Yes, yes, it's a Friday feature, which can only mean that I'm allowed a certain leeway in terms of content. In this case, and I'm sure the designers of the Nokia E7 will be utterly horrified, I present a DIY way of improving the Nokia E7 using nothing more than a glue stick and a couple of scraps of grip matting, in true 'Blue Peter' style....

You will, of course, have been following our extensive review series on the Nokia E7. Here's the full breakdown:

Nokia E7, part 1 - Overview and Detailed first impressions
Nokia E7, part 2 - Camera and Camcorder functions
Nokia E7, part 3 - Multimedia and Gaming
Nokia E7, part 4 - Communications and PIM
Nokia E7, part 5 - Internet, Security and Productivity
Nokia E7, part 6 (Navigation, Utilities, Homescreens, Wrap-up)

In short (very short, the original review ran to 19,000 words!), the E7 is a fabulously built QWERTY smartphone, criticisms of which arise from a number of deliberate compromises, all aimed at keeping the thickness of the device down.

Criticisms that we're not going to address here include the lack of a microSD slot and FM transmitter, plus the inclusion of a smaller, EDoF camera (rather an auto-focus one). 

Criticisms that we are going to address below, in somewhat DIY, low-tech fashion and with a little impish naughtiness, are:

• The flush back face and non-recessed camera plastic means that it's way too easy to scratch the transparent plastic with the constant sliding of the E7 around a desk in normal use.
• Along with scratch risk, there's the irritating way the device can move/slide when you type, when you apply any pressure on the home button or even the touchscreen itself.
• The loudspeaker is mounted almost flush with the back, meaning that sounds are a little muffled.
• The E7 is too easy to drop - as with the N8, the curved aluminium sides make it a slippery beast in closed mode.

Users of the E7's predecessor, the E90, might remember that the latter had four little rubber feet, to keep the device from sliding on a desk and to protect the back face. OK, so the feet were complete rubbish and were either badly aligned or fell off after a month or two, but the thought was there - smartphones this big that are going to be used sat on a desk need something grippy underneath.

Which got me thinking. In my office, I had some of this:

Just some cheap £1 grip matting from my local bargain bin hardware store. It's designed to go on car dashboards and hold gadgets in place, etc.

I chopped two rectangles of the mat with scissors and used a convenient Pritt-stick (glue stick) to glue these on the E7's underside like this:

Note that I used Pritt-stick because it's a fairly weak (and easily removed) glue. You might not want to use a strong glue in case you can't get it off again later when re-selling your device(!)

I positioned the two pads of grip mat to miss the speaker aperture:

.... and the rear microphone holes:

The end result, though a tad inelegant, works really, really well. Addressing the four problems mentioned above:

1. The pads lift the E7 off any desk or surface, protecting the camera 'glass' (see photo below)
2. The opened E7 is now rock solid on a desk or other smooth surface (e.g. airline lap-tray, as Ewan will report later today) and doesn't skate away from you when you try to use it.
3. The loudspeaker is now held further away from the surface beneath, stopping any muffling and on hard surfaces giving just the right degree of acoustic bounce-back.
4. In the hand there's substantially more grip. Both to stop you dropping the E7 when holding it or picking it up, and to provide middle-finger grip on the bottom when bracing the E7 to open it up. It's dramatically easier.

I'm sure I'll attract a fair degree of ridicule for such a crude solution. I'm sure Nokia will attract a bit of ridicule, too, for such a solution to have been deemed necessary. But we're here to help at All About Symbian, and this low-tech (and extremely cheap) solution has already helped me appreciate the Nokia E7 a whole lot more and curse it a whole lot less.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 11 March 2011

PS. In the interests of science, I also tested removal of aforementioned pritt-stuck pads.... 55 seconds. Peel off, rub gently with bathroom wet-wipe. Done. Good as new. 8-)

PPS. As mentioned in the comments below, a (two part, necessarily) silicone cover would also work here and be less 'tacky' (pun intended) - reviews coming up next week.