Nokia C7

NOKIA C7 REVIEW

Nokia has recently launched the C7 mobile handset, expanding its much popular C-series. The Nokia C7 is a middish-priced (£20 per month on contract) smartphone with a surprisingly nice appearance, for a Nokia. It's superslim, at just 10.5mm and has a nice shiny stainless steel casing with curved edges. It's a good size to hold and very tactile. The weight is a solid yet manageable 130g. The screen is a decent size (3.5 inches) and the dodgy old resistive screen used on the C6-00 has been replaced with a more responsive capacitive screen with pinch and zoom support. Nokia have also ditched the dinosaur release of Symbian used on the C6-00 and replaced it with their new Symbian^3. Now, as we remarked in our Nokia N8 review, Symbian^3 isn't yet ready to compete with Google or Apple, but it's getting there. Freezing and crashing is still present from time to time. The C7 is endowed with an excellent feature set. When Nokia get things right they can be excellent value for money. For instance, as well as all the usual smartphone stuff (music player, FM radio, assisted GPS, web browser, etc) the Ovi mapping system comes with a free lifetime license for car and pedestrian navigation, as well as free access to the latest maps. There's also Bluetooth 3.0, and an FM transmitter, which is something only Nokia seem to offer. The memory has been boosted up to a huge 8GB and there's support for microSD cards up to 32GB too, giving a maximum possible storage of 40GB. That's big by anyone's standards. The camera is pretty good, with 8 megapixels and a bright flash. We're less keen on Nokia's full focus cameras compared with proper autofocus cameras, but they do have the advantages of being fast and enabling the phone to be very slim. The camera is capable of recording video in 720p high definition, and a secondary video camera enables video calling. The battery isn't the biggest in town, but at 1200mAh it's "right" for the phone and manages to give excellent battery life, for a smartphone. Likewise, the processor isn't the fastest available, but it's fast enough, and there's a dedicated GPU to provide support and 3D graphics. Just when we thought Nokia had gone into a nosedive, we find ourselves pleasantly surprised by the C7. Sure, it's not at the cutting edge of technology, but for the price it offers a lot and delivers it well. If only Nokia could polish Symbian^3 as well as the stainless steel finish on the C7, it might be in with a chance of taking on its newer rivals. Still, Nokia fans are used to glitchy software, and for those die-hard Nokia fans, we'd recommend the C7 as an excellent alternative to the N8, if the 12 megapixel of the latter doesn't grab you. The C7 sports a 3.5-inch AMOLED screen, 8MP camera (the picture quality is amazing, to its credit and video capture quality is of the highest spec), GPS, 8GB internal storage and Bluetooth 3.0, all encased in a well-designed body. The phone features a metal backplate reminiscent of the older Nokia 6300 series and this is where the review starts to take shape for the C7. This phone feels like an introduction to the smartphone generation for any first-time smartphone buyers/long time Nokia users.

SPECIFICATION & FEATURES

NOKIA C7 PRICE

Price in USA $317

Price in UK £213

Price in EURO €240

Price in PAK Rs.36,000

Price in INDIA Rs.16,240