The Nokia E-series is famed for its high level of professional features and for many professional phone users it is the first port of call when looking for a new phone. The popularity of these phones has led many other manufacturers to bring out professional handsets of their own. One such manufacturer is Sony Ericsson whose new Xperia Pro brings professional functionality to a series of Android handsets that have traditionally focused on entertainment. The Xperia Pro still offers the same great entertainment value as its Xperia cousins but the question is whether this and the Android OS in use give it a competing edge over Nokia's latest e-series handset, the Nokia E7.
Both handsets come with slide-out QWERTY keyboards but perhaps the one found on the E7 has a bit more style, pushing the screen up to an angle that provides a more comfortable typing experience. The E7 also comes with a slightly larger screen at 4", compared to the Xperia Pro's 3.7" display although the later comes with a sharper screen resolution and more vibrant LED-backlit LCD technology. The E7 features Nokia's ClearBack technology while the Xperia Pro is one of the first phones to come with Sony's BRAVIA technology that was previously reserved for their high quality TVs and both handsets come with multitouch support.
Both phones come with fairly evenly matched messaging options with threaded SMS, MMS, email and instant messaging all available. Both handsets also come with great social networking support as well with excellent integration for websites like Facebook, with Symbian^3 easily rivalling Android in this respect. Symbian can allow you to type about a message and simultaneously post it to all of your social network accounts (as a tweet, Facebook status update etc). The Xperia Pro has introduced a similar feature with Type & Send, through which you can type out a message and then choose which method to use to send it, without needing to open a specific app beforehand.
Android Gingerbread is arguably a more open OS than Symbian and has the potential to offer more professional flexibility. Regardless of this both systems come with excellent native support for professional features with the Symbian system coming with editors for MS Office documents and the Xperia's Android featuring Office Suite Pro.
Perhaps in terms of professional features the two handsets do not differ a great deal, although the different approach to the QWERTY keyboards will have supporters on both sides depending on preference. However, as modern smartphones, the E7 and Xperia Pro also come packing a great deal of entertainment features as well. Both come with excellent media players with good support for music and video, with the Xperia Pro having excellent native YouTube support thanks to its Google OS. Both phones also come with Adobe Flash support, although with the E7 this is only in the form of Flash Lite 4.
The E7 and Xperia Pro both come with HDMI ports, allowing you to stream videos through a TV. Both of the handsets also provide you with the opportunity of recording your own high quality 720p videos with their cameras, which again are fairly similar in specifications with 8 megapixels and software features like geo-tagging and face detection. While the Xperia Pro comes with a slightly higher frame rate for its video recording the E7 has the benefit of a dual LED flash, compared to the single flash on its Sony Ericsson rival.
The Xperia Pro comes with a more desirable wireless connection with DLNA supported on its Wi-Fi, although the E7 is capable of faster HSDPA connections for 3G. In virtually all areas of their design the Nokia E7 and Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro are fairly evenly matched and each handset has its own strengths and weaknesses compared to the other. The two main differences between the phones that are likely to influence a decision are the operating system and the sliding design for the keyboards.
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