Nokia World 2010 live coverage: Nokia E7, C7, C6, N8, C3

Nokia C7

Next, we're moving on to the Nokia C7 - this stainless steel beauty is just 10.5 mm thin. It has an 8MP camera with dual-LED flash and 720p video, and the same excellent connectivity features as the E7, except the HDMI - it relies on the more traditional composite video-out instead.

Nokia C7 official photos

The Nokia C7 has a 3.5" AMOLED screen with nHD resolution and 8GB of built-in memory. But unlike the E7, the C7 memory is expandable through the microSD card slot. The Nokia C7 is expected to cost 335 euro (430 US dollars).

Nokia C7 hands-on

The Nokia C7 may not be able to outdo the E7 but it is destined to sit on top of the Nokia most popular (in terms of sales at least) series. Symbian^3 and the larger screen alone should be enough to make C7 undisputed leader there but the top of the Cseries is already well above the entry-level territory so it will face tough competition from outside.

Nokia C7 live shots

Weather or not the Nokia C7 will be up for the challenge is a bit hard to say at this point. Sure the device is nicely slim and feels great to handle. Metal is used a lot for its body and that gives it the solid feel that we appreciate so much.

Nokia C7 live shots

The performance is also there so it won't be annoying in normal day to day use and the connectivity options are more than adequate.

The Nokia C7 AMOLED compared to the Apple iPhone 4's IPS LCD

Yet Symbian has earned itself quite bad reputation as a touch-driven OS so we are not sure that the pricing is properly chosen. People will need more persuasion to buy a Symbian device now than they did a couple of years ago and we somehow don't see the C7 as a package as attractive as the other two devices announced today.

But then again it's way too early to judge now as we need to spend far more time with the device before we confirm or deny those speculations.

Here's a hands-on video of the Nokia C7:

Camera samples

We managed to get our hands on several samples from the Nokia C7 camera. Unfortunately the photos are taken with a 16:9 aspect ratio, which may fit the screen perfectly but doesn't make use of all the sensors so they come in 6MP resolution.

Those photos have plenty of fine detail indicating that the Nokia C7 packs fine optics. The noise is also rather low so the potential seem to be all there. However, understandably at this stage of the development of the handset, the image processing still needs some tuning. Still even at this stage most of the images look pretty well and while we can't say anything about the shooting conditions this is still encouraging.

Much like the E7 however, Nokia C7 lacks autofocus and relies on the so-called full-focus (or extended depth of field) instead. Yet this doesn't allow photographing objects that a less than a meter away from the camera so it's by far not the real thing.

Nokia C7 camera samples