Design
Previous phones in Nokia's Communicator series have been described as "bricks"; the metallic brown case of the E90 we received added to this impression. At 132mm by 57mm by 20mm and 210 grams, this is a big, solid phone. Don't expect it to slip easily into you pocket, and considering this phone's weight and price, you wouldn't want to drop it.
At first glance the E90 looks like an oversized candy-bar phone, with an outside interface with large, square buttons that are reminiscent of older phones. The external screen is not huge, but at 240 x 320 pixels and with a 16 million colour active matrix display it looks good. In addition, there is an automated screen saver which features both date and time.
While not sassy, the exterior of this phone is very functional. A handy button in the top right-hand corner allows you to quickly move between different phone profiles such as silent mode, and also allows you to switch the phone off. The right side of the phone features a camera button, and a shortcut to a voice recorder, which would be useful for quick voice notes or during meetings.
Once you've passed the archaic outer design, you get to the best part of this phone. The interior features an impressive 800 by 352 pixel screen. We naturally found ourselves using the interior display for every function in this phone, with the exception of answering calls. The interior display looks great, and the clock in the right-hand corner was particularly useful. The internal interface features a full QWERTY keyboard, which is always a luxury. A particularly useful feature we found were the two customisable My Own buttons, which allow you to add your own shortcut to the menu.
One frustrating feature of the internal design was the placement of the large Enter key. As an everyday PC user, one becomes accustomed to using enter to "OK" interface enquires, however the Enter key does not allow you to "OK" many enquiries on the E90. Further, stiff QWERTY keys prevent rapid typing, and the buttons are small.
Features
Without a doubt the most striking feature of this phone is that it is 3G compatible, and also supports HSDPA, which provides for a fast Internet connection. This is the first Communicator to provide these features. Connecting using a 3G network, we were able to stream YouTube clips without a problem.
The E90 Communicator features a 3.2-megapixel camera with both flash and autofocus. The camera worked well, and the plentiful memory available on the E90 Communicator means that vast numbers of photos or videos could be stored. The E90 also features a number of internal photo editing options including white balance, exposure, contrast, sharpness, and a number of colour options such as black and white photographs, sepia or negative. The flash worked moderately well in dimly lit rooms at night, although the smaller flash probably wouldn't stack up in very low-light conditions. The auto focus was reasonably quick and produced crisp images. The E90 can also capture videos, and has a camera on the internal interface for video calling.
The voice recorder, with quick access key on the outside, functions with the same capacity as a mid-range digital voice recorder. While it made high-quality recordings at short range, the small microphone didn't pick up voice well during meetings.
The messaging application supports POP3 and IMAP e-mail as well as SMS and MMS messages. We tried the Nokia PC suite phone integration software and found it easy to use and highly functional. One expedient feature in the was the messaging options available via the software, which meant that we could rapidly receive and respond to phone messages on the PC while continuing to work. The phone also includes a message-to-voice reading option, but the shortcut described in the manual to read messages didn't seem to exist in our phone.
The E90 includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, and we had no problem utilising any of these features, for either Internet connections or file transfer.
The E90 includes a true GPS system, which is (potentially) an exciting feature. However, despite our repeated efforts in multiple outdoor locations throughout Sydney (CBD, eastern and western suburbs), we were unable to get the E90 to lock on to a GPS satellite. This made the maps function completely useless, as the phone was unable to find our location.
Our E90 came with a 512MB microSD card (which can be expanded up to 4GB).
Performance
The E90 comes with an impressive 128MB of phone memory, which mean no menu lag and no problem running multiple applications. We found opening PDFs, watching movie clips and running office applications to be a snappy process.
Battery life is excellent on this phone. Nokia claims up to 5.8 hours talk time and up to 14 days standby time. We used the phone moderately for six days without having to charge it, which suggests that Nokia's figures are correct.
The Nokia E90 Communicator has an impressive range of features. The large amount of internal memory available on the phone as well as strong computing performance means it would works well as a smartphone or travelling business device. Coupled with a fast Internet via Wi-Fi or 3G with HSDPA, this phone is a great productivity tool. The PC suite software is intuitive and provides a range or useful options.
The stiff buttons and possibly flaky GPS are two minor drawbacks of the E90, and unless you plan to utilise the myriad of features on this phone, it may not be worth its price.
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Looks good - but will Nokia tweak the E90 or the E61i to 850 UMTS to work on the Next G network ?