POLL: Nokia E7 or N8, which would you buy and why?

S

sdirkette

New member
I want to come back to nokia from being loyal back in the high end dumbphone days of 1998-2002...(nokia never really made any decent CDMA phones except the 6185 for sprint which i dual nam-med for alltel and sprint) im loving both of these phones but am having a hard time deciding. basically, if the E7 is no more than 600 bucks ill still be considering it, if its over 600 bucks, ill prob just take an N8.


for me, this is where I stand with each device. i am leaning equally to both devices just the same but id like some others input that alreday have the devices and can speak more first hand compared to just me reading all the reviews and threads all over the internet.

now, this is where i stand. I played with a live E73 in the tmobile store. the browser was not totally bad as it was able to pull up my bank account and utilize the functions i need it most for such as transferring funds, etc. The main problem i had with the browser is that the tower serving that store is a 2G tower, and a 3G tower was nearby therefore causing a lot of handoffs and switching between edge and 3G. my mytouch4g was reacting the same and so were other live devices in the store so its not the phone so to say.
when on edge, the browser stunk, just as my current device does. but on 3G it loaded just fine. the device having a 600mhz processor IIRRC, was respectable and everything that i was able to play with was just fine (i had my 2 year old next to me so i wasnt able to really focus hardcore on it)

so after playing with that much i felt fairly comfortable with the device considering i have never ever in my life touched a symbian based device. while not polished like android, it was a lot less frills which probably means more stability (in theory i hope im right)

So, here I sit torn...im using tmobile, and a android OS on a mytouch4g rooted and overclocked.

THE N8
WHAT I LIKE
the size, the camera, the micro SD slot, all the HD goodness.

WHAT I DONT LIKE
on screen keyboard reviews i keep reading about and no real portrait keyboard which i use a lot on my MT4G.
no google voice application

WHERE IM NEUTRAL (compared to my current phone)
i think my mt4g has a 3.7 inch screen and this has a 3.5, my blackberry storm IIRC was only 3.2 and that was fine so im cool with the screen size being in the middle.


THE E7
WHAT I LIKE
the size, the camera, all the HD goodness, physical keyboard that will eliminate the keyboard concerns on the N8. bigger screen size compared to N8.

WHAT I DONT LIKE
no real portrait keyboard that im aware of, which i use a lot on my MT4G and opening and closing my phone constantly to type may be discouraging.
no google voice application for the OS.
no micro SD (iirc from what i have read it does not have one?)

WHERE IM NEUTRAL
camera is not 12mp, but 8mp is fine....but the lenses are different and not sure about the quality of the picture itself in comparison.

in all honesty, i have a 16gb card in my phone now, and used to have an 8gb card for the past 2 years and never used more than 2gb until this phone with its 5mp camera i think im up to 3-4gb now, and most of my storage is music and android backup stuff where i didnt have the android stuffs on my blackberry either. i also constantly remove pictures usually every week to 2 weeks because the phone takes forever to load them up and ill keep a select few on the phone that id like to use for wallpaper for show to other people, etc. i dont really treat my phone as an external hard drive so 16gb internal storage with no SD slot may be just fine. i only keep music on the phone for when i travel on plane anyway which is not very often, maybe once a year, 2 times if im lucky.


so lets hear your thoughts? which one would you buy....i havent been this torn over a phone in years and the main reason why i have been thinking to go to nokia is that from my experience, throwing a nokia against the wall used to not even damage it. (going back to my sales demonstrations at ATT wireless, i used to take my personal use 3360 and chuck it against the wall, put it back together and power it up, it usually closed the sale immediately LOL) not to say im doing that with either of these devices, but my mt4g is pretty solid as well, but i think its solid because its a tightly built phone compared to a phone made out of metal. my main concern is that these phones are not in any local stores near me that im aware of, so its hard to get to play with them in person so i rely on videos and people online talking about these devices.
tell you all the truth, if the E90 communicator had 3G and a slightly faster processor id be on that like white on rice
 
I wouldn't buy the E7 over the N8 out of principle: the camera is complete and utter trash. On purpose.

And yes, I think many of us here would sleep better at night if we had an N900 and an E90 on 850/1900 3G.
 
I can't use Symbian anymore after using Android or go back to using an ARM11 processor after a Snapdragon or Hummingbird processor. But assuming I never met Android, I would pick the E7. Why? Something I can do better for business with the bigger screen. Easier to work with. Also I would be using the Gravity app and having the keyboard makes a great Twitterphone.

The N8's camera means nothing to me if the processor lacks the mojo to process images with high pixel densities quickly.
 
Fortunately this is not the case at all. Because this is handled by the BCM2727. Not that 8Mpix vs. 12Mpix (or the more likely 9 that you'd shoot on the N8 in 16:9 format) really would make a huge difference ether way.

As for the choice between the two, I guess it depends on how you value the E7's keyboard and bigger screen. I think Swype makes the E7's keyboard (and all slide-out keyboards for that matter) anachronisms. You have to use the E7 keyboard in landscape mode anyway so comparatively speaking it's not even a big deal that there's no portrait QWERTY on either phone yet. It's a big deal, just not when comparing the N8 to the E7.

Personally, I attribute greater value to camera and MicroSD than I do to screen size and physical keys.
 
swype can suck it, its a PITA and have used it on a winmo 6.5 phone and i removed it from my mt4g because it slowed down the keyboard.

question this....since the n8 and E7 both have non user replaceable batterys, how would one do a battery pull if the phone hangs up and becomes a brick? is there a reset button somewhere?

and... how fast can you type on the onscreen keyboard? is it laggy at all or is it really smooth and has a perfect response time when hitting all keys one after another.....does the word show up letter for letter as you type or do the letters show a second later after typing it?
 
Of course I know Swype. I use an Android and I've been using swipe keyboards longer than Swype itself. yes, there are alternatives.

Its fast but its no fun. Touchscreen typing if done by an expert, and I am proud of myself to be one, can be faster than button typing.

But its no fun. Crunching keys create an addictive repetitive muscle movement and tactile sensations on your fingertips. We know why Blackberry keyboarding is a real physical addiction. Texting even on Nokia T9 keyboards is just as addicting. The number of presses it takes don't seem to matter because of the pleasure it generates.

Simply said, a slider just looks cooler, and there is a psychological bang as well when you have transformations (figure out why cartoon series do a lot of transformations) behind the slider. Samsung and LG didn't make its fortune on the mobile business making all bar phones, they did it with sliders.

There is also something inherently boring about slab like phones. They all fundamentally look the same. Good to have a slider because it breaks out from the pack. Most slabs are starting to feel very cold for me. Except for maybe HTC, which has very complex geometries to make an exquisite shape around the screen. And the Nexus S, which has some very exquisite curves. and a sweeping black appearance to go with that Super AMOLED.
 
You need a torx driver so it is not that hard to remove or replace a battery. There are several videos showing how to remove the battery on the N8, should be the same on the E7.
 
Ummm....that I did see. but is this something that has to be done everytime the phone locks up?

Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk
 
you say hard reset, but doesnt a hard reset erase your phone? im consfused because you do say its the equivalent to a battery pull....which is a soft reset? just wanna clarify.
 
I have never done a battery pull either, I just learned how to do it just if. In fact I have only used the equivalent key press once after I installed some S60v5 beta apps that were from a 3rd party.
 
Nice.

Today I happened to find a store locally that sold the n8. I got to play with it and it was pretty decent. Snappy enough as is. No sim card in it so no real full test but typing was not too bad just have to get used to it from portrait to landscape for now. Unfortunately they wanted 700 bucks for it and only had it in black.

i also noticed that its kinda hard to hold tho since its all metal and has none of that fancy rubber coating like my mt4g has...and those phone condoms are not my first choice because i put my phone in my pocket all the time. any other alternatives?

oh, and does anyone here have good real personal pictures of all the different colors, not the promo pics that nokia makes? i am torn between the silver, blue, and orange. i have seen the black one in person already.

Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk
 
i would check the n8 thread. there's pictures of the phones there. probably want to look within the last 10 pages or something lol

or use google, that would be way faster
 
You're on T-Mobile. Get yourself an N900. You get yourself a physical keyboard (strength of the E7) and a quality camera (strength of the N8). They also run around $300 now, so it'll be cheaper than either one. I don't think it has much in the way of portrait typing, but it's not like that's strong with anything else.
 
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