Nokia have been kind to give me the X7 to trial for 2 weeks. I in-turn, was happy to let Suheil Tapia (my brother) use it for the 2 weeks it was with us. He is, after all, the TG the phone was made for. Below are his thoughts on the phone. They hold more weight than mine as he is someone who does not track the technology space and wouldn’t be influenced by blogger reviews about the phone.

Here goes:

Ok so to start off with this phone is really no threat to the iPhone or for that matter even the Samsung Galaxy S-II but I would say it’s not bad considering the price tag. So here is what I like and I don’t like.

WHAT I LIKE:

1) This phone comes with Nokia’s new OS and a good processor which is quite efficient. The phone hardly ever lags so forget about hanging (it just happened that once when I tried connecting it to the computer and I still don’t know why it hanged). You can easily run 4-5 different things on the phone at the same time. Maybe it becomes a little slow with a low battery but it’s hardly anything really.

2) The thing that I and others really like is the uniqueness of the design of this phone. It’s a hassle removing the SIM card and the Memory Card because of the drawer like mini storage place given to it but once you get used to it, its pretty easy. Yes it’s a little bulky design-wise and a little difficult to hold sometimes but the look and feel pretty much make up for it.

3) The touch screen is brilliant. The colours are fairly vibrant and the black background looks classy. Considering the phone is almost 10-15k cheaper than the iPhone, the touch really does its job fabulously well. In fact, when I compared the touch of this phone to the iTouch – which has the same touch screen performance as the iPhone – it actually gave it a good run for its money.

4) The audio playback of this phone is also pretty good. I only used the normal earphones that come with the phones and the sound was nice and clear (again even when compared to the iTouch). The video playback, all though may not be as good as some of the other touch screen phones, is fairly decent. But then again this phone only has a screen with 360×640 pixel resolution compared to higher resolutions in other phones. Also even the loudspeaker is fairly clear and audible.

5) The QWERTY keypad is pretty easy to use. Even though I didn’t like it initially because it wouldn’t bring up the word I would want first, I did grow into liking it eventually. Swype technology is really fun [ed: I installed it before giving the phone to him] but even the normal typing mode is not a hassle at all once u get used to it.

WHAT I DONT LIKE:

1) My first and biggest complaint is the battery life of this phone. It barely lasted me 6 hrs and considering that I’m not all that heavy a phone user I’m guessing for a phone addict the battery life would come down considerably. With an audio output so good this is a real disappointment as I would barely be done listening to 3 songs and I could see the battery indicator beginning to drop.

2) The camera also is a real downer. It comes with an 8 megapixel autofocus camera but the clarity really is not that great even with the flash. It tends to absorb a lot of the light outside and makes the picture look terribly hazy, same with the video mode. Even the photo editing option is really no good compared to older Nokia phones like the N86.

3) The browser is fairly quick and efficient but what I don’t like is that it is while browsing that the bulkiness of the phone really gets to you. If you are browsing through Facebook or googling something which takes a little time you begin to feel the bulkiness of the phone and all of a sudden you won’t be comfortable holding it and browsing simultaneously. The same is the case when searching for an app in the Nokia Ovi Store.

4) The second biggest complaint I have is the kind of applications available. Let’s just put it this way that if the applications in the iPhone and Android are a rich man’s breakfast, Nokia apps are a poor man’s meal. Even some of the in-built apps like the CNN video browser and NatGeo videos app are fairly primitive as they reach a dead end after a given time. The graphics for the games are also nothing great. The games which come with the phone (Galaxy on fire and Asphalt 5) look a tad bit pixelated most of the time.

5) The in-built memory is only 512MB but it does come with a 8GB memory card.

I had a fun time with this phone and its a shame we have to return it back. THANKS NOKIA!!