Looks - good looking but weighs a lot. The N91 is a smart looking phone. It’s got looks and feels like a phone (yep - the things that used to be attached to wires and wiegh a tonne because of the metal plates that used to get hit when someone rang). The weight isn’t really an issue with me - it’s usually in the pocket and I’m not particulaly muscular - if I can take it I’m sure you can too.
Music
Jokes aside, it IS heavy, but why would you want to hold a phone like that to your ear when you’ve got a speaker phone? The N91 was touted as an "iPod Killer". I think as far as the sound quality on the headset provided goes, it beats the iPod quality hands down. The music player interface is an attempted rip of the iPod interface (not a very good one, but passable for a phone). They’ve got a speaker that you wouldn’t listen to the music with - a shame it’s such a sad speaker - there’s a Nokia that costs under 5K
and has a MUCH higher quality speaker and delivers much higher volume.
Features - up the wazoo!
There’s wi-fi (don’t try using wi-fi while bluetooth is on though). There’s a browser that tends to crash pretty often - for lack of memory more
often than not - why not have a decent swapping mechanism - even 286
machines had one!
There’s a 2 MP camera - don’t count on any decent quality of pictures though. The picture quality’s below average - I was better off with my VGA
camera on the 6230.
Okay, the meat of the review starts HERE
Wishlist was
You thought you’d go out and buy a nice phone that is good to look at,
*plays your
music for you with a standard audio jack so you can plug it into
your 5.1 speaker set, set it to Dolby ProLogic II and have a party, surf
the internet, has a mini USB **port so you
can hook it up to most computers without too much of a hassle (lose the cable
and you don’t get robbed by Nokia to get another one) - it **detects as a
standard drive in the right mode without having to install drivers **on an XP
machine, has a camera and bluetooth, the list goes on... there’s
an amazing number of apps out there that you can install aren’t there?
erm...
And Nokia said...
nope... This is a Symbian 9 release 3 phone. They changed the specs on
how programs were supposed to work and folks haven’t really started developing for this phone just yet. Even **Nokia
doesn’t have any themes **for the phone available on its site. Most of the
popular hangouts (Handango.com) have stuff limited to earlier releases of
Symbian. I haven’t checked for the last
couple of months, but don’t think too much’d have changed.
Gadgets galore... where’s the phone?
I USE my phone as a phone though... that’s one of the problems I’ve got with
it. I want to be able to make and take calls without problems. The crashing
started the day I got the phone home from the shop. It crashed the first day
when I was in the middle of a call (this was after dumping a gig of music on
it). It crashed on an average at least twice a week. I spoke with a couple of
other N91 users I knew of and they came back with "There’s nothing wrong
with my phone... I just don’t use the memory the way you do - you used 1GB
already???". Theoretically, they’re supposed to use most of the 4gig on
music that goes on the phone.
Nokia going Microsoft on us... - you mean you thought there was service?
Okay so it crashed... that happens right? I waited for a new
firmware to be released. Found a program on the Nokia UK site to flash the
phone at home to save time/effort, so I downloaded this software, read the
instructions on how it was dangerous and it could damage the phone and I’d have
to take it to a Nokia center if anything went wrong and blah... got the new
firmware, the software gauged the compatibility of the firmware with the phone,
said all was well and attempted to flash it... my battery didn’t die, but my
phone did. My phone was out for a little over 2 weeks. Got it back and proceeded to make a phone call. Got another call in between and attempted a
conference call. The phone crashed, and my two friends were left talking to
each other while I sat and tried unsuccessfully to dial back into the call.
Human technology? - market leaders stop innovating
There are loads of good features that they’ve thought about, but they could
have taken some of the basics from the older/cheaper phones. I bought a 1100
when I got REALLY sick of waiting for them to release this phone (a year and a
half after it was initially planned). If you tap out a number and try saving
it, it’ll pull up the name of the contact associated with that number. This
prevents having a single number saved twice - if that happens, the caller name
doesn’t show up when you get a call from them which can be very irritating.
Rabbitting on Design again - is it really *that *bad?
Here’s the part where Nokia’s really screwed up though. They’ve always been
into the physical design and maximising comfort while minimising contact (in
way of number of clicks).
Slidey phone - don’t slide back by mistake!
This phone however is the worst design they’ve had yet. The thing looks
good, but that’s the end of the design. The slide concept gets bad - slide it shut by mistake (or open a bit then shut) and that’s the end of your call. If that
slider goes back in you get cut off... it’s GOT to stay open or be opened and not shut for the call to
continue - there’s no config option to change that.
Charge for a converter from the normal charger to this type
It’s got a mini plug for the charger - one point of comfort of having a Nokia
was that a charger was ALWAYS available wherever you may have gone. That’s the
end of that era.
Precision finger movements require extra effort by user
You slide down the music pad and you’ve got these tiny buttons that are very
fiddly. You would usually have to look at them to use them.
A bumpy drive
The fact that it’s got a hard disk also for the first time brings moving parts
into Nokia’s products. I don’t think they did enough research on this - my
drive is incredibly slow and clicks. I don’t have too many pictures stored on
the phone and it takes almost a minute to open the images gallery.
Okay, so that’s all the good points... should I start on the bad ones now?
Set by over a 2 year wait for this phone
Kidding. I was amazingly disappointed in the phone - I guess I was prepared for
the crashing since none of the Nokias since 2003 have been stable for the first couple of years after release, but then I expected the
quality to be there.
A few of the cons... should I stop whining?
It should have had a good camera which it doesn’t. It should have had a good
speaker which it doesn’t. It should have been able to record conversations for
over a minute either on a call or off which it doesn’t, but MOST of all, it
should have been good to use as a phone which it’s not.
Despite it all a nice gadget
I love my phone and I’m happy with the gadget that it is.
I’m happy with the feature