Nokia C7 bridge the gap between Nokia N8 and Nokia C6, it will be released in Q42010 at a price of 21,000/- excluding taxes. Lets have a look at the features of Nokia C7 in detail:
Size
117.3 x 56.8 x 10.5 mm, 130g, clamshell form-factor
8 MP, 3266x2450 pixels, autofocus with dual LED flash, video recording at 720p resolution (1280×720) and 25fps, Geo-tagging, face and smile detection, Secondary camera for video call
Connectivity
GPS, A-GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps, Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP, microUSB v2.0 USB On-the-go support, 3.5 mm audio jack
Processor & Memory
ARM 11 680MHz with 3D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenGL-ES 2.0 support, 256MB RAM, 8GB mass memory, 340MB of internal memory, microSD, up to 32G, 1GB ROM
Other Features
Multi-touch input, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer sensor, Scratch-resistant surface, FM Transmitter and Stereo FM Radio (with RDS), TV-Out, Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, Li-Ion 1200 mAh (BL-5K) Battery, Stand-by Up to 552 h (2G) / Up to 648 h (3G), Talk time Up to 9 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 5 h (3G), Music play Up to 54 h in headphone
Nokia C6-01 looks like cheaper Nokia N8 at first glance, it will be released in Q42010 at a price of 16,000/- excluding taxes. Lets have a look at the features of Nokia C6 in detail:
Size
103.8 x 52.5 x 13.9 mm, 131g, clamshell form-factor
8 MP, 3266x2450 pixels, autofocus with dual LED flash, video recording at 720p resolution (1280×720) and 25fps, Geo-tagging, face and smile detection, Secondary camera for video call
Connectivity
GPS, A-GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, microUSB v2.0 USB On-the-go support, 3.5 mm audio jack
Processor & Memory
ARM 11 680MHz with 3D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenGL-ES 2.0 support, 256MB RAM, 340MB of internal memory, microSD, up to 32G, 1GB ROM
Other Features
Multi-touch input, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer sensor, Scratch-resistant surface, Stereo FM Radio (with RDS), Li-Ion 1050 mAh Battery, Stand-by Up to 408 h (2G) / Up to 372 h (3G), Talk time Up to 11 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 4 h 30 min (3G), Music up to 50 h in headphone
I yesterday published about best Nokia smartphone available in the market but here is some good news for us as Nokia announced three new Symbian^3 phones E7, C6-01 and C7. All of three have all the essentials covered like 8MP camera, connectivity, capacitive screen and lot more. Lets first look at Nokia E7 in detail:
Size
123.7 x 62.4 x 13.6 mm, 176g, clamshell form-factor, with predominantly anodized aluminium body except some plastic on keyboard.
8 MP, 3266x2450 pixels, autofocus with dual LED flash, video recording at 720p resolution (1280×720) and 25fps, Geo-tagging, face and smile detection, Camera aperture of F2.8, focal length 5.4., There is no secondary camera though
Connectivity
GPS, A-GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps, Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP, microUSB v2.0 USB On-the-go support, 3.5 mm audio jack
Processor and Memory
ARM 11 680MHz with 3D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenGL-ES 2.0 support, 256MB RAM, 135MB of internal memory, 16GB mass memory, 1 GB ROM, No card-slot
Other Features
QWERTY keyboard, Multi-touch input, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer sensor, Scratch-resistant surface, Touch sensitive controls, TV-out (720p video) via HDMI, Dolby Digital Plus via HDMI, FM transmitter and Stereo FM Radio (with RDS), Li-Ion 1200 mAh (BL-4D) Battery, Stand-by Up to 432 h (2G) / Up to 480 h (3G), Talk time Up to 9 h (2G) / Up to 5 h (3G), Music Up to 50 h in headphone
Nokia E7 specification and samples looks impressive except nHD resolution is not that impressive on 4 inch screen also there is no Secondary camera, Nokia is still using age old ARM 11 processors they should have used Cortex A8 1GHZ at least. It will be available in Q42010 at a price of 500 Euro before taxes. Lets wait to see how it fares in real life.
Gone are the days when Nokia had produced real multimedia-cum-smartphone like N70, N91, N95 etc. Now we are left with some E-Series and few N-Series phones to choose among. I had hard time picking phones to my comparison chart. The reason I choose N97 and N97 mini is because these are the Nokia flagship smartphone scurrently available in the market also there is a buzz around us for touchscreens. I can't leave E-Series flagship E72 for comparison which is an all-rounder with some real business capability. Now lets compare head-to-head each of them and see which one scores better. Each feature carry a maximum of 10 marks which is given to the winner with that feature and rest gets marks relative to winner.
Phone
Camera
5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, Dual LED flash, video light
5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash, video light, Lens Cover
Nokia beta labs released beta version of swype. In case you are unfamilier with swype then it is a very popular and convinent method for text input in a touchscreen phone. Unlike other input methods where you have to lift your finger to write different characters here you just need to swype your finger or stylus across the screen keyboard so that all characters in a word are connected to your finger or stylus motion.
You need to Sign in on nokia beta labs and the follow the above link.
Supported Phones
All Nokia Symbian S60v5
Nokia 5800
Nokia 5230
Nokia X6 (no portrait mini-qwerty for firmware v21.0.004)
Nokia N97
Nokia N97 mini
Nokia C6-00
Key features
Standard QWERTY keyboard layout makes Swype easy to learn.
Use a stylus or finger – Swype’s amazing input path analyzer allows you to go fast and sloppy. Just make a reasonable effort to trace through the word and Swype will do the rest
Double Tap Editing – Make a mistake? Double tap on a word to bring up a list of other possible matches.
Auto-Spacing
Auto-Capitalization
Auto Spelling Correction
Automatic Help – Swype detects when you may be having trouble or might benefit from a particular feature and prompts you with helpful tips and instructions
Instant access to Symbols, Numbers and Editing functions
65,000-word Learning Dictionary – Chances are the word you are typing is already in the Swype dictionary. If it isn’t, just tap it out once followed by a space and Swype will remember it for future use.
Installation
I installed it on Nokia N97 mini which already has physical full qwerty keyboard but it doesn't has on screen full qwerty keyboard. After installation it requires your phone to restart to fully integrate swype with nokia default onboard keyboards. I was rather excited as I wished N97 mini had a full on screen qwerty keyboard because its annoying to open physical keyboard to just input few words.
Settings
Swype setting is accessible from the keyboard itself where you can configure swype for your convinence. In simple setting you can specify whether to use swype or not but if you change this option then you will have to restart your phone to get it changed, next you can enable or disable word prediction, audio feedback or vibration feedback. There are more options in advanced setting where you can enable of disable auto-spacing, auto-capitalization, complete trace, word choice window, speed and accuacy.
Use experience
When I opened swype for first time I was a bit disappointed because portrait keyboard was almost unusable whereas on landscape I was making so many errors. But after using it for 2 days I love landscape keyboard. Portrait keyboard is still unusable because N97 mini screen is not that much wide also I was unable to press shift key, whenever I try to press shift key 'z' got pressed so I left using portrait keyboard. Swype is designed to be very intelligent, it does things what exactly you wanted to be. Switching between numeric, alphanumeric, special characters and capital letters are very easy you just have to press SYM and SHIFT keys. Word prediction is very handy at times but sometimes it can be annoying also, like when you want to wirte a word of other language in english. Typing is little sluggish when you enable complete trace but overall its good. Most of the time you will be using swype with only one fingure or a stylus also you need to press little harder on resistive screen to get correct word typed. In case swype is unconfortable for you then you can disable it and you can use it as a simple on screen full qwerty keyboard in that case you can even use your both fingers/hands.
Verdict
Nokia beta labs claims that you can reach upto 40 words per minute with swype but I don't think so unless you practice typing with swype for an hour daily. Swype can be very handy for phones without physical qwerty keyboard like 5800, x6, 5230, 5530 but for N97 and N97 mini physical keyboard is better for long typing like writing an email still swype can be used on these devices for small typing like sms reply etc. Overall this software is must have on all Nokia Symbian S60 touchscreen phones whether there is physical qwerty present or not.
