Nokia E90 Communicator - Beam Me Up Captain

 
Nokia’s E90 Communicator is part cell phone, and part laptop replacement. The high capacity smart phone has a conventional numeric keypad and display on the outside, and it unfolds, much like a laptop (or the T-Mobile sidekick) to give you a wide Qwerty keyboard for typing email with your thumbs. This mobile phone isn’t really meant to be a fashion accessory for anyone not in the pocket protector set; rather it’s meant to be slung in a purse or briefcase rather than shoved casually into your jeans pocket when you head out to the club.

The phone, like most in the category, promises to give you every feature imaginable, all completely usable, all in a small, compact package with reasonable battery life. It doesn’t quite meet the small, compact package part of the description, but it does boast a plethora of features worth mentioning. One nice feature of this phone is that you can access the address book and contacts data from the “traditional cell phone” interface, meaning you don’t have to open it up in laptop mode.

 
 
First, it runs on the S60 operating system, and while that means it isn’t Windows Mobile, that may be an advantage for some, though if you’re counting on being able to review the company spreadsheets in the cab to a meeting you may not be thinking this. What applications are there for the system do work well. Like it’s sleeker sibling, the N95, it comes with Global Positioning Satellite capability, and Nokia maps. We found that it took several seconds to synchronize, meaning it was fine for walking around, but not responsive enough for driving. Nokia’s mapping products are good, but there re better available for a fee.

The network connectivity is excellent, as would be expected from a data-centric mobile phone. There is full connectivity with WiFi, HSDPA, Bluetooth and quad-band GSM connectivity. The web browsing application took a long time to render most pages; we’re not certain if this is because of a slow connection, a slow processor, or simply a bad build of the browser.

Like virtually every phone made in the last 3 years, the E90 has a camera. The camera comes with an LED flash, which while adequate, will disappoint if used in really dark settings as opposed to low light ones. At 3.2 megapixels, it takes good pictures, though when printed out or blown up to full size, the limitations of the camera’s optics started to show. Color range was good, if a bit over saturated in the blues.

Sound quality as a phone was excellent; sound quality as a multimedia player wasn’t quite up to par – in part because of the placement of the speaker unit. Battery life is rated as 6 hours of talk time and about 14 hours of waiting; our runs with it were close to that, though using the wireless connectivity ate battery life to a fare thee well.

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