We do admire the loyalty that Nokia has shown the Symbian operating system. While many have criticised the OS, the Finnish phone manufacturer has stuck with it, which is probably why it has such a loyal following of users who never have to learn new menu systems.

Nokia has so far refused to take on Android and Windows Phone 7, as Samsung, LG and HTC have. Symbian has had a recent update - Symbian^3 - which first appeared on the Nokia N8, and now graces the Nokia C7, a touch-screen device with a social networking focus.

First impressions

The Nokia C7 is certainly a good-looking handset. Reminiscent of a stretched pebble, it looks and feels metallic, and so feels cool to the touch. Having said that, it also means that it is prone to getting covered in greasy fingerprints, so be prepared to keep wiping them off if you want it looking pristine.

While the 3.5-inch AMOLED screen looks good, we were also pleased with how responsive the capacitive screen turned out to be. It's a shame that its default setting is for three very cluttered home screens, though. Each has a total of six rows of news feeds, widgets and shortcuts. They can be altered or cut, but not individually - this meant we had to take out a whole row and then re-add widgets even if we only wanted to get rid of one. Not only that, but to delete or add you have to go through the menus as there is no facility for dragging and dropping as there is on Android devices.

Getting social

As we mentioned, at the core of the C7 is social networking. You can input your Twitter and Facebook details, and feeds from both networks will be joined into one stream. It is also possible to post updates to both networks, search for friends and upload photos. Mind you, we found that because the feed is so wee, if updates are more than a few words long, you won't be able to read the whole post without opening up the application totally anyway. When we did do this, text appeared pixelated - rather a surprise on a screen of this quality.

You'll also find Google and Bing pre-loaded on the C7, so you can choose which search engine to use. It's a shame that the text bars are so tiny, as we found it hard to see if we'd managed to actually spell out our search teams correctly. Another issue was that in landscape mode, web pages appeared with a big area of empty white space on the right side. It is possible to bring this into line by pinching and pulling, but it seems a bit of an odd omission when all is well in portrait mode. We also missed the copy and paste facility, which appears on most smartphones.

Voice search is also disappointing and doesn't compare well with that offered by Android Froyo. Google's efforts in this area have been fabulous, but on the C7 (where it's fired up by pressing a dedicated key on the right side of the device) it was robotic sounding and inconsistent - a real shame.

But there is some good news. Of the "free" mapping facilities on offer, OviMaps is one of the best and the C7 managed to offer us a speedy and accurate A-GPS fix, then the vibrant AMOLED screen did the rest. The eight-megapixel snapper is one of the best things on the C7.

Its zoom is probably smoother than most other phone cameras, and it provides a number of after effects to improve your snaps - there's also a facility for removing red-eye. We found the dual-LED flash really powerful - don't fire it off too near if you're taking pictures of people - it left us rather startled and seeing spots! The flash can also be used when recording video.

The Verdict

We were full of praise for Symbian^3 when we reviewed the Nokia N8, although we did mention some of its downsides. It seems that while Windows and Android are progressing in leaps and bounds, offering better features and usability, Symbian is plodding slowly forward. The C7 proves this - while the mapping facilities, camera and design are great, the phone is let down by limited customisation, cluttered home screens and a less-than-smooth user experience that means we'd rather choose Windows, Apple or Android than Symbian any day.