Review: Nokia E90

Hardware The bulkiness is of course the major downside of the E90. However, the solid sturdy build quality means it can survive many trips to the boardroom. Also, it doesn't look that big - the silver bezel on the front looks like the edge of a normal-sized phone, until you look closer and realise theres an extra 10mm on the outside of that. It's quite a tidy phone, and a pretty standard layout on the front. It has a power button in the top right corner, next to the speaker, then the portrait screen below, then two option buttons, a D-pad with centre button, a menu key and "C" (clear) either side of that, and a green & red telephone button below, then the 1-9 */0/# keypad. This is all the standard configuration, and everything does what you would expect it to do. The rear of the phone has the 3.2mp AF camera, an LED flash, small speaker, battery cover, covered Micro SD slot and unusually 4 rubber pads to rest the phone on. Behind the removable battery cover is the 3.7V 1500mAh BP-4L battery (compared to my N95's 950mAh) and that needs to be removed to access the SIM card slot and serial numbers etc. The left side of the phone is just the double hinge, and there's nothing on the top. The right side has the voice command button, the camera button (which is a bit mushy and annoying) and a blank cover for what may be an infrared option. The bottom has the USB connector, thin Nokia power socket, 3.5mm jack connector and two gold connectors. Opening up the phone, looking at the top half: on the left is the almost-invisible lower-quality camera for web calling, and the green/red telephone buttons; then the 800px wide screen (similar to the N800), and then two option buttons. The lower half has the full qwerty keyboard, 8 function buttons along the top (Desk, Contacts, Messaging, Web, Notes, Calendar, My Own (customisable) and a menu key). On the left of the qwerty is the bulb button and a GPS key. Other functions mapped onto the keyboard include volume and Bluetooth controls. Software The E90 is running S60 3.1 on top of Symbian OS 9.2, which is a deliberate backtrack from the S80 software in order to retain backward compatibility, considering the new OS kernel. This means that existing Series 60 software is fully compatible with the E90. The main screen is the Active Standby screen, with quick links to selected applications, extracts from call logs and the calendar, and WLAN control. This all looks pretty much the same on both screens, although the inside one displays a few more icons. The main menu is separated into folders, which are all customisable. The menu theme is entirely skinnable, along with the Active Standby screen. A lot of the software alters to make good use of the wide inside screen, but some just resize. The contacts screen predictably allows you to create multiple details within each contact (phone, business phone, mobile, fax, email etc), all renamable. The search only searches from the start of first and last names, which could be improved but works fine for most uses. There is a separate search application (in the Office folder) which can perform more thorough searches. The calendar is a bit weak, simply storing events/anniversaries/meetings that occur on days at times at locations, and a very simple to-do list. However, thanks to the S60 backward compatibility, there is a range of other calendar software you can pick through to find something that works well for your needs. Messaging is adequate, although the lack of Fax support and HTML emails (shows up as text, with source, images and objects available separately). Again, third-party software can come to the rescue if this is something you need. Alongside this, push email solutions supported by the E90 include Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email, Blackberry Connect, Mail for Exchange and Visto Mobile. There is also Text To Speech technology here, where pressing "Listen" will read out a message to you, and the voice is customisable. The QuickOffice document software performs quite well with Microsoft Office documents, and ease of use is quite good, although formatting can get repetitive. There's also an Adobe PDF reader, which works very well thanks to the large RAM allowance of the E90. The Nokia S60 OSS web browser, built on S60WebKit (part of the same open-source framework as Safari) is the star of the show for me. Mouse operation and scrolling is generally great, although the mouse can sometimes be frustrating since it doesn't allow you to stop at every pixel. If you scroll up or down a page, an overview of the page appears on the right, so you can see where to scroll to. When you press back, you can scroll through shots of your previous pages to go back to the correct one, rather than waiting for each page to load as you step back. The screen quality here is what makes reading web pages actually worthwhile. The rendering falls just short of the Opera-based browser on the N800, since it can't deal with complicated JavaScript and flash sites. Also, since it self-identifies as a mobile browser, many sites force you to the mobile version of their site, which is usually simple unformatted text and links, but many give you the option to load up the full version to take advantage of your screen real estate and mouse power. Flash animations are possible, and FLV files open in RealPlayer, but the speed of YouTube here really negates its use. This is mainly a software issue, which can no doubt be cured with third-party downloads and the like. The GPS and maps is the same as the N95, where patience, open ground and clear skies make for a useful navigation device, but any lack of those makes the experience frustrating and potentially misleading. Maps can be freely downloaded on-the-fly or in advance. Voice-guided navigation and city guides usually require payment, but the short cheap rental terms are a big advantage here. Again, the possibility of 3rd-party software could be a workaround. As for media, it's all standard stuff. The audio player plays AC, AAC+, MP3 and WMA, and the built-in RealPlayer can play MPEGs and the like. Additional software caters for DivX and XVid movies. An annoyance is RealPlayers inability to select an access point, and failing to manually select your WLAN could be an expensive mistake. Playback of audio is smooth and pleasant, and the integrated speakers are fine for most on-the-move uses, although a decent pair of headphones never goes amiss. Also included is voice recording (adequate quality), FM radio, a fun but imperfect camera-based barcode scanner (which can save data to contacts etc), file/settings transfer application, decent search feature, Active notes, Zip compression, Printing (Socket/HP JetDirect, Bluetooth, Infrared or network), Clock & alarms and others. Comparison to N95 I currently own a Nokia N95, which is quite a bulky phone by today's fashion standards, but is considered top-spec with its 5mp camera and GPS. However, the E90 is as astonishingly similar, with the same operating system, themes, software and features. The E90 only has a 3.2mp camera, but that is still above par for most current phones. Of course the E90 is significantly larger and heavier than the N95, but this is to give its three big advantages over the N95: the qwerty keyboard, wide screen and better battery life. However there is one other difference between the two phones. One thing that annoys me no end about my N95 is that it often gets easily confused. The two-way slider rotates the screen to landscape when you're in viewing/gallery mode, then returns it to portrait for normal keypad operation. If you do this a couple of times in quick succession, or if that happens in your pocket, the N95 becomes the Norman Wisdom of communication - crashing and not really being too sure which mode of operation it wants to be in. It also has a habit of not locking the keypad, or just unlocking it when it slides in your pocket, which just gets annoying and has already caused me to make several accidental phonecalls - I'm not sure how much my friends appreciate talking to my crotch whilst I'm walking... The E90 surpasses the N95 in the quality of its software. Even though the appearence is pretty much identical, and it does all the same things, it just works in the E90. The hinged opening means no accidental unlocking, and the only way to unlock the phone when its closed is to follow the standard two-button unlock (unlock & *). Even when you open the phone and it has to switch the resolution to the 800px wide internal screen, that happens in a couple of flickers and immediately works, rather than the N95 dying doing its similar operation. The other small difference is that the E95 only has one menu key next to the D-pad, rather than the two different ones on the N95 which further contribute to its confusion. Conclusion The E90 is 210 grams of solid professional excellence. It has achieved everything Nokia intended it to do, and it does it with no hiccups or dramas along the way. It does exactly the same tricks as the N95, but without the crashing and ambiguity that has come with every version of the N95's firmware. As with most smartphones, it falls short of being a PDA, with the calendar and email being that which you would expect on a phone, and not much interaction between applications. Perhaps it could do with learning a few new tricks, and having a few more surprises for the technologically excitable, however as a professional smartphone, the wide range of useful features, infallible reliability and immense ease of use comes way ahead of 5mp cameras and games. As for the size and weight, you'll have to try it out and decide for yourself whether it is too much. If you don't mind the extra couple of mm on each side, and the weight in your pocket, the E90 is the ideal smartphone for professionals. If you're looking for a fashion icon, or a clever toy, look elsewhere.