Don’t take my words though, see the samples for yourself.

Processed in Windows Live Movie Maker for trimming and background music only:


Raw video file uploaded directly to YouTube:

Random shots:
Without auto-focus, closed up shots are out of focus as evident in the tempura photo.

©2011 SheepTech

Nokia E7 Sample Photos & HD Videos #maxis10

For the purpose of this post, I have requested fans of the Nokia E7 on Lowyat.NET to forward questions they have on the device. The following 3 questions are from aspire2oo6.

How’s the web experience on the 4 inch screen?
When you put a large but low resolution screen together, everything looks big. I find this an advantage though. Even on my laptop, I don’t have the highest resolution set, it will only make everything too small to read.

Colors are great, as of anywhere else on the device.

The default browser however is a little disappointing. Scrolling is not as smooth as I wished. Pinch to zoom is also not working as well as it should. When zooming out, instead of instantly rendering the page size on-the-fly, checkered box will be displayed. Only upon releasing my finger, the new page size is displayed. Not very elegant.

Certain web app like Tweetgo.net don’t work very well on the Symbian browser.

The browser is flash enabled, and it’s capable of viewing flash videos and load some elements of flash sites. Though you won’t have full flash experience on it, it’s good enough considering how it can do things impossible on the iPhone.

How’s the sliding mechanism is it smooth?
The first time you handle the phone, you’d probably find it tricky to slide the keyboard. After a few try however, things get easier as you now know which part you need to push to slide it open.

I wouldn’t say smooth, it’s more like snappy. Push it slightly and the screen will automatically pops out in no time, revealing the keyboard. The hinge is made of aluminium too like the rest of the phone’s body (I guess), it feels very sturdy despite the slight backward force when the slider pops open.

There’s nothing I would complain about it, everything makes sense once you’re done struggling the first few times.

How’s the battery life like?
There’s 2 out of 7 bars of juice left after 130 hours of minimal usage. Minimal as in, a few short calls and texts a day, around just 15 minutes of app usage, setting alarm clock daily, 3G off, Wi-Fi scan on the whole time, and at 50% brightness.

©2011 SheepTech

FAQ on the Nokia E7 #maxis10

When I first held the Nokia E7 in my hands, it’s pretty slim and sleek but it doesn’t weigh the same. The heavy weight makes it feels bulky.

The large, long display screen makes it easy for browsing.

I like how the homescreen is practically made into multiple use. The 3 different homescreens put a lot of my daily use elements together and they are easily accessible.

The multiple homescreens and multiple submenus makes it confusing to navigate around the phone. Without deep familiarity with the phone, it is very difficult to navigate and browse around the menu.

Sliding the phone for the keyboard is a little tricky because the main screen of the phone seems bulky. Sliding it will reveal a sleek and complete QWERTY keyboard. The keys feels very solid and it does take some time to type in a lengthy SMS. I would prefer using the on-screen keyboard so my fingers wont hurt.

8MP camera for a phone seems quite promising, but the quality of photo taken by the camera is rather disappointing compared to taking a video.

The camera captures decent videos. The phone captures sounds very well too. Photos and videos in the phone can be edited right in the phone itself which makes editing easier as I can do editing on-the-go.

The flashlight can be made in use as a torchlight is a plus for a gadget where I bring it everywhere I go.

©2011 SheepTech

First 20 Minutes Impression on Nokia E7 #maxis10

USB On-The-Go. That is by far the the most impressive feature on the Nokia E7 in my opinion. With it, you can manage files in a USB flash drive or an external hard drive right from your smartphone.

From a business point of view, it can be useful for last minute document or presentation editing. From a casual user point of view, the amount of songs and videos you can have in your phone is limited by the number of USB sticks you have.

Reading files from a USB stick right from your phone is impressive. But using a USB mouse and keyboard, fully plug & play? Mind blown.

Potential: Connect a wireless keyboard and mouse to the phone using a USB hub, then project the display on your TV via HDMI and you will have a giant E7 that can be remotely controlled.

The MP3 demo-ed in the video is True Colors by Nicole, composed by her father and uploaded by her brother, a fellow Redditor – http://redd.it/g1izi

©2011 SheepTech

Demo: USB On-The-Go on Nokia E7 #maxis10

Since I don’t have a fixed 9-to-5 as a student pilot, I decided to film what a typical day looks like—starting with a morning roll call, breakfast (not very nice), and later a flight as per schedule.

The E7 is only capable of recording 720p videos, somehow after trimming and exporting from Windows Live Movie Maker, the video can be viewed at 1080p on YouTube.


*bump the video quality to HD for actual footage quality

The video is about 345 MB in size and it took a few hours upload using Maxis Broadband. Good thing the connection behaves well during this period, otherwise I would have to re-upload all over again.

As for the video quality, it seems to be even better than that of my point-and-shoot camera (which also takes 720p videos). What say you?

©2011 SheepTech

My 9-to-5 From The Lens of Nokia E7 #maxis10

Homescreens

Coming from iOS, I would welcome any homescreens that allows the slightest amount of customization. On Symbian^3, there are 3 homescreens which can be customized with 6 widgets each.

With the widgets, you can display live information on the homescreen such as your latest emails, social network feeds and your phone’s notifications. You can also use the widgets to create shortcut icons to your favorite apps or contacts, and also shortcuts to phone functions like Wi-Fi toggle and music player.

The downside is that the shape and size of the 6 rectangular widgets is fixed. Want to view more emails at a glance? No you can’t. Only 2 email subjects can fit into the small widget, live with it.

There are two ways to switch home screens, by either swiping across the screen or using the button with dots at the bottom of the screen. Either way, there will be a slight artificial lag between home screen switching.

Somehow the Symbian developers decides that a slight lag is the most elegant “theme effect”. You can turn it off at:
Settings > Themes > General > Options > Theme effects > Off

All the three home screens can be customized by different wallpapers.

Multitasking

Multitasking is definitely not a new feature on Symbian. It works flawlessly even on my first and second Symbian device, the Samsung i550w and Nokia N82. Symbian^3 takes multitasking a notch higher by introducing screenshot thumbnails of all opened apps.

In this test, I have 15 apps opened concurrently. There is no sign of slowness until I open the Traveler app (the 15th opened app) that came with the phone. From there on, the screen froze with a never ending “Please wait” loading bar.

I’m more inclined to believe that this is more of an app issue than Nokia E7′s multitasking capability.

You can easily close any opened apps by tapping on the “X” button. Hold the button down a second or two longer and you will be presented an option to kill all opened apps.

To those who doubted the performance of a 680 MHz processor and a 256 MB RAM, it’s really not the figure that counts. It’s the actual performance.

Overall, I am very impressed with the multitasking capability of the Nokia E7.

p.s: Did not have the chance to capture a screenshot when I have 15 apps opened, the one above was captured earlier.

©2011 SheepTech

Nokia E7 – Homescreens & Multitasking #maxis10

Big. Heavy. Rock solid. These are the very few words to describe the Nokia E7 when I first laid my hands on the Nokia E7. Of the entire housing, only the top and bottom part of the device (where the ports are) are made of plastic. It’s otherwise almost entirely wrapped by its anodised aluminium chassis, except for the scratch-resistant Gorilla glass screen.

The default wallpaper is very colorful, brilliantly showcasing its 4″ AMOLED screen with ClearBlack display. The QWERTY keyboard sliding mechanism is top notch, backed by an aluminium hinge and produces a satisfying snap when operated—so much that I snap it just out of spite at times.

I couldn’t compare the keyboard to that of other mobile devices since I don’t previously own any of them, but typing on the Nokia E7′s QWERTY keyboard is a pleasant experience to say at least. The keys are somewhat soft, and the pressure required to press the keys is just nice.

Being a backlit keyboard, there is no problem typing on it even in the dark.

I haven’t spend enough time with the camera at this point, so I couldn’t comment much on it. Rest assured though that I will dedicate an upcoming post just for photo and video samples captured using the 8MP camera on the Nokia E7.

I also like the fact that there is no need to purchase any additional casing and screen protector for the E7. It takes some serious effort to scratch its anodised aluminium chasis and the screen glass is just as strong.

Upcoming: Symbian^3 first impression.

©2011 SheepTech

Nokia E7 – Build & Hardware First Impression #maxis10

For this round, SheepTech is selected to review the Nokia E7, the most important model for Nokia in 2011 (sadly) according to Nokia VP Ukko Lappalainen.

I’ve previously used three mobile phones running on S60 3rd, namely Samsung i450, i550w and Nokia N82 (which I’m still using now). When S60 5th came along for touch screen devices, I’m far from impressed.

Let’s see what improvements Symbian had done in the latest Symbian^3 in the Nokia E7. Stay tuned for some extensive reviews for the coming two weeks.

©2011 SheepTech

SheepTech is Part of Maxis10 Reviewers Programme for Nokia E7

I have been a Nokia N82 user for the pass 9 months, and there is this thing that annoys the hell out of me. The S60 3rd Music Player could not differentiate ringtones and sms tones from full songs, thus indexing every single audio files and mixing them all together.

What does that means? Random ringtones will be played from time to time while you’re listening to your mp3s on the Music Player. The playlist can go like this:

1. P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face~ (full song)
2. Message.. message!.. message!!!, MESSAGE!, MESSAGE!!!!! (message tone)
3. I believe I can fly~ (full song)

If that is not annoying enough, try selecting a ringtone or sms tone. Again, all the audio files will be listed, and you have to browse (listen, no searching or filtering while selecting ringtones!) and look for the ringtone or sms tone you want manually, among the entire playlist plus all your other audio files.

This might not be a problem if you do not store songs in your phone, but to those who own a 16GB microSD and have half the card storage occupied by songs, you will know how painful it is, scrolling the monster list, just to look for a freaking 30-seconds sound clip.

Solution

Fortunately, there is a way to rectify this huge mistake by the S60 3rd developer.

Things you will need:

• A hacked S60 3rd phone. If your phone is not hacked, do so (at your own risk) by installing HelloOX (Google it). You will need to have the HelloOX signed before you can install it. If you do not have a certificate and key to sign it, request it here. After you have received your certificate and key, learn how to sign here.
• Y-Browser – to copy files and set file attributes

Procedures:

**make sure all your full songs are located in the Digital folder, and ringtones & sms tones in the Simple folder**

1. Download speedup_gallery_and_music_player.zip (mirror) (mirror2)

2. There are two files in it, MGXDatabasePlugin.rsc and 101ffcd2.txt. Using Y-Browser (or Modo):

• Copy MGXDatabasePlugin.rsc to C:\Resource\
• Copy 101ffcd2.txt to C:\private\10202be9\

After doing so, only audio files from E:\Sounds\Simple\ will be listed when you are selecting ringtones or sms tones. Besides, the Music Player will only index files from E:\Sounds\, while the Gallery will only index files from E:\Images\ and E:\Videos\ only.

3. Open Y-Browser, navigate to E:\Sounds\, then set the Simple folder’s attribute to hidden (File > Attributes > Hidden – Yes)

4. Go to the Music Player and refresh it.

Voilà! If you are doing it right, you will no longer see ringtones and sms tones appearing in your Music Player playlist, and full songs will no longer appear in the ringtone and sms tone selection list. The Gallery and Music Player will also load slightly faster than before.

It is definitely worth the hassle doing all these, your phone now make more sense!

©2011 SheepTech

S60 3rd: Remove Ringtones from Music Player, Remove Full Songs from Ringtone List

3.5″ touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, 32GB internal memory which can go up to 48GB with a 16GB microSD, 5 megapixels camera with Carl Zeiss lens, Wi-Fi, built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Symbian OS v9.4 — all powered by a Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery that will last up to 430 hours of standby, or 6 hours 40 minutes of talk time, or 1.5 days of audio playback.

Basically everything that a smart phone should have is included in the N97. Except for the design, which is not too bad in fact, the N97 seems to be winning in almost every aspect comparing to the iPhone, therefore being dubbed as the iPhone killer.

A review comparing the Nokia N97 and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 would be interesting, as both are very appealing (I personally like the N97, monster specs!) and appears to be in the same category. The N97 would be retailing at €550—not cheap, but definitely worth it.

Gizmodo has a set of hands-on photos that you might be interested. GSMArena had put on the specs for N97 too.

©2011 SheepTech

Nokia N97 – High End Touchscreen Smart Phone