Symbian, smooth as never thought possible.

Symbian Belle N8

Is that stolen Android status bar on top? :)

OS has some promising enhancements, but what's with the lag? It's obvious apps takes longer to load and the menu has definite lag when dragging. I sure hope that's a beta thing.

Also, is anyone else averse to that whole roundish ballooned icon thing?

and arbitraily positionable widgets and shortcuts it seems in portrait and landscape. pretty nice. if this comes to $150 unlocked phones like nokia 500 seems like it could be a good job by nokia.

on a side note of shameless promotion, I am selling my e7 on ebay if anyone is interested. PM me or mention tmo in your best offer and I will give you special consideration as a community member.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=140587353206

i like the phone a lot, just selling off some stuff

also available is another phone some of you nuts here might be interested in, sonim xp3300, a kind of super rugged phone.

Damn! A week ago I would've been very interested, but Amazon got my $$$

I actually really like those icons, not sure why, maybe I'm attracted to brightly coloured things...like candy!!

I'm sure all that lag is because it's an unreleased OS and it's still in testing phase, plus there might be other things like 25 apps running in the background or something. I'm looking forward to the improvements, although I'm pretty damn happy with what I have right now.

Also, on the camera front, I worked out that you can get slightly better indoor pics if you choose the 'vivid' setting. Still not great though

I also installed the fancy Nokia Pure font, that together with the Anna theme really gives the E7 a flippin lovely look.

UPDATE: if you're thinking about installing the Pure font, I would recommend you do this *before* installing any Ovi apps. For some reason, all of my apps' icons disappeared and were replaced with a red/white jigsaw icons, and I had to uninstall them and then reinstall them. I also find that more patience pays off when installing stuff, even when it says it's done, wait another minute and the E7 will respond. Otherwise it sticks, it's still doing stuff I guess.

I hope it's because it's in testing. He has nothing running, I watched the menu - no indicators.

Frankly, I don't like it. The icons are OK instead of text, but they are less than suggestive, IMO. App icons don't look like candy to me, they look like a failed Android/iPhone spoof, where all icons are rounded/in a round rectangle, and nokia thought nobody would catch on if they make it a bulky rectangle. I don't know, I just find that less ink blots make for a more tasteful UI.

But, I can switch theme to Anna or Belle icons now, I assume I'll be able to switch back. And if all else fails, I'll brew my own. I just prefer a suggestive symbol to pics.

On the bright side, we get status bar (poached from Android. Why not poach Maemo, it's way better?), slide windows, a smoother UI and another few enhancements like stacked windows with animation.

A few more enhancements and we'll run Maemo. Hopefully with a better fate. And faster.

okay so my fiancée got her E7 about a week ago. (now I have her N900 )

two things that annoy her so far:
- alarm app is very limited - you cannot set desired days an alarm goes off, it can only be set for one day of the week
- the charging light cannot be turned off

one thing I dont like is having to use ovi store to download apps

overall its a very good phone

It is limited in that sense, but not enough so you can't have 3 alarms for the days you want to wake up to (I'm assuming that if daily and workdays is out, you're likely to have less than 5 days, thus 5 alarms). If you have a more complex schedule, there are apps out there that allow better alarm manipulation.

Which charging light? The one near the USB? Mine is obscured by the cable. Or is it the "breathing" button light? I think the latter is off while charging if off in settings. If it's the one near the USB, use a bigger cable, my is useless (obscured) unless using one of those thin wall chargers.

I don't agree with your comparison.
I've had the Nokia E7 for a month now since Nokia Care couldn't send me my N900 repaired back and offered this phone instead, and it's been constant hell for me.
There are no apps whatsoever available for E7. Not by a million times can it be compared to the huge app repositories we have available for Maemo. And the little there are, you have to pay for them in the OVI store. Maemo community gives us the apps for free in their majority.
Connectivity IS key for this kind of phone. And the N900 is by far victor in this field.
Multimedia capabilities are far better on the N900, as it can stream audio/video while the E7 can not. Only thing better on the E7 is the HD video recording, but anyway, it's a just a phone camera. You're not going to record your wedding in either of the phones and the N900 does just nice for home videos.
And the screen? Seriously, you think a 640x360 screen, however good or amoled it'd be, is better than a 800x480 one? I for sure don't think so. Browsing with the E7's browser is a living hell, Opera does a nice job but it is in fact a MOBILE browser while Fennec is a desktop one (flash included).
And that's about it. The E7 is a very nice smartphone, but the N900 is something more. I like to think that the E7 as of a "phone with something more" and the N900 as of a "Computer with mobile capabilities".
Anyway, I thank you for your opinions and well-done analysis, and I want to state that these of mine are just that, opinions. Anyone can have his/her own.
Cheers!