn't charged for the data usage, instead my GPRS data balance reduced.

Long story short. If you have a 3G phone and if you are using Airtel GPRS for 98Rs, which gives 2Gb/month, you can consume that 2Gb data with 3G data transfer speed(100kb/s download speed minimum) by changing your mobile network mode to 3G only. Prior to doing this, you should activate 3G on your SIM by sending 3G to 121. You will receive a message saying "existing 2G data plan will be deactivated, send 1 as reply to confirm this" reply with '1' boldly, this doesn't work as it says, you will still have your GPRS data count intact(dial *123*10# to check data balance). This is not a hack or a trick to fool around the system this works out of the box and I'm using it without problems/threats of hefty bill. I guess there is some flaw in the way Airtel have implemented 3G for existing customers, unlike BSNL where you need to get a 3G sim card to have 3G services.

This is working flawlessly with Airtel pre-paid connection, Andhra Pradesh, not sure it is the same for post-paid. You pay for a GPRS plan and consume that data in 3G with higher transfer rates. When you go for vanilla Airtel 3G data plan you need to cough out 799Rs for paltry 1.2Gb data.

For one more time, I'll simplify things.

I have a 3G phone > I have a Airtel pre-paid SIM card, I've not activated 3G in it yet > I'm using GRPS, let it be any plan, say 2Gb for 98RS (very slow) here is what you've to do. Activate 3G by sending message 3G to 121 > let the 3G activation be done(read para 3 for more) > Change your mobile network mode to 3G/UMTS > start browsing at 3G speeds. Use Mobile Office as the access point.

Here are some screen shots from my E7 showing transfer speeds.

You/I don't know how this happening and do I dare to think that a company like Bharthi Airtel is so naive that they allow customers to use 3G for bargain prices? before they pull the plug out make full use of it. Now there is a GPRS data plan costing 251Rs(AP circle), giving you 8Gb for 3 months does it ring a bell?. What are you waiting for? go and recharge.

Please post your comments and clarifications. Thanks.

Dual-SIM phones.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous so have become the dual SIM phones lately. There are many cheap, Chinese dual SIM phones in the market selling for rock bottom prices, with features which major phone manufacturers don't give on their phones, they are selling like hot cakes. This blog post is also about disadvantages of buying these Chinese fake phones and why dual SIM phones are popular, especially, in India and not that popular in other markets.

Many prefer dual-SIM phones so that they don't need to carry two phones for their work, with dual-SIM phones one can have both work and personal numbers on a same phone, which sounds more productive. In recent times even major mobile manufacturers have joined the dual-SIM band-wagon, they have realised the importance and demand, though lately, of dual SIM phones to give these Chinese ones a run for their money. On any day I would go for a dual SIM phone by a major, reputed manufacturer instead of buying these Chinese ones.

Semi-active and active Dual SIM phones: One should be careful with this, few dual SIM phones are semi-active means they can take two SIM cards but only one will be active at a time, you need to manually switch to make calls with the other SIM card. On the other hand you have proper dual SIM phones where both SIM cards are active at a time.

Fake and China-made dual SIM phones: Well they are in hands of everyone from a daily-wage worker to professionals. The have dual SIM(even three SIM cards support), touch screen/QWERTY, dual/three/four speakers some advertise they have built-in woofer, TV antenna, memory card support, Megapixel level camera and they can make calls, all for a bargain price, now what on earth will stop anyone buying it.

These phones have note-worthy drawbacks, they don't have IMEI number, no warranty, no manufacture support, bad quality components/accessories etc. Setting up GPRS on these phones is not simple and straight forward unlike phones from major manufacturers. All they can do is make and receive calls, with not so good call quality, output songs loudly through their woofer(a gimmick really) enabled speakers which aren't pleasant to ears. These phones are good, if not OK, for a normob but for people who like to use their phones more than for calling they are not capable, they simply don't follow any standards.

Dual SIM phones popularity: India and other Asian countries are the market for dual SIM phones. One reason is how service providers operate here, especially in India. In India you can buy a phone from Nokia/Samsung/LG or which ever manufacturer and get a prepaid/postpaid connection from Airtel/Vodafone/Aircel etc. You are not, in anyway, locked into a contract or constrained by a service provider or manufacturer. If you don't like one you can switch to another over-night. So buying a dual SIM phone you can have two connections from different network service provider and it's uber productive.

That's not the case in Europe, U.S.A and other countries, there the service providers are the ones who sell phones and they tie you up for a contract for atleast two years with them, charging a fee on a monthly basis for calls, messages and mobile internet for that two years period, while giving the phone free of cost. The actual phone cost is subsidised by the network providers. This sort of subsidised-contract-based phones won't work for dual SIM phones because a service provider can't give two connections for a contract or allow you to use the phone, bought from him, to work with another network provider in the country. This makes dual SIM phones a less feasible option for mobile network providers in developed countries.

Dual-SIM phones to consider buying: Micromax and Samsung have been dishing out dual-SIM phones in various price range, Micromax has dual-SIM functionality in all of their phones. Nokia recently launched two dual-SIM phones C2-00 and X1-01, just to clear things up Nokia C2-00 is a dual-SIM phone whereas C2-01 isn’t dual_SIM phone, be careful before you buy it. Nokia’s naming convention is a shambolic mess, well that’s a topic for another day. Currently X1-01 isn’t listed in Nokia-India website I’m sure both  will be available in the stores in few days.

I’ll give a short cover-up on Nokia C2-00 and X1-01 dual-SIM phones. Both are active dual-SIM phones.

My pick would be Nokia C2-00 for its design and features, good thing is you get a industry standard microUSB connector even on the low-end models which other manufacturers don’t give for the same price. C2-00 support memory cards(microSDHC) upto 32Gb, hot-swappable. One other unique feature of C2-00 is a hot-swappable SIM card slot located outside the phone, this comes handy when you want for a quick SIM card change without switching off the phone and pulling the battery out.

Nokia X1-01 is a budget music-centric phone with dual-SIM support. Nokia says X1-01 as the clearest and loudest speaker on phones Nokia has ever produced, so literally it is a pocket sized boom-box. X1-01 supports memory cards upto 16Gb and you get a standard 3.5mm headset jack where you can plug any standard headphones other than Nokia ones. There is no information about the pricing yet on the Nokia-India website.

Well I'll wind-up this post with that, If there is anything I've missed out about dual-SIM phones/functionality please comment about it. Thanks.

Give me one, I'm ready to get ripped-off.

A Customer walks into a Airtel/Aircel showroom to buy Iphone4.

Cust: Sir, I would like to buy Iphone4 can you explain me the offers.

Airtel/Aircel rep: Sure Sir, Welcome. We've very good plans for IP4. First we'll rip you off with Rs34,500 for 16Gb model/ Rs 40,900 for a 32Gb model. Good thing is the price is same for both pre-paid and post-paid customers.

Cust: What about money back plans which you people are advertising about?.

Airtel/Aircel rep: Sir, we'll give discount for the amount YOU recharge(for pre-paid) and for Post-paid  discount will be given in your monthly rental, for two years we'll give discount on your bills. BASICALLY WE"LL SAVE YOU, for 2 years, FOR THE RIP-OFF we did.

Cust: Sounds like a good offering. Let me buy one.

Now tell me who will be that customer?.

A blog post about Nokia E7.

After using 5800XM for an year I acquired the latest Eseries communicator flagship by Nokia, the E7.

Note: This entire post(text portion) was typed using the E7's QWERTY keypad.

Hardware&Design:

  E7 is built like a tank, it has a slide-out hardware, four rows, QWERTY keypad with Chiclet style keys. The aluminium uni-body design makes it look like a premium device and feels great on your palms, all this in an amazingly slim profile. Needless to say, E7 is a beast, coming under the enterprise series it is also a capable multi-media device, a 4' inch AMOLED capacitive touch-screen with Clear Black Display(CBD), HDMI port output, 16gb mass memory, 8mp camera with dual-LED, 720p video recording and playback etc... are few note-worthy features. Under the hood you have 680Mhz ARM11 processor, Broadcom GPU and 256MB RAM out of which more than 140MB is available for the end user.

Software and usability:

After using it for few weeks now it is growing on me well, I'm loving the qwerty keypad and it is my first ever phone with a qwerty keypad I've used, the experience is really great.

On the software part it runs the latest and greatest Symbian^3 OS which is a functional, capable and feature-rich OS. With live multi-tasking this aspect of Symbian phones has been taken to a new level with Symbian^3 devices.

Visual Multi-tasking on Symbian^3

Symbian^3 is a vast improvement over s60v5 a.l.a Symbian^1 especially to those early adopters of S60v5(devices like 5800XM). Symbian^3, utilising in-built GPU to the full-effect, is very responsive and applications loads faster. There are numerous tweaks done to UI to be more intuitive, as a Symbian^1 user in the past I'm finding some noticeable improvements in Symbian^3 on the whole, but on the competitive part it still lacks behind the best out there in some aspects, especially the web browser. Nokia have promised that there will be updates improving UI, fingers crossed on that.

Multi-media:

E7 is good in both media creation and consumption. Supporting wide range of audio and video formats you hardly need converter software to make it play on the device. Watching videos on the large AMOLED CB display is a true pleasure. E7 can also play 720p HD videos, provided the size of the video is less than 2GB, at present the video player doesn't support sub-titles sure Nokia can sort this through an update. Overall you've got a pocket-able movie player in your hands.

E7 has a 8megapixel fixed focus camera with dual-led flash, the technology EDoF(Extended Depth of Focus) as Nokia claims is good for point and shoot photography but with no auto-focus objects within 30cm are not in focus, in simple terms you can't take a close-up/macro shot, using E7's EDoF camera, the details become blurry. It can shoot HD(1280*720p) videos and you've got continuous auto-focus here, no matter how close you point the camera, in video mode, towards an object it is focussed. Video quality is crisp and clear and there is an additional noise-cancelling microphone at the back to producing some crisp audio too.I've added few camera samples taken with E7 in low-light and in sun light conditions.

Music player on Symbian3 devices has been improved, including eye-candy album art cover-flow. As said before Music player supports wide range of audio formats and with 16GB mass memory there is ample space for songs and videos storage. Lack of folder support and equaliser modification are the few draw-backs in the music player. Audio quality is top-notch as always with Nokia devices and the supplied WH-201 ear-phones do produce good bass at higher levels but I'm going to buy WH-701 ear-phones, which usually comes with Nseries devices, with audio controls on it . I was impressed with the quality of it when I used it before.

Full office suite:

All Nokia Eseries devices comes with full office suite with editing functionality. E7 comes with the latest version of Quickoffice suite, with a hardware QWERTY keyboard there is no need to do your heavy typing work on your PC, slide-out the keyboard you won't feel tired of typing on this. Entire text part of this post was typed using my E7 in quickword. It also comes with a zip manager and Adobe PDF reader. Nokia have also bundled a third-party F-secure anti-theft application for device protection in case of theft, you can password protect the device, the application also sends a message to a registered mobile number if the SIM card is changed.

E-mail is the first priority when it comes to enterprise devices and the E7 delivers well here, by declining the terms and conditions of Nokia messaging you can get additional options in the e-mail client and can use the in-built client to push e-mails from any IMAP/POP servers by-passing from the Nokia servers. E-mail client   display e-mail in HTML, formatted text, with attachments. Option to display images, when needed , is a nice touch  too. Using Mail for Exchange application you can sync e-mails from any exchange servers. There are options to sync e-mail at custom intervals with minimum sync interval being every 5 min. Typing long e-mails, posts such as this, is a superb experience on the stellar hardware QWERTY keypad which gives nice tactile feedback. At any point of time, anywhere in the world, a hardware keypad completely trumps any on-screen QWERTY keyboard no matter how it's designed and how fluid the experience is. 

Excellent keypad of E7.

Features which no other mobile OS has at present:

USB-OTG(USB- On The Go) means all Symbian3 devices, including the Nokia E7, can host a USB device on it. Using the supplied USB-OTG adapter you can directly connect a pen-drive and transfer files to E7 and vice-versa, you can format your flash drive too. If that's not enough connect a USB mouse and browse the device without the touch screen, connect a USB keyboard and start typing if your fat fingers are finding difficult to type on the E7 keypad, I'm thoroughly enjoying this feature and at times boast about it.

8Gb Flash drive connected to E7 showing up on the file manager.

Option to format the flash drive.

  Pentaband 3G- all symbian3 devices works in almost every 3G frequency out there, buying an E7/N8/C7/C6-01 you can almost use the phone around the world, in 3G, which isn't possible with dual-band or tri-band 3G devices.

Recent firmware update:

E7 got an update recently, it got updated to V14. Update was released via FOTA to address some bug fixes and performance improvements.

Version 14.002 update.

Battery life: This is one aspect always depends upon the usage limits of an individual. In case of me, where the device is connected to Internet all time pushing e-mails, refreshing twitter timeline, browing web etc well for that's what the modern devices are made for, I get only less than a day out of it. Using power-saver mode you can drag it slightly more than a day.

All that being said E7 isn't the device for all. There are few drawbacks which may turn down one's choice of E7.

No auto-foucs camera on a high-end device is a complete bummer, I felt the pinch recently when I tried to scan a bar-code using E7's camera it simply won't scan, later I used my Nokia 5800 to scan it and it scanned in seconds, the same applies for scanning some documents or text/picture on a paper.

No memory card expansion, E7 comes only with 16GB mass memory for storage, this isn't a big deal for me as 16GB is enough for my media collection. Device back-up can't be done on to the mass memory, you need to insert a flash drive if you need to have a back-up of the phone memory.

No data encryption. All Eseries devices, except E7, have got data encryption. It's been rumoured that this feature is going to come in a future firmware update.

Non-replaceable battery, no more mocking at Iphone. Any freezes you need to press the power button for 8sec to revive the device.

Final words:I would say E7 is the best ever mobile hardware made so far. Though it has its own demerits, considering what it delivers and it does I don't see them as short-comings. Also the Nokia-Microsoft partnership has dampened the expectations of this device. I'm really worried and sad that such a good, capable and feature-rich OS is counting its days. Nokia have promised to support and release devices running Symbian for an year or so. I bank my hopes on Nokia and wish they optimise Windows Phone OS to match the functionality of Symbian or even better it. If that doesn't happen then many Nokia-Symbian users may bid adieu to Nokia.

 Camera samples

 

Panorama shot of NTR memorial.

Low-light with Flash