The Nokia N8 offers the best mobile camera of 2010, but its C-series follow-up, the Nokia C7, looks a lot like a cheaper edition of this photographic classic. But how do the two compare?
SoftwareNokia N8 — Symbian^3
Nokia C7 — Symbian^3
The Nokia N8 and Nokia C7 use exactly the same version of the Symbian^3 OS, which made its debut on the Nokia N8. There’s nothing to draw between them on this front, but what’s Symbian^3 all about? It was intended to bring the ageing Symbian OS into the present, to compete with this year’s big hitters — iPhone iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. It wasn’t entirely successful, but if you’re after a simpler smartphone system, Symbian^3′s a decent choice.
It gives you multiple home screens, each housing six slots that you can fill with widgets. Plenty of widgets are included as standard, making Symbian^3′s home screens more efficient, if less pretty, than those of Android. 22 million Euro has just been plunged into Symbian development, but as yet we don’t know what this will mean for software updates for these phones — the additional fund may be geared towards bringing Symbian to non-smartphone platforms, so the Nokia-centric focus of the OS may be diluted.
Verdict — draw
Power
Nokia N8 — ARM 11 680MHz, 3D h/w acceleration, 256MB RAM
Nokia C7 — ARM 11 680MHz, 3D h/w acceleration, 256MB RAM
Once again, the Nokia duo clashes and no winner emerges, because they’re exactly the same. Next to Windows Phone 7 and Android rivals, these phones sound a little underpowered — a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM has become the standard for top-end smartphones — but Nokia’s simpler operating system doesn’t need more than this to keep clipping along at a good pace. But is this good news or bad news?
We don’t know the price the Nokia C7 will sell at here in the UK, but if it significantly undercuts the Nokia N8, it could look far more respectable among its price peers than the Nokia N8 did on release.
Verdict — Draw
Storage
Nokia N8 — 16GB, 512MB ROM
Nokia C7 — 8GB, 1GB ROM
We may have criticised Nokia for falling behind its rivals in tech terms over the past three years, but one thing it has always been good at is packing-in plenty of memory. These two Symbian shockers are no different. The Nokia N8 has a huge 16GB of memory, big by any standard (although still beaten by the jaw-dropping 32GB that was included in the Nokia N97), and theNokia C7 has 8GB — more than respectable for a mid-range phone.
Each can bolster its memory banks with a microSD card, using cards up to 32GB. Both phones are winners here, but the numbers mean there can only be one top dog.
Verdict — Nokia N8 wins
Camera
Nokia N8 — 12-megapixel with Xenon flash, 720p video recording
Nokia C7 — 8-megapixel with dual-LED flash, fixed focus
The Nokia N8 is the camera phone star of 2010, without a doubt. With a “proper” Xenon flash and the largest sensor ever seen on a mobile, no phone can compete with its photographic versatility. The Nokia C7 seems like a simple step down, with four megapixels less and a less advanced dual-LED flash — until you look at its autofocus system.
The Nokia C7 uses a fixed focus lens, which normally sets off all sorts of alarm bells, but it features a new type of focus system we’ve not seen before. Using EDoF (Extended depth of field) tech, the Nokia C7 claims to be able to keep both your shots’ foreground and background in focus, unlike an autofocus system that relies on focusing on a single focal range. Will it work? Will it be terrible? The Nokia C7′s camera seems very high specc’d to fall flat on its face, especially when Nokia’s cameras have traditionally been very strong. We’ll be back with more once we get to have some more quality time with the Nokia C7, but for today there’s only one winner.
Verdict — Nokia N8
Body
Nokia N8 — aluminium bod, 113.5 x 59.1 x 12.9 mm
Nokia C7 — aluminium bod, 117.3 x 56.8 x 10.5 mm
Metal bods on phones help to give that extra touch of class, and the Nokia N8 uses an aluminium exoskeleton, for a metal finish without adding too much weight. The Nokia C7 is less wide and significantly slimmer though, lopping-off that odd camera housing the Nokia N8 uses. It doesn’t have the full metal casing of the Nokia N8, but Nokia’s usual high-quality build is in evidence in the C7.
The Nokia C7′s design is more conventional, and it doesn’t come in the array of colours that you can buy the N8 in. With more of an emphasis on style than bigging-up the phone’s camera, the Nokia C7 picks up a rare victory.
Verdict — Nokia C7 wins, with a slimmer, sleeker frame
Screen
Nokia N8 — 3.5-inch AMOLED, 360×640 pixels
Nokia C7 — 3.5-inch AMOLED, 360×640 pixels
In an impressive win for the Nokia C7, the phone uses the same grade of screen as the more expensive Nokia N8. AMOLED screens aren’t as common as they were a few months ago, once appearing in all of HTC’s high-end handsets, but Nokia is clinging on to the tech.
AMOLED displays offer better contrast than their LCD rivals, because they don’t use a backlight. Instead, the pixels each have their own light source, so dark areas can reach superb, deep levels of black.
