The huge screen huge QWERTY keyboard form factor is one that Nokia has traditionally excelled at. Us old guys still remember the 9300 Communicator and the E90, but things started getting a little bit rough around the edges after that. Remember the N97? Many of us do and many of us lost our loyalty to Nokia’s brand after that mishap. The Maemo powered N900 was supposed to make things better … and it did, but only for a small amount of users. The N900 was a geek toy and no one, not even Nokia, can deny that. Enter the E7, the first Symbian^3 device with a QWERTY keyboard. Announced at Nokia World in September 2010, the E7 was supposed to ship by the end of last year. Sadly, that didn’t happen and Nokia issued a statement saying that they were delaying the device because they wanted to make sure the software experience was solid. I’m happy to report that Nokia has now started taking orders for the E7, but only if you live in either Sweden or Finland.
Due to ship in February, which we’re not very confident that it will, the E7 will cost you 600 Euros ($805) if you’re on Nokia’s home turf or 6000 Kronor ($905) if you’re in the meatball loving neighboring country. The spec sheet, for those who don’t quite remember: 4 inch OLED screen with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels, support for all 4 GSM bands and all 5 3G bands, meaning you’ll get high speed internet regardless if you subscribe to T-Mobile or AT&T, 8 megapixel camera, 16 GB of memory on board, Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI output, WiFi b/g/n, 3.5 mm headphone jack, GPS, video recording at 720p resolution, FM radio support, and just about everything else you’d expect a device at this price point to have.
Check out our hands on video of the E7 and look forward to our review if we manage to sneak one off the show floor at Mobile World Congress next month.
[Via: The Nokia Blog]