so true.

like every n900, my usb has just broke. i've sent it to nokia, and they exchange it with e7.
i've got that piece of **** for 1 week, and oh my god, i can't stop think about how i was wrong to use nokia warranty.

i've read ndi review, and i can say that 75% of it is just wrong.
at one point i was starting to thinking if he really use the same n900/e7 i had.
here my "very" short list of what e7 is "something" better than n900:
-free gps (n900 must buy sygic. if yout don't want to spend years to make openstreetmap working)
-brighter an bigger screen (BUT crappiest resolution, and YES, i see pixel in my e7)
-keyboard flip out (that screen angle is pretty cool)
-battery last longer (but it's because your phone is a useless piece of ****, like an old nokia 3210. LOL)

in fact, i've started to compare it to my very old htc blue angel ( http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&i...htc_blue_angel) (lets call it BA, it's shorter) wich i'd updated to winmo 6.5.5
symbian^3 is the same ****ing mess than windows mobile.....
...... but with more "fart apps" and less usefull apps than winmo when it was "the OS to have" (before iphone today)
the e7 is VERY buggy, and a lot of app don't work properly if you don't put your sim card on it. with n900 or even my ol' BA, without sim, well, it's just a tablet device like an [s]ipad[/s] ipod touch .....

don't make people foolish you, e7 is a great "feature phone", "barely" a smartphone. so, you CAN'T compare it to a tablet phone. it's just not the same thing. a bus and a car had both steering wheel and motors, but .....

ps: by the way, they stole my front camera! LOL

shot yourself in the foot on your very first post with that comment.
Winmo has never been "the OS to have"

E7 sucks and I returned it for Samsung galaxy S2

It is.

As a DSLR owner I'd be wrong if I didn't give you two tips:

a) DSLRs are f*ng impressive. The quality is stunning compared to just about any other imaging tech out there. There is endless fun to be had. They also look cool when everyone uses compacts and phones to keep memories, taking 15 shots to get one right and a DSLR only needs one. And then there's the sound. And the 12 bit color. And HDR.

b) They are incredibly expensive. Well worth it, but expensive. They sound cheap, but if you plan on using it right it needs a few more glasses and it starts to mount up. On the bright side, once you have your camera and your fav lenses it's free. And there's a great second hand market. Still, unless you have around 2000E to throw at it, you're going to have equipment envy.

and one advice:

Buy a very good camera. This is paramount. Forget the price and marketing, go to dpreviews, look them up, pick a good one. Because once you do, you'll buy glass, accessories, and you'll beat yourself if it has some flaw.

And one last tip. Fanboism is rampant in the world of DSLRs. REALLY rampant. Let me save you trouble. They are all basically the same if they come from the top guns in the industry. Canon, Nikon, Sony. I went with Sony because they have in-camera stabilization, making lenses cheaper. To each his own, I guess.

I'll stop here before I post another multi-part review

Can't say, with Nokia you never know. Still, they have screens, promises, beta testers. It's definitely real unlike some other updates they kind of forgot about. I'd make a crack on N900 here but it's not funny.

It is visibly better. It's not that E7 doesn't do text, it does, it just needs bigger font to make text visible in low resolution, so loads-of-text is going to show. Think of it as N900 with big fonts.

Opera does a font-and-zoom thing that I find really nice. Double-tapping zooms element to screen, makes font large enough to read and reflows the text.

It can. Without Big Screen, it does N900-like output (it even has PAL output just like N900). That is, shows the menu/desktop on screen.

Big Screen is a media center that gives you a menu for music, video, images, a la HTPC, while the phone itself displays a D-pad with very big buttons so you can control it. It also allows control via BT-linked hardware, like mice, keyboards and Wi-motes or what that's called. As a result, you can plug the phone in the back of the TV and watch video using a non-directional remote to control.

Lookie here. See the video to view it in action.

Not a breakthrough in technology, still, allows a pro-looking display rather than showing the world your menu full of strip games. I mean, personal data. Yeah. Personal data, that's what I meant.

Also, you have Default apps, a la XP+, so you can have NBS fire up automatically when HDMI is plugged. Still an option, you can use the normal players.

It can use media player to stream RTSP links, just like N900, also, it sports an Internet radio. With Anna, it comes with one installed, sporting 4000 stations or so.

It also has a streaming access point, and you can initiate a link via said AP while in a call, much like sending a MMS, except this can be done while in a call, with the other party (as opposed to anyone, via select number).

Once this is accepted, the other party can see live from your camera. If it sounds like a fancy version of video calling over 3G, and you think it's useless, then great, because as far as I can tell it's precisely that. Documentation is poor. Help is limited. I just left it where it dropped.

N900 works by being online as long as possible, regardless. This kills battery.

Symbian works on a request basis. What it does is scan for wifis, but does not connect, it just keeps it as an option. As soon as someone wants out, it will "dial" out, transfer data and the hang up, be it wifi, 3G, etc.

On N900, wanting something is instant because it's online. With E7, you need to wait a little. Generally, it's half a second, as it already knows what to connect to. Most apps offer "Easy WLAN" as a connection option, which means "if online, go. if a known wlan is close, hit that. If more, hit in order. If not, scan and ask me". Which is, indeed, easy. er. Easier. Can't win them all.

Still, if you hop on and off it's kind of distracting and it also goes off unexpectedly when widgets request it. There is a screen that tells you who wants out and why it is online (apps that use the link). As soon as they shut up or don't do enough traffic, it hangs up.

It is extremely useful with battery life, not being on WLAN at all times almost doubles my battery life alone.

However, it does have drawbacks. For example, live chat isn't live no more when using a widget. What it does is link up and ask for new messages. If one exists, then it keeps it live for a little while to see if there are more (they arrive in packs). If not, is sleeps again. You can fire up the chat app by clicking the message/widget and that keeps it online at all times, but now it wastes battery.

So you can either have a 5 minute delay or the lower battery life. It's good you have an option. It's bad that Instant Messaging is kind of not instant. In fact, it's about as lively as mail.

I was a bit disappointed myself, but we've grown closer with time. It's still a Nokia, so it still has frustrating moments, some bugs, sometimes needs a reboot, but it's lighter on my nerves than N900. Hey, progress is progress

When considering low light performance I never count the flash. First, because if it's flashed, it's no longer low light, now is it? Second, because flash only illuminates close targets that support flash, not distant targets, panoramas, landscapes, sleeping babies, plus, it washes out the image. Plus, color of skin starts to matter. It's very hard to review. Especially with no specs.

I tried to get hold of camera sensor specs for E7 but couldn't. If you have a link to a reputable source I'll gladly bring the math out to work out the light distribution and post the errata.

I could only find specs for N8. And while it is impressive for a phone, it's laughable by camera standards. It sounds nice in marketing (bigger than some cameras), but it's only the second smallest sensor size. It looks nice, but even positive (and professionally done) reviews admit that while it has clearer images, the shutter is 1/8 or slower which to a photographer means only one thing: static images only.

Anything under 1/125 will need to be slow moving or stopped, and stabilized. Anything over 1/15 has to be standstill, and with a tripod.

1/8 means that a talking person will have a blur for a mouth.

I'd like to make clear that when I say low light poor performance I mean low light poor performance (kids these days, right?). By which I mean in an absolute scale. It may be better than other phones (it is), but better evacuation from rear end still smells. You can't take moving shots in low light, it loses color depth, etc.

1/1.8 sensor has 38 mm2. APS-C in a DSLR is ten times that. A full frame is ~30 times that. And then there's glass size.

I did refer to E7 camera in the paragraph, and I did offer the N8 as hint of what happens when resolution goes up. That said, I did not review the N8 camera in depth, so if they compensated for it with larger optics, it may be better than E7.

Still, that is not saying much.

They only real thing I found was that both N8 and E7 seem to have an f/2.8 camera so, in theory, they should be exactly the same.

Like it wasn't difficult enough.

No, troll. That ^^ is why you are on my ignore list. Because you are stubborn, attack in your posts, put labels on people, throw in words like "ignorant" two rows after admitting that in a 50.000 character review you only disagree with one point, and "fanboi" because I like what you also like, but dare disagree on points.

You are also on my ignore list because you accuse me of fanboism, but are active in IPhone versus N900, Galaxy versus N900 threads, Android 2.3.5 and other competitors, defending whatever you feel like it with posts that contain "N900 is GOD" and posts replies that starts with "Wrong." and that timeless, signature "Oh dear, how old are you?"

You wanted to start an endless debate and I ignored you.

And, if you were the adult you claimed, you would have gone away, instead of coming back and throwing a tantrum over the injustice of the internet.

The nerve of these fanbois!

On a side note, I found more images with E7.

Next up, in-depth review of Anna. Also, Symbian Anna. Ha!

...my n900's guarantee will expire in a couple of months and since it has some hardware issues with the phone's radio dropping the connection every 8 minutes (sometimes it even falls just after a minute or two) when data or voice are in use, and i'm concerned that when i take it to the care center for "repairs" i'll be given a replacement of either an e7 or an n8... i've been trying to delay this move as much as possible but truth is it extremely annoying, and now that Anna is out and Belle seems to be on its way, i might be less reticent to jump...hell, i wished that if i wait long enough they might offer an n9 (i'm not greedy, i'd even take a 16GB *wink*), but i guess that's just quite an unrealistic expectation...

...anyhow, i look forward to your E7-Anna review...

I bet you are a boring kid to hang out with..an incoming yes or no question and you follow up with a damn 10 page essay.

I'll be short on the N8 vs E7 vs DSLR comparison. HERE:

N8 vs Canon 550d

Maybe better??? Why state something which you don't know? It's much much better. Since you have the time to read about technical stuff, I suggest you either read up reviews of the N8 camera or just stop right here with your stubborn attitude.

WOW

So you wanna say that my N82 is similar with N8 in image output??? DOUBLE WOW

An adult doesn't put people on ignore lists if someone has an opposing opinion in an active discussion. You seem to be a kid who is insecure, stubborn, self-centered with chin held high up even if ignorant of lots of things that are not in accordance with your beliefs. It's a well known fact that Symbian browser sucks and that N900's MicroB is pretty much praised by everyone. And yet you seem to defend E7's browser with technicalities rather than side by side testing, by stating that the renderer is different hence the lag, bla bla. It's slow, it's laggy, it's crap in S^3 and Anna (Belle is a sure improvement). I stated that I have tested both devices E7 and N900 next to each other and can surely have an objective opinion on what is better. Can you? (oh wait, you don't have a N900 to test, just spewing crap from memory)

Oh yeah, stating that E7's camera is better than N8's without even knowing anything about it and going against the world's conclusion. Keep it up.

I'll ask again, HOW OLD ARE YOU???

P.S. We don't need any encyclopedia material, just answer the question and get to the point immediately. It's not a blog or a university exam.

ndi, nice to see you still updating this thread with more info on the E7. I'm a month in with it and love it, flaws and all. The missing macro grates on me almost everyday - I'm not using the E7 to take 'arty pics' of flowers close-up, but sometimes in my job I need to take a quick shot of a receipt or note - using the autofocus of my old N900 did a superb job of that, so I miss that feature.
That aside, I'm in love with the E7's industrial design, the keyboard flips up so nicely and is a joy of joys to use.

My American friends (all iphone and SG2 users - so predictable!) often comment positively on my "NO-kia", but would never take the plunge, chickens! "Ooooh! I like it but....I must have a phone everyone else has got! It must be one I've seen advertised on TV! It must be one my friends will like!" Chickens and sheep!

The generous amoled screen is wonderful to look at, and apart from the odd freeze up and then restart, I've had very few problems.
Very much looking forward to Anna (then Belle!). Here in the US it would seem we're waaaaay down on the release list for Anna, but I'm patient. I hope Anna fixes those bugs that make it freeze though.

Looking forward to your E7+Anna review, very much.

Just face it. You are a spiteful human being.

What about battery life as compared to N900

Well, sorry about the delay, some (minor) health issues kept me from posting. So. Onwards.

First, the summary: If you are alone at night crying yourself to sleep because Anna isn't on your device then good news, everyone. It's not what is cracked up to be. Anna seems more like a fork of Belle, to keep us happy and ease the transition. You might as well have it and not know, save for a few things that jump up.

The nice thing is Nokia keeps going forward. There might not be groundbreaking things in it, but at least it's all(ish) good.

Improved Icons
Well, kinda. All icons are now fat squares, with back solid color fill and icons. I like the idea of icons rather than little pictures, it gives it an intuitive feel, but personally I rather hate them. It looks like they wanted to be like icons on other OSs but they are late to the party.

The best looking ones are still the iOS, since they got there first. Nice rounded squares, well proportioned. Then Android got there and made them squarer and a little fatter, and now Nokia is left with these obese things.

Still, it's a matter of taste, frankly, if you like the new icons you're all set. Because they're staying.


Better browser
It's slightly faster. It has a top address bar that incorporates the stop/go button at the end. Seems small but it's easy to hit.

It is always full screen, no more of that silly thick bar on the right. The horrendousness has been replaced by a small round anchor (N900 style) that, when clicked, pops up the menu. This allows settings, switching windows, viewing images, etc. It still lacks a source viewer.

In portrait, the keyboard only covers half of a screen, so you can see what you type, instead of the normal opaque keyboard. Same old in landscape, though in landscape you probably gonna go hardware.

It finally has a back button! Yeeey! The back button is still an anchor and it still pops the animated history, BUT now there's a setting that allows you to use the on-screen button as a directly-back which is something I assume you will want to. Ye old history is still available via menu, only 2 clicks away instead of one. It presents itself as a list of visited links, in order (hence the name).

It feels overall faster, but not by much, and it still has no keyboard shortcuts. But with always-full screen there is more much-needed realestate and, with a normal back button you may not need the menu after all. So, improvement.

Oh, and better HTML5 support. And better CSS support. And improved hardware acceleration. Yes, folks this one really is better. It has also gained tap-and-hold menu.

Refreshed Ovi Maps
Search is better - split search tabs make for a better UI.

You can now share places better (Nokia says SMS and e-mail - never tried it).

It has more layers, basically. Nokia lists this as a transport route enhancement thingy. It now has a later of POIs and lines that includes transport. No magic here.

It also lists update over wlan which is confusing because I could already do that. But, since Maps can be downloaded separately I might have had a newer version.

Also, as preview of things to come, this is the last one that will work this way. In Belle (or now if you are feeling adventurous with Beta) Maps will be split in separate apps. Check In will be separate, Places will be separate, Update, etc. They may separate driving app from normal maps. Not a bad idea for development, but not as bright for us. The decision is final, says one Nokia employee, so, if you don't like it, tough.

Still, it's not bad, because you can have shortcuts to driving and to check in separately and use a folder to group them. I already do that, so it's not too bad.

Again, the separation will be mandatory in Belle.

Better Ovi Store
In the sense that a turd is better if you spray some aftershave over it. I'm gonna need a stiffer drink.

That's got it.

It's not agony to use OVI, but it has a few things that annoy me, like that bug that makes items disappear when scrolling long lists (they part-fixed it. Hint: Exit OVI, start again, then go directly for the list. Fiddling with login and profile windows trigger the bug).

So, what's improved?

Nokia says: Improved search (like THAT was a problem), including auto-complete (why?), spell-checking (oh yeah, baby!) and Internet search engine optimization and error fixes (again with optimizations I don't care about)

Also, an "increased file size limits for downloading over WLAN". Whoop-dee-doo.

Social Media Enhanced
Now we're getting somewhere.

The social app is better. It now reliably gets updates, no longer coughs when booting up the phone, is faster, better.

It has now grown a "home" button (look for a button that looks like a settings button - that's home) in the top right. Yeah. No more 25 "back" buttons.

It also has status updates in contact cards. Also, apparently you can retweet and view follower list in Twitter (I wouldn't know, I hate Twitter), higher resolution image uploads, ability to add caption to images.

Cutting through marketing, let me make it clear: It's faster, better, more reliable and it has a few more things it should have had from the beginning, like captioning an image.

It still needs to download an entire album to view an image that has been posted, though. It's still a rather poor viewer.

But, better. The direction is more important then speed.

Enhanced Ovi Suite
Why this is listed as Anna improvements is beyond me. Maybe it relies on Anna fixes on phone side.

OVI suite has received several updates, and now works right with maps, music, sync is OK. I still have a bug where some messages read from the PC are stuck as unread in the database.

But there is a fix where you can use a db editor to mark them read. As N900 owners, this should be second nature to you by now. Fix it yourself.

They did address the bug, in the sense that Nokia says it stopped from happening. No word on already-stuck messages. Still, it is an annoyance rather than a problem because this is in the local PC storage, not on phone.

Messaging Enhanced
Microsoft Communicator Mobile

If above word make you swell with joy, rejoice. If you have no idea what it does, you don't need it.

Other stuff
There are other things that come with Anna that are not listed above, mainly because I stole the headers off an article I found to keep me in line.

So, new stuff not above:

* Calendar has split screen. Calendar now uses what's left from the square calendar month view to list what's going on today, so you don't have to switch views.

N900-style color for each calendar bar at the beginning, followed by the description. Todo notes are shown in the current day as if they were scheduled today, instead of every day or some other nonsense. This happens in portrait and landscape alike.

They kept the swipe to change month, also, clicking date allows jump to date. Basically, there is no need to leave moth view any more. Useful.

* Portrait keyboard has QWERTY. Yes, folks, if you ever saw a QWERTY crammed in a portrait phone and thought "I gotta get me some of THAT", you're in luck. Fortunately for sane people, you cans switch back and forth with T9 at will so you can type with a single hand. On the brighter side, numbers are spread so it's not as bad as other people's. Also, some (rather large) news sites report that the T9 has been ditched in favor of QWERTY. Don't believe the hype.

* Email is faster. Email app is faster to load mails and is more lively. It also followed Browser in the UI cleanup. Now some of the UI elements slide with the view to make more room, buttons were collapsed, fat was lost. Same mail app, but better, in line with Anna so far.

* Home screen better. When starting, each tile has a "preview" generated by the OS, composed of the icon of the app, on the left, and a sign that it's "refreshing" on the right. As each one redraws, they are replaced, so no more empty places. Also, it gives a sense it's actually doing something, instead of empty seconds staring at the screen wondering.

* Bootup time slashed. Old OS took a shower (literally) to start up. This one is way, way faster. It has been improved, but a lot of it is because instead of waiting for each widget to draw/update, it now just displays the placeholder and moves on.

* Widgets are better managed. I have already outlined above, but this is actually an improvement. They are better managed, there is less slowdown when one misbehaves, there's the placeholder thing to interact with it before it's fully loaded (like remove and re-add).

* Better management of features. This has no place in QWERTY portrait or Browser sections, so I made one. When QWERTY/T9 Portrait keyboard fires up, it goes in split screen. In browser, the input box is scrolled into view. In home screen, the widget accepting input (like Search) is brought into view. The background is cleared of widgets (except Search) and the input point is moved into view, like the screen only had this widget and it was placed perfectly. It's neat and it reminds of that attention to detail that made Nokia a big name. Good to see someone kicked someone in the behind.

* Image gallery better. Same incredible speed, but the side buttons now have a button that enters select mode. In this mode, tapping an image selects it. With nice, large, visible checkboxes overlayed. Finally. That tap-and-hold 50 images was getting old.

It has also gained a "mode" button that allows choice of "all" (boasts "multi-select button and share), "Album mode" (Boasts add to album and sort by buttons) and "Tags mode" (boasts tag management button and sort by size or alpha).

* Camera minor improvements. Several improvements have been claimed but all I can see is a new Anna-like UI finish, with actual iconic icons, and zoom is finally smooth (old camera has steps when zooming in). Same camera though, double tap to zoom in and out, multi-touch to change resolution)

* New app: Internet radio. Internet radio from N900 is back with a vengeance. Boasts thousands of stations built-in, can add more. Works in background. Stream info. No stutters that I could induce. Has bandwidth setting. Cool by any standards.

* New app: Shazam. Not a fan, but many people cried for it on N900, so it's here. On E7.

* Improved speed: Videos. It seems faster. No new features. Could be indexing is faster/better, all multimedia stuff feels more lively accessing on-device content.

* Better user feedback. Now the phone displays the "wait" animation when a (larger) program is being launched, so no more of that "did I press it" wondering. Still no "exit" feedback, exiting large apps leaves the phone sluggish for a few seconds with no feedback.

Well, that's it, really. If it seems that is a lot, that's because it is. And this is just a step up to Belle, which is the thick slice.

Yeah, and that stuff about not noticing having Anna installed, I lied. It's great. I didn't want to add to your grief, but can't help it. Most apps have new UI, most are faster, better, or at least not worse. Worth every penny. (haha, it's funny because it's free!)

There is already a section called "Battery" in my review (Note it's split in 2-3 posts, it didn't fit in the TMO's constraints). But the short answer is, yes, much. Anywhere from the same to 3 times as much, depending on what you do. I get about twice the autonomy, same usage. Gets savings from better screen technology and slimmer OS.

That's a pain. Still, you get more clarity from further away than from close up, you don't really see it on screen, but from about 80-100 cm away I can read the text if there is good light. Still, pain.

I've been looking at those, and most if not all have been caused by the widgets locking up. It happens rarely on mine, so it's hard to tell which, but, sometimes the phone resets my desktop to default because even a quick restart doesn't fix it. (once since I have it, before Anna)

OTOH, I've ran a poll through several honest phone owners and found it to be no more restarty than others. It's more stable than my N900. This is rather subjective, because I reboot it if I feel wifi is sluggish, others keep them running for weeks. Still, not a big issue on E7. I could lower my widget count, but I'm not going to.

At least one has been caused by me launching Maps several times, because the first instance was hooked trying to get a lock. It's odd, though, it rarely happens. Whether it's the GPS thing locking up or a bug in Maps I can't tell. Or a bug in connectivity, since A-GPS tries to get online. Most of the time it's smooth, sometimes it gets choked up and needs a restart.

I also noticed that when it happens the apps no longer have previews in task manager - and I'm wondering if it is not a simple, yet hard to find bug in the UI. The screen still locks, menus work, lantern fires up, so the OS is still there. Looks a lot like the hang of GFX driver on N900, only less severe.

It must be said, though, even choked up it still powers down politely, menu works, didn't have to pull battery.

That being said, my 8110 self-restarted, and so did 7110, 7650, 7610, and so on and so forth. It's not like it's a new problem. Better to have it self-restart than to wonder for 2 days why nobody has called.

[/QUOTE]Here in the US it would seem we're waaaaay down on the release list for Anna, but I'm patient. I hope Anna fixes those bugs that make it freeze though.[/QUOTE]

I tried to make it sound less juicy but I couldn't. It's cool. And yes, it is less restarty. I average one a week. It's not good, but, frankly, N900 needed one every 48 hours because of Python leaks.

Your wait has come to an end.