14 DAY TRIAL // Finnish giant Nokia has finally made the E7 smartphone available for UK customers. The device is available for purchase starting this week at the company's online shop for £499 off-contract or £469 on PAYG (Pay as You Go). Users who are looking for a better deal and don't mind being tied down to a long-term contract can choose to receive the Nokia E7 for free and sign a £35/month two-years agreement with T-Mobile or Vodafone.
In addition, the handset manufacturer will deliver the phone for free to every customer in the country.
Nokia usually charges £9.99 for express delivery and £3.99 for Standard delivery, but orders over £300 are eligible for free standard delivery. This discount will be applied during checkout.
The E7 is currently competing with the N8 for the company's flagship device title and comes with a slightly larger 4-inch ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors and 360 x 640 pixels resolution.
Its side-slide form factor is one of the traits that differentiate it from the N8, along with its full QWERTY keyboard.
Nokia E7's 8-megapixel photo snapper lacks autofocus; instead, it features something totally inefficient called 'fixed focus'. There's no Xenon flash either, and the dual-LED flash included is very small.
Acting as multi-purpose business tool, the smartphone offers users secure and real-time access to email, calendar, contacts, tasks and the corporate directory through Microsoft Exchange servers.
The QuickOffice package is also included and doesn't require users to upgrade it to be able to create new documents.
The HSDPA-enabled slider is powered by a 680 MHz ARM 11 processor (with 3D Graphics HW accelerator) and offers WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity capabilities, as well as active noise cancellation with dedicated mic.
Another strong point of the phone is the battery life, which is rated by the manufacturer for up to 432 hours (up to 480 hours for 3G) of standby time or up to 9 hours (up to 5 hours for 3G) of talk time.
