Nokia has announced yesterday that the corporate and enterprise targeted business smartphone, the E7 has begun shipping to customers around the globe.

 

This phone, which is almost the same thickness (13.6 mm) as a Nokia N8 (12.9 mm), sports a full four-row QWERTY keyboard underneath its large 4" AMOLED (640 x 360 pixels) capacitive touch-screen, which also boasts ClearBlack technology that assists in improving outdoor visibility.

 

 

As is the case with the Finnish manufacturer’s N97 and N97 mini, the display is of the sliding tilt variety and it’s also the largest touch-screen in the company’s Symbian^3-running range (that also consists of the Nokia N8, C7 and C6-01).   

 

The E7 features an 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, which can capture HD-Ready (720p) videos and the phone also (like the N8) has an HDMI adapter, enabling users to display their high-res photos and HD videos on their HDTV or PC monitor. There’s 16GB of on-board storage and users will  be able to employ this smartphone’s USB-On-The-Go feature to attach USB memory sticks. The latter uses the same technology to connect to accessories including DVB-TV adapters.

 

Nokia’s E7 will come preloaded with Microsoft Communicator Mobile, for secure corporate instant messaging (IM) and the device has support for other POP/IMAP email services such as Hotmail and Gmail.

 

According to Nokia the E7’s battery is rated for more than five hours talk-time over GSM networks and 430 hours standby. The E7 also offers 3G data rates of up to 10.2 Mbps over HSDPA, 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity and free drive and walk navigation across 80 countries with Ovi Maps.

 

The official word from Nokia SA is that it will be available in SA around April. No pricing info is available as of yet. A video of the E7 follows after the break.