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Filed under: Nokia

Nokia C7 – Hands On, First Impressions

by Kyron John on August 18, 2010 · 16 comments

Nokia C7 – Hands On, First Impressions NokiaC7

I woke up today thinking that it would be just another Wednesday and it certainly started out that way (forgot my wallet and my lunch as I left for work, went back and got my wallet but still forgot my lunch) but I received a call from a contact of mine who has access to new devices and was asked if I wanted to join her for lunch (which was perfect seeing as I forgot my lunch. #WIN). As always, she brought some devices that she figured I’d be interested in seeing, playing with and sometimes breaking (if they didn’t want you to drop iPhones they wouldn’t make them so damn slippery. Still sorry about that Nokia C7 – Hands On, First Impressions icon biggrin ). In any avail, one of the devices she brought was the yet to be announced Nokia C7 and allowed me to go to town with the device as long as I respected a couple rules: 1) Don’t take any pictures of the device (which is why I’m using leaked photos from zol.com.cn) 2) Don’t upload or post anything from the device (which is why I don’t have any 8MP picture samples or 720p video samples from the device). Other than that, I can tell you a few things about the C7 that you might not have already known.

Nokia C7 – Hands On, First Impressions NokiaC7thin

  • First things first, the earlier leaked photos of the C7 led me to believe that it was thinner than the family of touchscreen Nokia devices it will eventually replace (5800 XpressMusic, 5230 XpressMusic, etc.) but not by much. However, pictures can definitely be deceiving as the C7 is around the same thickness as the E71/E72. In fact, if I had to compare it a specific Nokia device, it would be the E55. They’re roughly the exact same size with the C7 being heavier (and ditching the keys of course).
  • The device is built from high quality plastic with a brushed aluminum battery cover and metal bezel around the screen like the E71/E72. The latch that removes the cover is more like the E72 than the E71 though.
  • The screen is the typical 640×360 (nHD) touchscreen that accompanies Symbian devices however the C7 is equipped with a 3.5″ capacitive screen which apparently has a glass coating (I’m not convinced but I’ve been wrong before)
  • The menu button had a lot of play (squishy is the word I used to describe it) but this might have been due to this being an early prototype.
  • The 8MP camera DOES NOT have a Carl Zeiss lens. This isn’t a big deal to me but judging by how many people asked me since they found out I was playing with the C7, this is a possible dealbreaker for some of you.
  • Photos and videos captured with the camera look great but everything looks great when you play it back on the device right?
  • I can’t get over how thin this thing is!
  • The battery is 1200mAh and it’s tiny in comparison to the Nokia batteries that I’m used to. If they can make the 1200mAh battery this small then I expect them to make some larger capacity cells that won’t sacrifice esthetics.
  • The Symbian^3 experience is pretty much exactly the same as Symbian^1 without having to remember to tap here but double-tap there. That might sound like a slight but it’s not. I never really thought there was much wrong with Symbian so having used an N97 for all those months, I felt right at home
  • Turns out that Nokia does remember how to make a device without a huge bulge for the camera module.

Anything else you want to know about the C7? Feel free to ask in the comments section below.

- Photos leaked by zol.com.cn

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has written 13 articles for The Mobile Fanatics.

Your favorite blogger's favorite blogger coming at you live from Toronto, Canada. One of the original BMEs and a cell phone fanatic. Find Kyron on Twitter @EverythingBlaxx. Email him at kyron.john@themobilefanatics.com.

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  • http://thenokiablog.com Mark Guim

    great post. thanks for sharing! at first glance, it really looks like an eseries device.

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  • http://www.themobilefanatics.com Mike Macias

    wow. i am really impressed with the Nokia C7 so far. hopefully this thing is priced right, not having a carl zeiss lens and nseries name behind it. i would love to hear more about the speed of the UI and Symbian 3. Were there gentle transition effects like we see on the N8 videos? In other words, does it feel fast enough to not be bitched about by Android & iPhone users?

  • http://www.i-symbian.com Asri al-Baker

    More infos about the C7-00

    - ETA Oct 2010.
    - Symbian^3
    - 3.5” AMOLED capacitive screen,
    - 9.9mm thin,
    - 8MP camera with LED flash (no Carl Zeiss, no Xenon),
    - Internal 8GB memory,
    - USB OTG,
    - TV-out.
    - No HDMI
    - Max RRP 350 Euro

    Cheers!

    http://www.twitter.com/asrialbaker

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  • Anonymous

    Definitely a respectable device IMO

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  • http://twitter.com/ming387 Ming Zhang

    Next time you get your hands on the device, take a picture and then zoom in to the pic to see if the details are captured well. It’ll give you a better idea of the camera’s quality.Is this thinner than the iphone 4? There needs to be some bragging rights for a device to sell, making this the thinnest touch device could be a good marketing tag… lolAnd how was the web browsing experience?

  • http://twitter.com/creip Chris

    Hearing that stuff about the thickness (or thinness) of the device really got me interested. In all the pictures I’ve seen, the C7 looked like the E66 closed, only with a touch screen.

    Are you still going to do a follow-up to this first preview?

  • Pingback: Nokia C7 hands on Videos | mobilelivingroom.de | C7

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  • Anonymous

    It’s definitely fast enough and the software build was actually stable which is shocking for a prototype Nokia device. Nothing crashed but there were some things that were not yet installed (Ovi Store client for instance). The transitions are a little too gentle, I would have liked a few more visual effects when launching the menu, opening/closing apps, rotating the screen. It’s mostly just fade out/fade in. I dunno, maybe the N900 has me spoiled

  • Anonymous

    It’s not thinner than the iPhone 4 but unfortunately I didn’t have one for a side by side comparison. I’d say it was about half as thick as my N900, maybe a lil more than half.

    The web browser was the same Symbian web browser that we’ve seen since the N97.

  • Anonymous

    I hope to do a follow up where I’m allowed to take pictures of the device and post samples from the camera.

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