The Wahyudiharto's Blog

Nokia E7 - the latest communicator device a.k.a Magn-E7 - is one of Symbian^3 mobile phone (still a big questionnaire if it's last Symbian generation from Nokia, but thank’s god – at least it support to be extending until 2016). In the middle of Nokia issues with Windows, MeeGo & Symbian, the E7 has born with perfect composition of hardware, software & price :). A luxury fast of 680MHz processor with "iPhone" touch screen sensation (capacitive screen type) & full QWERTY keyboard, it's a great device as rivals of Android & iPhone - sorry, for premium users I means.

As I still become a loyal Nokia user - from 2008 with Nokia N95 8GB for almost 4 years with no problem until I replace it straightly with E7. Though, I hadn't choosing any brands (iPhone or Android or BlackBerry or else freaks) since I was falling in love with the E7 style. Somehow, I still believe with Symbian performance - even people think that this OS seems out-of-date – anyone called this as zombie OS is moron. Well, all I can say that Symbian is a mature OS than any.

Anyway, Symbian^3 used in E7 looks more than impressively. Here below is my micro-review after I used it for 2 months. Each of it, I categorized in groups of - let say – the advantages:
1. Home Screen
The E7 home screen contains 3 desktops - it can show up to 72 applications shortcuts right there.



Pretty great if you have it all on it since it’ll cut your time off by running the application from menu button. Here what it look like in landscape mode:



As a multi-threading device, Nokia E7 has a better memory management that let the phone run with lots of application opened simultaneously.



Thank’s to Symbian^3 used on this phone as it optimally avoiding the performance to be slightly decreased mixed with the consideration of the processor speed & the battery life which I said... perfecto! To get the home screen, just press shortly the menu button. Pressing it in a few seconds will showing you a similar ALT+TAB just like PC did.

2. Keyboard Layout
The E7 comes with 4 type of keyboards layout. When it operate in landscape mode, a full of virtual qwerty will showing up on the screen.



Anyway, more than 70% in a day I used this phone is in portrait mode. The keyboard layout it self changed to standard view. While in Contact mode, a complete alphabets virtual key filling the screen, relating it to appropriate existing contact name automatically.



As physically it have slide-up qwerty keyboard, typing in E7 is more than fun, enjoyable & quite looks elegance.



3. Image Editors
E7 supplied with 8MPx EDoF slim camera device with double-bright flashlight behind it. However, each image created can consume about 900Kb of size. Unfortunately, it only allow up to 3 pictures when you want to send it over MMS – since greater pixels are equals to the file size.



To downsizing the pixels, E7 provide Resize function from built-in image editor. Not only that, you can also make it rotate, crop, adding text & any other effects to make the picture suitable for you.



As it simply fast touch & touch, forget about editing the image from PC! The Nokia engineers has providing it to E7.

4. Software Update
Updating OS version much easier with E7. As I did it once after I bought it & recently have an up-to-date version by my self. Try to do this with free internet connection from WiFi around you or your bill will blows up :)



5. Mini Touch Screen to Extra Large LCD
E7 also HDMI device ready, means you can connect it to LCD TV to scaling up the screen to a large-wider one. From the box, it also supplied with HDMI cable connector.



Anyway, you need to buy separated HDMI extension cable to connect the TV. In a while – if you don’t have it – try to use – if you have – N95 8GB TV out cable. It’s kinda RCA cable type but compatible to E7.



The E7 will now act like a HDTV player. Quite awesome if you need to show pictures or watching movie with family right on TV screen.



6. Maps
N95 8GB takes about 10mins to show current position on the Nokia Maps, while E7 only takes about 10secs.



It’s a great enhancing now offered by Ovi Maps since it provide lot of maps extension tools; for example below is weather widget.



7. Messaging
Nokia E7 comes with threaded messaging, means it’s like a chat conversation view.



A well organized view from there, since it only displaying messages per recipient name.



And it absolutely similar with BlackBerry messaging…



8. Premium Office
A premium (& expensive) business phone without office capability means…useless. That’s why E7 has built-in QuickOffice Premium with full-feature & functions. It has editor for document, spreadsheet & presentation which support even to .docx extension of Microsoft Office.



And that’s why I love to move my works on E7, just for editing document & managing my Excel spreadsheet. Including this blog article :)

9. USB PnP
Nokia E7 has a feature called USB on the Go. It makes any USB device more useful & highly compatible to the phone. Let say charging with USB cable connected to PC. Not only that, this phone also allowed you to transferring data from USB disk. Try that function from File Manager, provide an USB storage & the cable included from the box.



Then, plugged in the cable to the USB flash disk & connect it to USB connector on the phone.



Now, a new drive letter (F:) will show up from File Manager automatically.



The E7 has now become a micro-PC as you can move your files to support your works independently! Is there any phone that has the same capability apart from this gadget? Well, not only this. Try to plugged-in any USB keyboard & feel free to type from a larger keyboard! This is also works on USB numeric keypad…



Getting tired touching up the screen all day long while you browsing the Internet? Attach the USB mouse & you’ll have an active cursor on the screen.



Excellent!

10. Symbian Anna
In the upcoming months, there will be a Symbian^3 update (code name: Anna) available to E7. Though, it’ll have lots of improvements including refreshing up the screen & icons, fastest internet browser, enhancing the photo gallery, maps version & others Ovi suites as it claimed.



But first, let’s try Anna screen & icons. The preview just like picture above. Quite beautiful just like it’s name.

11. Virtual DOS
There are plenty of applications that support Symbian^3, but I’m too curious with DOSBox. It’s a virtualization of DOS that ported successfully on Symbian – beside others PC platform. The point is, so much articles from Internet tried to prove that it could run Windows OS from their Symbian based phone. Unfortunately, it’s not happened to me with E7.



Still, the issue I faced was the keymapper – which is too hard to configure - & crashed DOSBox when I loaded Windows. While I still try to tuning-up the configuration file to find a best suitable one, I’ll shared the story as soon as I succeed to make Windows 9x running on my Nokia E7. Hope me luck

12. Wind OS
As it state from the homepage, Wind OS is almost like the real Windows on your phone. The app will let you feel the Windows atmosphere: you will hear noise of the cooler and see the classic Windows desktop screen. With Wind OS you will also have a notepad for text editing, a browser for surfing and, of course, a Minesweeper for fun.



Pretty cool project out there. Someday – probably – we just wait until this application turned up into a real OS. Symbian replacement maybe? Ha ha ha

13. Programming
The term of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP) is popular to those web developers. As this LAMP was successfully ported to Symbian, the project it self known as PAMP (the first P with Personal) – but I prefer with P means Portable. In short, PAMP works with E7.



Once the service running, it broadcasted to the wireless network. Try to load the default localhost page within E7 browser:



Let’s check it out the phpinfo link from there:



In order to make sure, try to load the IP from other machine (eg: PC browser):



Open the phpinfo link from the same browser:



Awesome! So, there’s no need to carrying netbook anymore to make a software presentation to your clients or editing the source code & testing it right a way if you’re programmer, as you only need to carry this phone to make them all stunned.

C O N C L U S I O N
Lots of side I’d skipped from this article; the E7 hardware, Ovi Integration, Multimedia, Internet Capability, etc which I believe that someone out there has a chance to share & reviewing it. But all I can say is, Symbian^3 that (finally decided to) filled-up in Nokia E7 are far away to be called as a dated OS. As my conclusion to this article, everything is just possible to improve - a real statement to leave behind the rivals. The company; Symbian, Nokia & other third party else had succeeded to bring into the world a finest communication gadget.

Labels: Bluetooth, Celullar, DOS, Handphone, N95 8GB, OVI

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