Engadget and multiple other sources tell us that there are no plans to release the Nokia 808 PureView in North America. Obviously this doesn’t mean that it will be impossible to get hold of, it just means you’ll probably have to import it. This means that only those with money to buy this smartphone outright will have the chance to get their hands on the 808 PureView as no US carriers will be offering it at a cheaper price as part of a two or three year agreement. Back in August last year we told you that Nokia planned to scrap Symbian smartphone launches in North America, however we must say that we thought that Nokia may have made an exception for this particular device.

There are mixed opinions about the Nokia 808 PureView at present, yes the camera is ground-breaking and could put serious pressure on the compact digital camera market, but many are put off by the software which it runs on (Symbian Belle). We want to see PureView-like technology come to Nokia’s future Windows Phone 7 smartphones instead – we don’t need 41 megapixel quality, but anything greater than the Lumia 800′s 8 megapixel camera would be a huge step in the right direction.

If you head over to Cnet you can get up close and personal with the Nokia 808 PureView, however this will probably rub salt into the wounds of any North American reading this who was hoping to get this smartphone from their preferred carrier.

Will you import the Nokia 808 PureView? Or does the potential price tag worry you? Also what’s your view on it running Symbian Belle?

As this article’s title suggests the 701 features a 1GHz processor, an 8 megapixel camera and it will run Symbian Belle, other specs worth mentioning include a 3.5-inch IPS LCD screen which boasts both ClearBlack tech and Gorilla Glass, you also get 8GB of internal storage and a microSD memory card slot which supports cards of up to 32GB. In terms of connectviity you get Bluetooth 3.0, NFC, WiFi (b/g/n we presume) and A-GPS, the latter of these comes in handy with the pre-installed mapping and navigation application.

One of this smartphone’s best features is its efficiency, the 1300 mAh Li-Ion will apparently allow for 17 hours of GSM talk time and just shy of 9 hours over 3G, if you will be making the most of its multimedia capabilities it will play 720p video at 30 frames per second for 8 hours 55 minute, in terms of music playback if the 701 is set to offline mode you can play over 70 hours of audio – now that’s impressive.

You can see full technical specifications via this link, below we have embedded a couple of images which gives you a good-look at its design from a few different angles – to give you an idea of size it measures in at 117.2 x 56.8 x 11 mm and weighs 131 grams, oh and there will be three colors available: silver light, steel dark and amethyst violet. You can see more images here.

Nokia is keen to promote the NFC capabilities which its new smartphones boast, you can find out all about NFC’s capabilities here – we were particularly impressed by the fact that you can pair the Nokia 701 with a Bluetooth stereo headset by tapping them together, the same tap can link you to loudspeakers or perhaps allow you to share photos and videos with a friend.

Are you impressed by the Nokia 700?

Let’s start with its dimensions, this is Nokia’s smallest smartphone and measures in at a tiny 110 x 50.7 x 9.7 mm and weighs just 96 grams. Below we have embedded an image which shows the smartphone’s design and the five color options that will be available, we think it is a pretty good-looking device – do you?

The Nokia 700 should be pretty snappy as it packs in a 1GHz processor, it also boasts NFC, WiFi, A-GPS and Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity, a microSD memory card slot with a 2GB card as standard, however the slot can take cards of up to 32GB. Other specs worth mentioning include a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, a 3.2-inch AMOLED “ClearBlack” display shielded by Gorilla Glass and 3G connectivity – you can see a full breakdown of technical specifications here.

As with all of the latest Symbian smartphones you get plenty of pre-installed software as standard, such as maps and navigation, fully functional NFC, up to 6 customizable homescreens and lots of dynamic live widgets – here you can find out even more about its features.

Nokia made the 700 out of high-quality sustainable materials to make it eco-friendly, also we are told that the OLED display is energy-efficient helps deliver long battery life from a single charge, when it runs out of charge you can use the Nokia Fast Charger AC-15 which comes with the 700 as standard.

We think that the Nokia 700 may have found a niche in the market as some people love small cell phones, you will certainly find it hard to find another small smartphone which can match the 700′s capabilities – so we think the Nokia 700 has huge potential, especially with its NFC functionality.

Will you buy the Nokia 700?

Before we delve into what the new the new features and improvements this OS version will bring let us just run through a list of smartphones which should get the update – apparently the Nokia N8, E6, E7, X7, C7, C6-01 and Oro will all get the update, however no specific dates have been given. Future devices such as the Nokia 700, 701 and 600 are set for a Q3 2011 release and should run Belle out of the box.

In our Nokia X7 review we were slightly annoyed by the lackluster home screen customization options, well Belle will give you up to 6 home screens which can be customized with dynamic and live widgets. Previously we were frustrated by the fact that widgets were all set to a specific size, however Belle will allow widgets to take up more space on your homescreen as they can be five different sizes, which is great for certain things like music and photo widgets. The image below gives you a rough idea of how your UI may look once you have the update.

Something else which is Android-esque is the new pull down menu which shows notifications, here you will also be able to quickly turn Bluetooth, WiFi and Mobile data on or off, you can also set your device to silent – we think this is great news. You can see this new pull-down menu below.

The most exciting thing which Belle bring is NFC sharing and pairing, once installed you will be able to share content such as contacts, videos and images over NFC by tapping them together. In the future games will feature NFC capabilities to unlock certain bonuses, the possibilities of NFC are seemingly never-ending

We like the sound of the changes which Belle brings and despite not being mentioned we think that general performance will be better thanks to bug fixes and optimization, will this make it an Android beater? Probably not, but at least things are getting better – we can’t wait to try out NFC!

The last Symbian device which we spent a lot of time with was the Nokia N96 and it was clear that Nokia needed a rethink, so we were excited to see how a 2011 Nokia smartphone compared to some of today’s more popular Android devices etc. Also as Nokia recently announced that they were scrapping Symbian devices in North America we were keen to see why this decision had been made.

Unboxing and Design

You can usually tell a lot about a product by its packaging and the feel of the device when you pick it up, in terms of retail packaging the X7 could not be faulted and inside the box you get the Nokia X7, a hands free kit, mains charger, USB cable, an 8GB microSD memory card and the paper work you tend to get with any smartphone (safety guide and a brief user guide). All of the cables etc were high quality and the controls on the hands free kit gave the X7 a premium feel, rather than cheap and cheerful “plasticky” accessories.

When you first pick up the Nokia X7 it has a very solid and weighty feel, it feels balanced in your hand and the single button on the front of the smartphone makes it quite iPhone-esque. On the right hand side there are volume rockers and a dedicated camera button and on the top there is a power button, microUSB port and 3.5mm headphone jack finally on the left hand side there are two trays which you must use to slot in your memory card and SIM card.

The two trays mentioned in the previous paragraph can be seen below, as you can see this is a pretty unique way of doing things and despite being pretty fiddly we quite liked it. This does mean that the back cover is not removable (not easily anyway), so let’s hope you won’t have to remove the battery. We liked the flush finish these trays left when slotted in.

The back of the X7 is pretty nice and premium-looking, you can clearly see an 8 megapixel sensor (no sign of Carl Zeiss optics) and a dual-LED flash. The physical design is dominated by a curved metal cover which wraps around the back of the device, despite the curved back edge it sits nicely on a flat surface and doesn’t wobble. As for the front of the X7 it is dominated by a massive 4-inch display and speakers at each corner, we like the design and the black bezel compliments the silver metal finish nicely. One design imperfection in our opinion is the fact that the volume rockers and camera button are situated on the tapered edge of the X7, this means that sometimes your finger slips rather press the button you wanted, this is especially annoying if you need to quickly take a photo.

Software first impressions

When you first turn on the Nokia X7 you have to carry out the standard “set up your phone” procedure and then you are welcomed by a UI which boasts three home screens, you can swipe left to right or right to left to see all three home screens, or press a button to scroll through each home screen. No matter what home screen you are viewing there is a “Call” button and an “Options” button, the physical button situated below the display opens up the phone’s menu. The display itself is bright, but suffers in outdoor conditions (like most touchscreen smartphones), compared to the Sensation the resolution was a little lacking, but that said there was not a moment where fonts on websites weren’t easily viewable. If you hold the X7 horizontally the UI automatically adjusts accordingly. One thing which annoyed us as soon as we begun using the Nokia X7 is the touch screen vibrating setting which is turned on by default, it is just awful and to us sounds like the noise a blown speaker makes, it is easy to change this setting, but it annoys us that Nokia think this is something everyone wants on.

As standard Nokia covers your home screen with all sorts of shortcuts and widgets, we didn’t like the hectic look and because a lot of the widgets were live we found that at times the smartphone slowed down when updating these – if you press options you can switch widgets to offline mode, this saves battery life, but somewhat makes some of the widgets redundant. We decided to clear all of the home screen and completely configure them from scratch to suit our needs. To do this touch and hold any shortcut / widget and select remove to clear it, then once they are all gone touch and hold the home screen and you have 6 areas on the home screen which you can customize, unlike Android these areas have a set size and do not spread across more than one area – this means that widgets have a very small area to work with (approx 43mm x 10mm), we see this as a major limitation.

It took us a while to configure the Nokia X7′s UI and once we had we tried out some of the many applications and widgets, Three UK’s 3G network ensured that services such as BBC iPlayer ran smoothly, however as you would expect loading times and buffering improved when connected via WiFi, we also tried out an app called Movie Teasers which allows you watch trailers and find out about films in an intuitive manner, videos were clear and so was the sound and streaming the videos worked well over 3G.

Music playback was great, the sound quality was crisp and the music app was responsive, however despite the X7 looking like it has four speakers spread out around the display sound only comes from the two situated near the bottom of the display, if you use the headphones which Nokia supply with the X7 you can easily skip tracks and play / pause media via the controls, but there are no volume controls on the headphones. What bemuses us is the fact that the X7 comes with just 350MB internal storage, obviously you get an 8GB microSD card, but we would have thought Nokia would have given the X7 at least 1GB of internal storage.

Camera

As previously mentioned the Nokia X7 features a physical button to help you take photos quickly, easily and comfortably – however as previously mentioned the tapered edge on the side of the X7 can make this a little difficult, that said in terms of layout and functionality the camera app is great. When taking photos it is easy to zoom in and out, adjust the flash and switch to camcorder mode, also if you press options you can further configure your settings. We loved how easy it was to choose different scenes, colour tones, sharpness and white balance etc (see image below), and also loved the fact that you could customize photos once taken, it’s really easy to crop images, remove red eye, add clip art to images and much more, if you capture video you can add images to the video and text or perhaps chop down videos to make them shorter – all of this functionality was available with no third-party apps installed and you can share media you capture to social networking services quickly and easily, but the software would not allow me to tag friends in photos for some reason.

Stills were all pretty good, however close-ups weren’t that crisp and the flash was sometimes over powering. For general day-to-day photos of landscapes, pets and people etc the results rarely disappointed and the colors captured look spot on. The video capture was not the greatest we have seen from an 8 megapixel camera, video playback was smooth, however the X7 picked up a lot of noise from fairly calm winds and there were often grainy areas of color, don’t get me wrong videos were great at times, but we have seen better results from the 8 megapixel sensor which the HTC Sensation possesses, so we have to compare the two side-by-side.

Symbian

Well as you probably know Nokia has pledged to concentrate on Windows Phone 7 in the future, and we have to agree with their decision, why? Well if you used the Nokia X7 for an hour and compare it to a similar Android-based device you would probably end up saying that the Nokia X7 would be amazing if it ran Android, that said the processor is a little on the slow side. When using Symbian we found that all thinks Ovi took time, the structure of the Ovi Store is impressive and purchasing, download and installing apps is commendable, but at times it seems as if the OS and applications need some time to catch up with your actions, which means that you don’t get the fluid experience which we expect from competing devices – also as social networking is so popular these days we were frustrated to see that there were no official Facebook or Twitter applications, instead it all came under something called Ovi Social, this creates one stream for both Facebook and Twitter and it’s not all that bad, but it takes time to open up and scrolling through the news feed is by no means smooth. We have to say that the virtual keyboard which Symbian allows you to use is pretty good, but the layout takes a little of getting used to and we preferred using it in landscape, also unlike Android there doesn’t seem to be much support for voice recognition (excluding the Vingo app) – but in my experience such functionality is usually flaky at best.

The default web browser is pretty fast and easy to use, but tabbed browsing seemed clunky and there was no easy way to share things such as links socially, we installed Opera and it ran perfectly offering a much more intuitive user experience than the default browser, but if you just want to check out a few web sites here and there Nokia’s solution is adequate – it supports pinch to zoom, but this is not always as smooth as you would hope.

Our biggest gripe with Symbian is the fact that quite often apps just wouldn’t launch or things would slow down to a halt, the multitasking functionality is there and you can easily see what apps are running, but at times you go to open something up and it just won’t load, you check open applications and there is no sign of your app. General menu navigation isn’t affected by this, and quite often apps open up just fine, but sometimes things just don’t work – why? Your guess is as good as ours. Intensive apps such as Angry Birds run ok, but you can pretty much guarantee that you will experience slow down at times, also the lack of a menu button means that if things freeze you quite often have to come out of an app by pressing the handset’s only front-facing button – which gets very annoying.

General Use

The Nokia X7 does not disappoint when it comes to calling, texting and emailing – calls sounded loud and clear and people on the other end never complained about my mic, in terms of texting and emailing the software was pretty solid, but we didn’t like the way that you could view SMS messages both independently or in a conversation view, surely these days the conversation view is just fine? We experienced some difficulties sending picture messages and were often told that sending the message had failed, but no reason was given which was frustrating to say the least. We do think that the Android and iOS ways of doing things are a lot less cluttered, perhaps Symbian devs should sometimes think less is more as half the time people only want to carry out basic functionality. In terms of battery life it depends heavily on how you use it, we would confidently charge it every other night as general usage does not take its toll, but if you start running demanding apps this will soon change, especially the navigation application.

Pre-installed Software

As previously mentioned the Nokia X7 gives you a lot out of the box, we were particularly impressed by the aforementioned photo and video editing apps also the maps app is just great. We used it as a sat nav in the car and can safely say that it will get you to your destination just fine, sometimes local road knowledge is missing so you won’t take the shortest route, also the narration isn’t as clear as a TomTom, but let’s face it this has been chucked in for free and it is actually pretty good. The Calendar application is a bit strange, for some reason it would not stay in a monthly view for us, which was annoying, but in terms of adding events and appointments you can’t fault it, that said there is no social network integration, which means birthdays and events from Facebook don’t sync, we were very disappointed by this. It was not just the Calendar that didn’t sync, when testing out the Nokia X7 there seemed to be no way to sync your contacts from your social networking websites, which means manual entry of everyone’s details, along with manually linking contacts with photos, social networking profiles etc – this is pretty basic functionality for smartphones these days and the Nokia X7 fails miserably.

Summary

This has been one of the hardest reviews I have ever had to write, the trouble is the Symbian operating system, it just lacks the intuitivity of modern mobile operating systems and sometimes has you wondering whether you lost signal, didn’t touch an icon correctly etc when really the OS is what was at fault – if the Nokia X7 ran Android or WP7 we are sure that this review would have been much more positive, Symbian just delivers a slow and predictable user experience which won’t cut it in today’s high-end market, at times you are delighted by the X7 especially when you see what some of the pre-installed apps can do, but at times your are left thinking “why is this so difficult” and that’s pretty much the bottom line. The Nokia X7 summarizes why Nokia has axed Symbian in North America, you can’t fault Nokia’s design team as it look great, feels solid and sets a strong foundation for the OS to thrive, but it is clear that the OS cannot run well on the hardware provided, is it because the processor speed is relatively slow? Not entirely, as this has nothing to do with menu structure, navigation, poor social networking functionality and extremely limited home screen customization – we just think it has been proved that the future of Symbian in the mid to high-end market is not very promising – and we really didn’t want to have to say that.

You can check out and perhaps buy the Nokia X7 over at Three.co.uk, we have heard that Symbian Belle is coming to the X7 and it sounds like it will improve things massively.

According to a recent article posted on AllThingsD, Nokia has confirmed that plans have been put in place to stop selling Symbian-based smartphones and feature phones in the United States and Candada, instead Nokia is planning a marketing push and putting their money where the mouth is with Windows Phone 7. We can also confirm that the Meego-based Nokia N9 will not get a U.S release either.

Below we have added a quote from Nokia’s President, Chris Weber, he said:

“When we launch Windows Phones we will essentially be out of the Symbian business, the S40 business, etc” and also went on to say that “It will be Windows Phone and the accessories around that. The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn’t matter what we do (elsewhere).”

As you can say this is a massive statement which seems to suggest that if Nokia fail with Windows Phone 7 they will not be able to succeed in today’s feature phone and smartphone market, we could be misinterpreting what has been said by Mr Weber, however what else could this mean.

Weber goes on to say that North America is Nokia’s priority as this is a key market for Microsoft, it also seems as if Nokia feel that success in North America will play a big part in global success. This makes sense but it does mean that Nokia is relying on Microsoft’s mobile operating system very heavily, we wonder why Nokia decided against dabbling in the Android smartphone market as so many other manufacturers have seen success here. In terms of call quality, general phone usage and camera clarity Nokia has a lot to bring to the table, do you think gambling on the success of Windows Phone 7 will pay off?

So far we only know of one Nokia device to run Windows Phone 7 which is on the way, this is codenamed Sea Ray and you can find out a lot more about this device here, what do you think of Nokia’s future plans?

So what makes it so good? Well Dusan says that there are 5 main aspects of the E7 which makes it a success, these are its keyboard, form-factor, build quality, multitasking and screen. You can find out full details as to why IntoMobile are so fond about these features by checking out their fully detailed article, in our post we will summarize what was said.

According to the article the E7′s slide-out QWERTY keyboard rocks, previously handsets like the N97 and N97 mini have featured flat keys, however this is not the case with the E7 and it is said to result a very desirable typing experience. It is not just IntoMobile who say this, MyNokiaBlog posted this video on YouTube and said the keyboard was “utterly awesome”.

As previously mentioned Nokia E7′s form-factor is equally as impressive as its keyboard, again Nokia’s previous handsets which featured physical QWERTY keyboards disappointed in terms of bulkyness and form-factor. If you compare the N97 to the E7 it is lighter and in some ways smaller than the new smartphone, however the E7 is 2.3mm thinner than the N97 which perhaps plays a part in IntoMobile regarding the E7′s form-factor being impressive. The E7 is also wider than the N97 (by 7.1mm), perhaps this extra width is actually a good thing.

IntoMobile did not have anything bad to say about the E7 in terms of build quality and to be honest with you this is no huge surprise, the keyboard’s sliding mechanism is heavily complimented and according to Dusan other side-sliders feel cheap in comparison.

Another area where the E7 shines is its screen, when you check out the specs you see that it boasts a 4-inch AMOLED display which features a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 640 x 360 you expect it to be good, however IntoMobile describe it as awesome. They are particularly impressed by the ClearBlack technology which makes reading the screen pretty easy even in direct sunlight.

The final mention actually complements the smartphone’s OS, apparently Symbian^3 allows for great multitasking, this is described as “real multi-tasking” which works in a similar way to how it does on a PC, simply hold the home key to see which apps are running and from here you can easily switch between apps etc.

Soon IntoMobile should be publishing a brief article which talks about the E7′s imperfections, when they do we will be sure to let you know. Have you used the Nokia E7? If so, is it as good as IntoMobile are making it out to be?

The review was carried out by SlashGear’s Chris Davies and can be seen in its entirety here, today we will sum up some of the main points raised by Chris and ultimately tell you whether the smartphone is worth buying or not.

When you look at the E6’s physical design it is very well built and made from robust-feeling materials which help give it a reassuringly weighty feel, Gorilla Glass protects the 2.46-inch (640 x 480) display, in terms of dimensions it measures in at 115.5 x 59 x 10.5mm and it weighs in at 133 grams. SlashGear say that it feels nice in the hand and has been designed to be usable one-handed.

As we mentioned in the last paragraph the small display features a relatively high resolution, this gives it a 326 pixels per inch density, this matches the iPhone 4’s retina display, however Apple’s smartphone has a much larger display. SlashGear point out that its high pixel density allows you to fit a lot more on such a small display, if your eyes are good enough to see small font sizes the display shows small text smoothly.

The 8 megaixel EDoF camera produces great stills which can be taken quickly, however close-ups failed to impress. As for video capture the image quality is solid, however it doesn’t cope to well if you pan around, also the microphone picks up too much noise.

In the wrap up SlashGear say that whilst the Nokia E6 is a step in the right direction for Nokia it still lags behind the competition, Symbian Anna just doesn’t deliver the rich user experience which people get from alternative mobile operating systems, however the Belle update should improve this aspect of the E6. SlashGear said that when compared to previous Nokia QWERTY candybars the touch screen display was a nice addition and helped massively when it came to web browsing, as for battery life there was nothing bad to say and when it comes to the camera it is great for a business-focused smartphone.

For a lot of consumers out there the Nokia E6 will do just fine, however in this day and age people want a better smartphone than their friends have got, if this is the case we advise choosing something which runs Android, WP7 or iOS. Check out the full review over at SlashGear for more detailed information, will you buy the E6?

Let’s start by saying that the Nokia N5 is going to be a mid-low-end device, so we weren’t getting our hopes up, but as soon as we took a look at the build quality, materials used and software environment we had seen enough, let us explain why. For the last few years we have seen lots of Symbian-based Nokia handsets come and go, we think that performance and intuitivity are two things that this software platform struggles with, yes the Anna update (which the Nokia N5 will come with) is a step in the right direction, but it is not going to deliver the rich experience that Android gives affordable devices.

In terms of specs there is nothing to get too excited about either, you get a 3.2-inch touchscreen display, a 5 megapixel camera (with LED flash) and dedicated buttons for volume and the camera shutter, sadly we do not have a full tech spec listing just yet, therefore we will have to keep you posted as we and when we come across one.

Having no hands-on time with the N5 doesn’t really put us in a position to comment on build quality or the materials used, however if you check out the two images (sourced from GSMArena) which we have embedded below you may see our point, to us the N5 look like it is made from cheap plastic and the buttons below the display looks very boring, do you agree?

What we don’t understand is why Nokia is releasing another Symbian handset, previously we heard how Nokia would be concentrating on MeeGo and WP7-based smartphones, therefore we think it would have been nice for Nokia to show us how well MeeGo runs on a handset with mediocre specifications and features, therefore to us the N5 has to have a very low price tag if it is going to succeed.

Our opinions on the N5 could be incorrect but to us it looks like Nokia has taken two steps forward with the N9 and Sea Ray, only to take one step back with the N5, we have also been tipped off that Nokia will also release the N6 and N7 in the future, which will be similar to the N5, we just don’t understand why they are sticking with Symbian, when they have been raving on about MeeGo and WP7 so much recently.

Would you prefer Nokia’s mid-low-end smartphones to run MeeGo?

However, we now have a bit of an update for you on the handset’s price and release as according to Carly Page over at somobile.co.uk, Nokia has just kicked off pre-orders for the Nokia X7 in the UK and the handset’s arrival is expected to be at the end of this month.

The Symbian run Nokia X7 smartphone can be picked up for free from £25.00 a month on subsidized tariffs from both Vodafone and T-Mobile. Besides getting a free Nokia X7 handset, the deal will also give you 500 texts, 600 minutes and 500MB of data for surfing the web.

If you don’t want to commit to a contract, then you do have the option of purchasing the smartphone on pay-as-you-go for £359.99 or SIM-free for £399.99. The Nokia X7 runs on the Symbian Anna OS, and includes a redesigned UI and a revamped web browser.

Other features include a 4-inch AMOLED display, an 8-megapixel rear camera with HD video capture, a front-facing camera for video calls, expandable memory up to 32GB, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and an onscreen portrait QWERTY keyboard.

Are you considering buying the Nokia X7 smartphone?