Nokia E90 Communicator

When it comes to music, apart from the painful fact that Nokia used a 2.5mm and not 3.5mm socket here, I have to say I was totally unimpressed with the output of the sound. Although the quality may have been just alright, the volume was very surprisingly just too low. It was a rather big disappointment. I even tried using a converter pin (not provided unfortunately) so I could use another pair of earphones but the outcome was the same.

Here's a funny thing though. I happened to be testing a Bluetooth headset and decided to give it a shot considering the E90 is A2DP compatible. I was pleasantly surprised to find the output was excellent and the quality was phenomenal. Now that's what I was expecting when I first plugged in the earphones that Nokia provided. So if you have a great set of Bluetooth headphones, go with that. You won’t be disappointed this time. Trust me. There’s also a flash player, voice recorder and an FM radio. Unfortunately you can’t record from the radio. On the plus side it takes just a couple of seconds to tune and save all the available stations.

Even a hardcore businessperson, I'm sure, would like to just kick back with a few oddball games now and then. Although the E90 has no regular Nokia pre-installed Java based games other than a few flash games, you can download Global Race. It’s a badass street racing game with some really cool graphics that look simply stunning on the large screen.

Camera
The E90 is equipped with a 3.2megapixel Auto-Focus camera with a flash and plenty of settings to help you get the best out of it. But sadly, irrespective of the many varied settings you can adjust them all you like, but that won’t really make the pictures any better. Normal images taken with the most conducive settings seem like they were painted with watercolors. Greens appear blurry and patchy at best. Although they may look great on the camera, the truth beheld on the PC, is nothing short of bad.

Close ups although seem clear also have the same watercolor effect unfortunately. No matter how you set the camera. But the good thing is you can really move in up close to objects so its more like super macro.

Settings include 8 screen modes that include Auto, Night, Macro and Night portrait. There are also settings for the flash, timer, sequence mode, exposure balance, white balance settings, color tone including sepia, black and white, light sensitivity and a separate setting for adjusting the contrast. So with such a vast amount of settings how come the pictures still appear a bit like paintings? I also think Nokia should have included an image or video editor, you know, just for kicks.

Other Features
Besides the many features and functions I've already mentioned, there are plenty more where those came from. Another few things that set this Communicator apart from the rest is the fact that it has a vibration setting.

Like the N95 the E90 also has a Barcode reader that utilizes the camera to read bar codes on products that sometimes contain information like email addresses and phone numbers that the E90 is able to store. But for a business class phone to have a feature like this is rather odd. What it should have had is a Business card reader. Now that would have been excellent considering it has an Auto-Focus camera. You'll have to download and pay for a software called BizReader from www.bizreader.com. It costs around Rs. 1457 ($36) though. I’ve seen the software in action and it’s good, but if a Motorola Ming can have it I don’t see why a heavy hitter like the E90 couldn’t.

The E90 also has a message reader software. It has a male or female (whichever you select) voice that reads out your messages. But the problem is that you have to mark all messages, and then select the 'Listen' option in order to activate the setting. You can adjust the speed of the speech, but the whole point is missed if you have to manually set it. Another feature a lower end phone like the Motoming has. The QWERTY keypad is excellent for typing messages too. And you can begin on the main screen and continue where you left off when you open up the phone.

Among other voice related functions the E90 has a Voice Command feature that allows you to simply call out a command and the phone will comply. These commands include those to activate the camera, Bluetooth, voice recorder and phone profiles.

There's also a Voice Aid option that opens a menu consisting of recent calls, contacts, Dialer, voice mailbox and clock. Only in this setting is everything read out loud, including the options, contacts name and numbers being dialed on the pad. But the moment you leave this menu you’re back to normal. What I also really like are the small indicators on top of the menus that let you know what applications are still running in the phone.

The integrated GPS module works like a charm. But if you don’t want to pay and download maps, just download Google maps. That’s the next best thing with a considerably lesser amount of functions but it still looks darn good. There are plenty of other free applications that you can download to spice up your E90, like Data Mover for transferring data from your old Communicator to the E90. You can also download World Mate, which is extremely helpful with maps, clocks, flight schedules, currency converter, a world map and satellite imagery for the weather. There’s also a weather forecaster that you can set to activate any time and call out the weather for you. This is a really awesome application.

The E90 is also the first in its class to use a 1500mAh, BP-4L battery. It lasted me for a total of 10 hours of almost non-stop usage. But talk time, I’d have to say averaged out at just around 4.5 hours plus, which isn’t bad at all. With regards to memory, the E90 has 128Mb of internal memory and you can increase that with microSD cards up to 2 GB. So no worries there either.

The Bottom Line
The E90 is currently priced at an MRP of Rs. 40,499 and is available in 2 colors - Mocha and Red. However I’m afraid it doesn’t seem to be worth that high a price. Other than the few things that the E90 lacks this is however, still, the Big Daddy of all the Communicators. It's fast and efficient not to mention an extremely sturdy and durable phone. Trust me, I tested it. It's pretty darn hardcore. As Business phones go, it's Aces in my book. I’m just going to wait awhile and hopefully when the price drops a bit, I’m going to get mine. But apart from the superbly large and clear display, the N95 is the closest competitor the E90 has.