Nokia N8 Versus E7 – Which Is The Must-Have Smartphone?
Nokia have struggled in recent times, and it’s easy to isolate the exact point in time things started to go wrong. It was 9th of January, 2007. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, stepped up to the dais at the Macworld Apple convention – and in his hand was a prototype of Apple’s latest piece of tech. A phone without a keyboard; a cellphone that would instead depend completely on touch screen technology and a ‘virtual’ keyboard. Apple’s iPhone shook the mobile phone business to it’s (Apple-)core, and nowhere was this quake felt more seismically than in Finland, at the headquarters of the undisputed kings of hand-held phoning. Nokia would take 3 years to respond to the iPhone. Their attempted iPhone killer was christened the N8. Was it a failure, or a bona fide contender?
Every year Nokia have a flagship phone, designed to display their newest research and development. This year that flagship is the N8. My initial reaction to the N8 is that the handset’s pretty slick – the rounded finish is attractive, and the metallic covering provides it with a high quality look and feel. What stands out initially is how many external buttons and slots decorate it. The right side incorporates a screen-lock button and camera, the left comes with a micro-USB port and SIM/microSD slots, and on top is an HDMI port.
A vital element of any smartphone is the touchscreen. The N8’s touchscreen is 3.5-inches, with 640 x 360 resolution, and produced from ‘Gorilla Glass’. Gorilla Glass, Nokia claim, is entirely scratch resistant. And when they say scratch resistant, they certainly aren’t kidding. I rubbed keys and a fork against it, and I must confess it didn’t leave even a hairline mark. You can leave your N8 in a pocket or backpack and it’ll come out unscathed.
The operating system installed on the N8 is the Symbian 3 – and it’s the weak link of the phone. Symbian’s OS is sluggish, has desperately few in-built applications and seems outmoded, obsolete even, when compared with Android and iOS. It’s a little foolish that after working so hard creating a phone that is eye-catching and well thought out, Nokia then chose a lousy operating system that drags down the whole endeavor.
A few months after introducing the N8, Nokia released the E7. It was shocking just how different the E7 and N8 were. The E7 is noticeably larger and weighs more than the N8 (135 grams compared with 176 grams). It has a larger screen that features a ‘ClearBlack Display’ – what this implies, in layman’s terms, is that it alters the brightness instantly based on the light conditions. In contrast to the N8, the E7’s camera doesn’t stick out from the rear. That gives the shell a smoother touch and means it can be placed flat on a table while the slider is open. Despite the fact that the camera is more gracefully integrated to the E7 than the N8, the still image and video output is dull, and nowhere near the standard set by as the N8. Notably the E7 also has a QWERTY keyboard that slides out of the base of the device – this accounts for much of the added weight of the phone. Unfortunately one element Nokia have kept between the N8 and E7 is the poor Symbian 3 OS, which means you’re subjected to that unresponsive and dated interface.
The key question, though, is this: which is the better phone? In my opinion it’s without doubt the N8. The E7 is way too large to hold properly in your hand – a problem which is amplified by the slippery metallic cover, which resulted in me dropping the E7 more than once while playing with it. The QWERTY keyboard is a nice enough addition, but brings up the weight of the phone to an unreasonable amount. Exactly why Nokia decided to go with a lower standard camera for the E7 is puzzling, but it’s not up to scratch for such a costly phone.
Both phones have problems – largely due to the outdated operating system, but while the N8 is top notch aside from that, the E7 is unwieldy, too big, too heavy and – oddly for a mobile phone – too large to hold in your hand with any comfort.
Although the N8 is not as consistently superb as Apple’s iPhone or the HTC Thunderbolt, it is nonetheless a phone which moves them closer to those market leaders. It’s clear evidence that the Finnish cell phone giants are certainly not finished.
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