The occasional scrivener

Nokia N90: first impressions

I got the chance to borrow the Nokia N90 for a couple of weeks. As I already have a 3G phone, the 6630, I thought I’d give it a shot.

At first I was put off by the phone’s size, and the fact that none of my settings would be on it. But it turns out that the latest version of Nokia’s PC Suite is actually pretty good. There was no problem syncing two phones at once, so I just loaded my contacts, calender etc. onto the N90 from my PC.

Another “must-have” app is Wireless IRC. I downloaded a trial version (good for 2 weeks) and could start chatting on #mobitopia on the way home from work.

Physically, the phone is pretty big. Even if it’s only a few millimetres bigger than the 6630 when folded, it gives a much more massive impression. Nokia haven’t been able to design a sleek folder model yet.

Despite the size, the new charger cable attachment it very small — so small and thin it looks fragile. Fortunately, there’s an adapter cable for old chargers supplied with the phone.

The memory card slot is hard to use. You can get the card out, but if you don’t have long fingernails it’s very hard to get it in again. A 64M card is included, same as for the 6630.

The screen is very nice, with a much higher resolution than other S60 phones. Unfortunately, my first impression was that the text in Wireless IRC was blurry. This is an artifact of the fact that Wireless IRC is a “legacy” app, and the text is scaled up to prevent unreadably small fonts.

When using the web browser, the screen came into its own. The text size was smaller, but more of it was fitted onto the screen. Using Bloglines was nicer than using the 6630.

The keypad is larger and easier to use than the one on the 6630, which is not surprising as the physical area is nearly twice as large.

This is the first S60 phone I’ve used with the “ready” or “today” screen, and I found it a bit confusing at first. This is the fourth S60 phone I’ve used, so if I found it confusing I hesitate to think of what first time users might think. This said, the today screen provides nice shortcuts to Contact, Calendar, Messaging etc. This is an improvement over earlier interfaces where you had to press the swirl button to get to the menu.

The camera is the showpiece of the phone, with a 2 mpx sensor and a Carl Zeiss lens with autofocus. I liked the fact that it has a flash. I haven’t been able to see how good the photos are outside the phone’s screen yet. See the reviews linked from the page above for the gory details.

When using the camera, you fold out the screen in a 90 + 90 degree configuration. Access to camera controls is via an extra joystick on the side of the phone. There are also 2 softkeys along the top of the screen, or to the left if in shooting mode. Using these was fairly self-explanatory, but not very “intuitive”. Read the fine manual for the details.

When the phone is folded you can swing the camera housing and use the cover screen as a viewfinder. More discrete than unfolding all the bits and pieces in standard mode.

All in all, this isn’t a phone I’d choose if I had to pay for it, and probably not if I got it for free either. The folding design is not something I like in a phone, and I’d rather pay more money for a real camera than one on a phone.

Prices

• Best price in Sweden: 5 725 SEK (via PriceRunner Sweden)
• Best price in the UK: £502.80 (via PriceRunner UK)

Posted at 22:52, in the comm » mobile category. Comments [0]
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