
Nokia X7 Symbian Anna smartphone
End of an era?
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Review When you buy a mobile, you know that you’re likely to be stuck with it for the life of your contract. Good news: you’ll get used to its quirks and differences. Bad news: you can only watch as gorgeous handsets are released for the next year or two.

Smart move? Nokia's X7
But what’s trickier about the new Nokia X7 is that it uses Symbian, the much-maligned operating system which even the Finnish phone maker says won’t be its main phone platform. From later this year the company will mainly focus on Windows Phone for its smartphones. So do you really want to buy what may turn out to be the last major Symbian handset?
Let’s say at first that this is far and away the best iteration of Symbian. On this handset, everything works at speed and with maximum fluidity. True, the phone’s tagline “All you need is behind one touch,” sounds more fruity than inviting, but let that pass. The N8 was chiefly let down by a touchscreen system that didn’t seem purpose-built, so the screen was slow and unresponsive.
That’s fixed with the X7 and it’s a pleasure to use it, with screens swiping exactly when your finger does, and the accelerometer spinning the display as quickly as you turn the phone. The three home screens of the N8 stacked with shortcut icons respond instantly, though the design of the interface looks less than new. Multi-tasking is handled well: a long press of the menu key shows which apps are open and you can flick between them easily.

Virtual keys are available in portrait mode now
Previously there was no Qwerty keyboard in portrait orientation (I know, I know) but that’s been remedied. But it does still feel like a system that was designed for other phones and tweaked for touch. Which, to be fair, it is. For all the improvements in this update, the overriding feeling is that Nokia was right to move on from Symbian. Nice touches remain, like the analogue clock lock screen.
Next page: Design matters
COMMENTS
Im curious...
If anyone who comments or writes reviews on this site is fitted with a brain.
The phone is fitted with a 600-800mhz range processor because of one very simple reason. It doesnt need any more power. Android, iOS and the rest of the them are lardy behemoths that suck processor power. The symbian core is still that of the EPOC machines, you know, the ones whose battery life lasted three weeks on two AA batteries.
I have a six year old symbian phone on its original battery - and it still does 4 days on standby without a problem.
I find it interesting that all the detractors are AC's - what a surprise to see the spineless leading the gormless as usual - reminds me of wall street.
This is the rule of the retards personified. There is plenty of freeware around for symbian v5 (which is what the X7 runs, with a few tweaks) so the arguments that there is no software for it are total and utter crap.
It always amazes me that people these days spout about the environment and saving energy, then get a phone that uses more power than the average notebook computer a few years ago.
I will say it again - condemning this OS because its actually more efficient than *any* of its competitors - harks of the stupidity of the masses... who've fallen for the adverts... and are happy to use systems on their phone that are insecure, powerhungry and utterly unsuitable for the devices they are used upon.
...and Zoidberg...
Is the reason why people are bashing Symbian and because every idiot reviewer who does a review of a Symbian phone does it in 5 minutes from the pub and therefore wouldnt know the phones ass from its elbow.
Then you have the traditional Nokia stance of 'advertising...? whats that then?'... and the rest is fanboi-tastic. I swear the Symbian platform has gotten more advertising from negative reviews than it has from anything else. Alot of people wouldnt know it exists otherwise.
Its fun to poke fun at Symbian v5 and even AAS have done it on occasion, lambasting Nokia for gormless product decisions (N97 anyone?). However people seem to miss the point and its an important one. The ONLY place the Symbian handsets lag is in their current UI.
Listen carefully folks - this is the important part.
In practically every other field they are either better, equal, or much better. Theyve had features that are touted as new by other OS manufacturers for years...
Dual processors - Nokia E70 206mhz - 2006
Output to Projector - Nokia E70 - 2006
Output to TV - Nokia N93 onwards - 2007
Discriminate Graphics Processor- N93 again - 2007
Need I go on?
The OS runs on much less intensive cores, so when its idling its using a fair amount less power processor for processor, but this is another important part, when its working its little heart out to play your futurama episodes out to the TV via TV-Out or HDMI.... its using substantially less power to do that, so even at full power it might be using less mA than a iPhone at 50% processor usage.
I would venture to suggest that if the new Belle update concentrates more on the UI than on other improvements (which to be fair are not really needed all that much since the system is comparable in function to anything else) then Elops idea to hum unto the Microsoft might fall down round his ears - and Apple might find their wheezy cameras and limited functionality are really getting put to the test function for function. Android... crashtastic, flakey signal, cr-app-tastic is also at risk, because to make a usable 'droid phone you need a step up in processor power, and therefore a step up in component costs.
The only OS of the top three that I havent tested is iOS, mainly because even touching apple products makes me feel dirty. I have had two manufacturer baked Android phones, and they've been pitiful on signal (no signal where the E70 gets 4/6 bars) and flakey on software, spontaneous reboots. Ive had a dual booting HTC diamond for a while and the Android on that was painful to say the least. Yet an E70 with 206mhz processors, that is 6 years old, can run rings around them.
But the really ironic thing... the thing that makes me laugh, is that Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5 outperforms Android - is much more stable - and can do everything that the current flock can do, and ALWAYS COULD.
But it wasnt pretty enough was it - and you had to think to use it - so now its confined to its coffin with dead iOS fanbois put to good use as the nails.
I dont recall the definition of the word progress as being "take all the functions off it, make it simple to use, use processors that need the power output of the falcons hyperdrive, and make it crash every second hour' but then I learned English...
Not Fan-glish.
"Everyone"
Hardly, there are 100s of millions of Symbian users. If they all hated Symbian as much as you seem to, then I suspect that precisely zero symbian phones would have been sold. This is clearly not the case.
As usual, the US experience is a bit different, because the US telecoms market is seriously fucked up, as are the analysys there who seem to think USA=World. The fact that NOK are not number one there, does not diminish the fcat that globally, despite Elops best efforts so far, still accounts for a massive amount of sales, and an increasing number of sales - a fact that many analysts and commentards fail to realise - mostly because they are intellectually incapable of basic comprehension.
WinPho might be the "saviour" of NOK, but (a) I do not think NOK needed a saviour (unless one thinks USA=World) and (b) The latest Symbian and the new MeeGo phone seem to indicate that NOK was well on the way to solving the issues they had with speed to market and product software capability.
Nothing like ignorant trolls to liven up the exchanges on the Reg, but it gets tiring hearing the same fanboy rubbish spouted by the ignorant

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