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Nokia X7-00 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £350
inc VAT

As usual, Nokia's hardware is superb, with excellent design and well-crafted construction, but its Symbian operating system is a pain to use and lacks a well-stocked app store

Specifications

Symbian Anna, 4.0in 360×640 display

http://www.play.com

Nokia’s X7 is a solidly-built smartphone with a futuristic design. The front of the phone is all screen, with a glossy black bezel and angular grilles on each corner, while the back is smooth and rounded, made from brushed metal. It’s a daring design, but we think it works really well. Like most Nokia hardware, it feels really well put together, but at 146g it’s not particularly heavy.

Nokia X7-00

The top edge includes the power button, a micro-USB data and charging port, and a standard 3.5mm headphone port. The right side has a volume rocker and camera shutter button, while the left side has two slide-out trays for the SIM and memory cards. The X7’s screen has an unusual 360 x 640 resolution, also known as nHD (so called because it’s a ninth of the Full HD 1,920 x 1,080 resolution). This is much smaller than the 480 x 800 found on most other large-screen smartphones, and much less than the qHD (quarter HD) resolution on the HTC Sensation (see What’s New, Shopper 283), but in practice we found it clear and bright, with accurate colours.

The 8-megapixel camera takes crisp and colourful shots with little noise, and with its dual-LED flash, low-light shots aren’t a problem. It can also shoot video at 720p quality, which again is sharp and has strong colours. It handles movement better than other smartphone cameras we’ve seen, with no sign of compression artefacts. Nokia ships the X7 with an 8GB microSDHC card, which is enough for thousands of MP3s and photos, but it can handle cards up to 32GB in size.

Nokia X7-00 back

As with most Nokia handsets, however, the outstanding hardware is held back by the outdated software. This is a new version of Symbian, but aside from a few cosmetic changes, it’s much the same as it’s always been. Ironically, now that Nokia has decided to release future phones with Windows Phone instead of Symbian, Nokia’s Ovi app store has started to fill out with some useful apps, but there still aren’t as many good ones as in Apple’s App Store or the Android Market.

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Details

Price £350
Rating **

Hardware

Main display size 4.0in
Native resolution 360×640
Second Display No
CCD effective megapixels 8-megapixel
Flash Dual LED
Video recording format MP4, 3GP
Connectivity Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB
GPS yes
Internal memory 1024MB
Memory card support microSDHC
Memory card included 8192MB
Operating frequencies GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 850/900/1700/1900/2100
Wireless data EDGE, HSPA
Size 120x63x12mm
Weight 146g

Features

Operating system Symbian Anna
Microsoft Office compatibility Word/Excel/PowerPoint/PDF viewers
Email client POP3/IMAP/Exchange
Audio format support MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB
Video playback formats MP4, H.264, VC-1, Sorenson Spark, Real video 10
FM Radio yes
Web Browser Nokia Web Browser
Accessories headset, USB data cable, mains adapter
Talk time 4.5 hours
Standby time 18.8 days
Tested battery life (MP3 playback) 57h 48m

Buying Information

SIM-free price £350
Price on contract £31-per-month, 18-month contract
SIM-free supplier www.play.com
Contract/prepay supplier www.mobilephonesdirect.co.uk
Details www.nokia.co.uk

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