If you read my other reviews you would get to know that I am a gadget freak, and change my handsets around 2-3 times a year(not to mention always top of the line, hence expensive). But I recently got married and everyone around told me to curb my expenses, anyways I was using the Mobile Imaging king K790 and was damn satisfied with it, and promised myself that would not change my handset for at least a year but God had other plans for me, I dropped the phone in a pool(while on honeymoon) and have to return heavy heartedly when the service centre people told me that nothing can be done and you can now use the phone as a paperweight.
So there I was looking for a new phone which can match my last phone, I certainly didn’t have too many options, not many phones in India carry a 3.2 MP camera, so my choice was narrowed down to N73, N80 and N93 ( I couldn’t have gone ahead and bought the same K790, however great it was). Decided to go for the N93 because I always look out for the exclusivity which this phone has got in lots and the size doesn’t matter to me since I earlier used Nokia 7710 which was a brick.
So finally I am ready to give inputs about my finding about this phone, on every step I may compare the features with the Sony Ericsson K790.Smartphone Capabilities - Do I need to explain this feature? Nokia does not change its feature dependent on the phone, you find all the standard applications, quickoffice to open word, excel file, a couple of games, settings, profiles, alarm, calculator, converter, setting up of various email inboxes, its standard to Symbian 60 3rd edition, nothing new or exciting in here.
Imaging - People Beware !!!!! If you are buying this phone for its Imaging capability, please don’t buy it, it takes one of the worst pictures in anything less than bright sunlight( of course I am comparing it to other 3 MP cellphones). In bright sunlight the photographs are very good, it captures good details and the optical zoom is pretty good, but whenever possible try to avoid the Optical Zoom since the image loses a bit of detail while using the zoom. Flash is weak and adds a lot of noise in the Images taken and pictures are almost worthless. Whereas K790 was one of the best Camera Phone, and its xenon flash was very powerful for a portrait in dark.
One more thing to add here is that N73 takes far more better pictures than N93 which is a shame.Video - WOW!!!!!!! Thats what I said when I saw its videos, although its not exactly DVD quality as Nokia would like to make you believe but its pretty darn close, and when you connect it to your Television, the quality seems amazing for a mobile phone. If you plan to take lots of video with it, then do not think twice to buy this phone. (of course the price would make you think 10 times). Though the video files that it creates are quite big in size, I think its somewhere around 25 MB for one minute of video. But again if you do not have proper lighting then all you would see is black screen.( the latest firmware v20.0.058 has increased the problem instead of resolving)
Music- Pretty standard stuff, nothing out of the ordinary, infact with other N Series phone, you receive a headphone with a 3.5 mm stereo jack connector, but you do not have even that with this phone though that does not bother me much as I do not plan to use my computer headset anyways with this phone since they are way too big.Battery - Goes on for 1 - 11/2 days with heavy usage of its feature which is actually not bad. Full charge takes around 2 hours. Other Features - The phone has Wifi which as imaginably not useful for me in India. GPRS speed is ok.
I didn’t like its browser interface though. Cannot recall anyother special features of this phone.In the end I would conclude that the only reason to recommend this phone would be to experience its amazing video quality, if thats not what you are interested for and you want to take good pictures or need a simple smartphone then there are plenty of other phones in the market. Dont think that just because its one of the costliest, everything in this phone would be the best. Its best at only videos.