14 DAY TRIAL // Announced officially in September last year, along with a series of other mobile phones running under Symbian^3, the Nokia E7 is still nowhere to be found on shelves, although the Finnish handset vendor promised it for a late 2010 release.
The fact that this mobile phone got delayed became clear a while ago, as Nokia failed to deliver a specific 2010 launch window for it.
Previous rumors suggested that Nokia might be set to deliver the device to end-users sometime in early 2011, in January, to be more precise, but it seems that things got delayed a little more than expected.
However, a recent post on esphoneblog notes that mid-February would bring the Nokia E7 to the market.
According to the news site, Nokia has pinned the E7 down for a February 16th launch, one month from now, and about two months later than initially promised.
Apparently, the launch date for the Symbian^3 smartphone was confirmed by Gigantti and Sonera, and things are already carved in stone.
Reportedly, Gigantti is usually listing devices on its website with the shipping date that the handset vendor provided, and they rarely list a wrong launch date.
Moreover, they also confirmed the price tag at which this device would become available for purchase, which was set at 579€, with a 23% VAT included. This price tag is lower than what was previously rumored for the Nokia E7, namely 649€.
Nokia E7 is the bigger brother of Nokia N8, which was already brought to shelves, and is the fourth Symbian^3 smartphone that Nokia announced officially last year, in addition to Nokia C6-01, C7, and, of course, the N8.
Boasting both a touchscreen display and a sliding QWERTY keyboard, the Nokia E7 is a device that should appeal a lot to business users, courtesy of both its hardware and software capabilities.
What remains to be seen is which markets would receive the Nokia E7 starting with the next month, and which carriers would be picking it up.