"trade-offs".. pure and simple. super screen but no ´freely placing´ desktop icons/widgets, better camera & no cover, uncluttered os & no xterm, multimedia magnificents & no sd card slot or fm transmitter. good battery life but unremovable (meaning only soft restarts) etc. reminds me of laptop marketing in the day eg duel core but lousy graphics card (=+/- 0 or even worse). you know the feeling?
great review thanks!
cheers!

Actually, with that in mind, holding the power button for 8 seconds power cycles the device. Or so I've read, never tried.

I does poweroff the device.

I've had an E7 for three days and have already suffered two system freezes :S

In general the E7 feels like a great *PHONE* unlike the N900 that is a great *POCKET COMPUTER*.

I miss my terminal so much ... :'(

[RANT ON]
Those nokia bas****** gave me an european version with a Spanish firmware and the keys are all wrong. I had to download ilegal software to install the euro firmware version just to notice that is doesn't work to me because it has no accents on the physical keyboard :S

And they replaced my still on warranty N900 with the E7 because they had no more N900... :S
[RANT OFF]

@Damnshock
Feel your pain m8. I don't know what would I do without my N900 atm as there is nothing to replace it yet

@Ndi
I do have devel, just don't have it enabled most of the time, don't see the point to do so.

While I did have a few issues with programs that refused to quit, it never froze through high humidity, intense heat or anything else. Didn't have it long, but no issues thus far.

Maybe you had a moody device? Or maybe I didn't hit them yet :P Seems stable, though.

ETA:

Update: Here' a few screenshots (figured out how to SS the device)

* The task manager. As you can see, several apps are running, including mail (running), Chat(running) and a screensnap app (works async).

* Two screens of Nokia's Battery Monitor. Sorry about the trimmed screens, apparently the screen shot app goes a bit awry when apps work in force-portrait mode.

As you can see, I have 93% left, which is over 3 days background use (with 3G, wifi, BT, screen to full and no power saving - it jumps to 9+ days if I cut back, some 5 online and kicking), 2.2 days average use (I pop it on, check mail, browse a little, send a few messages, talk and then lock again). It also shows an estimate of 5 hrs or talk time on 3G (9 or so on 2G), 4H 40 mins online, 35 hours music (headphones) and, cut from picture, also indicates 6:20 "maps" use (GPS, light, etc), and 3-4 hours "camera" - by which it means filming. yesterday I decided to have at it and filmed 4 hours. I was left with 37%. Screen also shows last charge.

The second shot shows averages, but I reset it recently. As you can see, it reports per-app use in "today" "last week" and "all time" categories. The app also sports an automatic power saving mode threshold, extending the 20% "12 hours use" to "2 days +". A lifesaver last night when I forgot my charger at home.

So, extending on my battery review, a few figures straight from Nokia's mouth.

Nice hands-on. I must say I am somewhat surprised by the outcome of it. Not about the screen, battery, keyboard, Maps etc., but regarding the speed. I have heard the E7 can become quite sluggish, especially when the mass memory starts filling up. And that was in comparison to the N8, about which I have also heard complaints in the speed area.

Comparing the processor clock speed does not seem very useful since the E7 has an older generation one. This is offset by the good GPU (although I read it is very limited in memory), which I am sure explains the result. In the end that is what counts of course.
But things like rendering pages in Opera should go faster on the N900 than on the E7.

My N900 feels very fast now, with CSSU, KP48 etc, even compared to an Xperia X10.
This actually includes Easy Debian (and therefore the Gimp and OpenOffice), since I have put it on a dedicated SDcard partition, that made a world of difference.
I can imagine scrolling, zooming etc. on the E7 is more smooth due to the GPU, but that is only one aspect of the speed.

Well, next time when I am at the electronics store I will have another look!

On the sites I've tried there is almost no difference at all between the two (so little its hard to tell which one was faster). But I'm sure the N900 finishes first if I start running stuff on the background.

When overclocked, N900 has more raw power, but UI is more sluggish, what with lower support for GPU, worse GPU, and bigger screen (twice the pixels). Plus, CPU is slower as I understand it from N900-stock?

However, whether a phone is slow or not is not very important when used. It's not a PC, it should not be treated like one. It could have a 3 GHz CPU in there, if I have to way 2 full seconds for the Phone to come alive I'll feel it is sluggish.

Besides, Symbian is lightweight compared to M5, with a simpler UI and that accounts (I feel) for the speed difference. If E7 could run M5, I'm pretty sure N900 would feel faster.

What strikes me is that E7 almost never swaps. Apps seem to take less RAM and the OS could be smaller in RAM too, or the on-board storage could be faster. It doesn't pause as much when exiting apps not does it choke as much as N900, especially since N900 has start and close animations, making it more visually vulnerable to slowdowns. Still, After playing a 3D flight simulator, and exiting, phone is responsive almost immediately, especially if it cheats a little and keeps desktop and menu loaded in memory. Cheat or no cheat, there is nowhere to go but desktop and menu for at least 2 seconds, so it feels fast.

Since there are few cross-platform direct-translate apps, it's hard to compare. It's a general feeling, at least partially because of graphics (not seeing bitmaps being painted is a plus).

As for filled storage, no wonder it slows down. Performance of flash gets severely diminished with increase in use, fragmentation, etc. Also, some software out there are written by people who deserve a kick in the groin. Inability to let user choose refresh rate for a widget is a bad, bad idea. Fortunately, there are plenty alternatives.

Thank you for such an in-depth, honest review. I think a few of us N900 owners have (at some point) considered the E7, especially after the N9 doesn't have a qwerty, and the N950 is like the holy grail for devs.

I would be interested to know a couple of things:

a) how does it handle really quick thumb typing on the physical kb?

b) I'm not a terminal guy or coder, so I wouldn't miss anything there, but just how customisable is the E7?

c) do you feel that Symbian Anna is an update that you kinda need to iron out a few creases, or would you be just be happy with good old S^3?

d) do you feel that you have a Nokia device that is being supported by them right now, in terms of apps, Conversations, beta labs, updates?

e) how much was yours?

Again, great review, better than allaboutsymbian even! Keep the info coming, I'm getting tempted...

Glad it's useful.

a) how does it handle really quick thumb typing on the physical kb?

Initially I thought it to be rubbery and with little feel. I was quite wrong about that (I'll be updating the review to 1.4 soon), the keys are hard, much like N900's later revisions. They are easy to press, in spite of the full depth of press hinting they would work at the bottom, like a membrane keyboard.

Right now I'm a bit slower on it, mainly because I got so used to N900 kbd that I keep hitting Sym instead of Shift (Symbol is now in the bottom left corner). Also, with a bit larger device, keys are more spread out.

But, it's a remnant of N900 and not the device's fault. It feels nice and I'll be as fast as I was pretty soon.

I'll say that it's as fast (95%) when held in hand, faster when laid down and using 2 hands. N900 didn't have that, so comparing held typing to on-desk is questionable at best, but it is faster considerably. It feels another 30-50% faster, since one has both hands to type.

Just don't use it on a glass table, it's very smooth and tends to walk away during frantic typing.

b) I'm not a terminal guy or coder, so I wouldn't miss anything there, but just how customisable is the E7?

Menu:
It's basically the same menu as N900, like I said in the review. Single one-screen menu, with 6x2 icons, last one is "Applications", that auto-holds all installed applications. This is initial configuration.

It has "new folder" menu, several folders, and ability to rearrange items or move to folder, like all Symbian before it.

Overall it's fast and as customizable as one would expect from a Symbian.

It has a noticeable lag when opening large folders (30+ icons) but with organizing, it's fine. AFAICT, it can take folders in folders.

Desktop:
Desktop is less customizable than N900, there is no freeform. Advantage is, it's guaranteed to rotate.

Each desktop has 6 rectangles, each in a 4x1 form factor. In landscape, it's 2x3 (2 column, three rows), making the desktop 8x3. In landscape, it's all one column, making the vertical 4x6.

Each slot contains one item. Be it weather, wifi, battery monitor, whatever. The widget itself can choose whether to work in a 1x4 space (like the music widget on N900) or reuse as it sees fit. One widget allows a list of contacts, scrollable in-place (no grabbing desktop by this one), choosing a 4-contact in-row layout. It holds more than 4 contacts, and is scrolls in a carousel manner, keeping 4 in view at all times.

Others are more creative. One widget (Nokia) contains clock in first square, then the next three are divided horisontally, with top being date and bottom being current profile and cell info display. When in operation, once can click to open clock, calendar and profile menu, respectively. Places widget looks similar, with refresh icon on the left, and top being current location (click to view in map) and the second saying "Check in" which allows one to check in in nearby places.

To add apps or links to desktop, there is a link widget. This allows 4 items to be added to it. When in operation, the widget is invisible, so the icons seem to stay on desktop.

As a result, you can't have, say, 2 links, then a widget, then 2 links in landscape on a row, you can only have 4-4 combos. But since I am kind of a neat person, I never went for the "thrown around hatefully" Nokia commercial look anyway.

Themes:
Themes are as all other Symbian: skins for buttons, desktop images, colors, etc. One can choose own desktop backgrounds in spite of theme. Quite a few themes to choose from and I understand theme creation isn't hard when assisted by Nokia's software. I am sticking with one of the themes that came with the phone. As with N900, the themes inside seem well crafted.

Other than that, it's pretty much standard stuff. I understand that one could customize animations via themes but I'm not that deep in yet. Nor do I plan to be any time soon :)

Phone sports black theme, which saves battery and looks fine, and can choose from black and blue tint, black and orange-copper and black and ... silver? I think. You know, commercial for gray. Standard stuff, fast, I use my own backgrounds (Nokia-orange nature I saved from N900).

c) do you feel that Symbian Anna is an update that you kinda need to iron out a few creases, or would you be just be happy with good old S^3?

Right now I have no experience with S4, but I am yet to find any bugs. Occasional hung app, but no bug per se, no feature that crashes, no features that don't work, no unexpected slowdowns.

If I ever update to S4, it will be after a while, since this one is stable and I won't be rushing in. Also, they better show me drastic improvements. I can't think or any bugs that bother me.

There is one bug I reported(*), using OVI suite to update maps triggers a bug where the suite (and after reboot, the phone) no longer lists installed maps. But the maps app, in spite of the empty list, still "sees" the maps just fine, routes, and has all the details, just doesn't list them. One can also re-download them if needed be and they will be listed until reboot so they can be updated or deleted. On broadband, it's not an issue - Romania map is 50M. Larger countries are larger (ha!) but they are broken down to be manageable. Less than 100M per map, on wifi, not an issue. It's not like I update Europe on 2G.

* The bug has since been fixed, 17.07.2011, the next release of OVI Suite. It also fixed the phone behavior.

Don't feel that is an annoying bug. Besides, in the week I had this phone, I have already received an update to OVI Suite, OVI Store, Maps, maps and a few other library updates. They are actively developing it and the Beta Labs lets one try versions before updating. In case of showstopper, revert and don't update. And complain.

It's an upgrade from N900 as far as care for the customer entails.

I have already used most if not all Phone features, hoping to complain now rather than later. I went literally through the menu and apps and fired up everything. Only things I didn't test are VPN, WebDAV (it works but it has an issue with DropBox for me) and video call AFAICT.

d) do you feel that you have a Nokia device that is being supported by them right now, in terms of apps, Conversations, beta labs, updates?

As I said in the previous point, it is actively supported, updated, with betas free for all and I have actually received a reply on the bug report from a person from Nokia who assured me the feedback has been pushed to the devel team.

I'm going to say yes. Don't know how much this will go on, but it's a good bet Symbian is not quite near death and if E7 upgrades to the next incarnation of Symbian I have a decent chance of support for quite a while.

e) how much was yours?

About this lo.. oh, you mean the phone. :P

I received mine as a replacement for N900 from Nokia, it was in warranty when the board failed, Unfortunately, replacements come box-less so I never got the USB OTG cable and all other accessories. Fortunately, other than OTG cable all other accessories match (MicroUSB). They did not extend the warranty, however, which kind of makes sense since I never paid them.

However, the Nokia shop price is 500E, unlocked and free, with two year warranty over here. I did find it at 450E, but it is unclear whether it's stocked or just an estimate. It's likely it will float around 500, the recommended price.