Nokia 5500

Smaller than a smartphone! Smarter than a dumb phone! Is it a bird? is it a plane? No, it’s… the Nokia 5500

What’s this? Surely it can’t be a smartphone, it’s too small and light!

But the Nokia 5500 is a smartphone, although you wouldn’t know it from the marketing which makes out that it’s just a normal cameraphone with a tough casing. There’s the telltale S60 squiggly menu key though, so what should someone make of this gadget?

Well, the truth is that it’s a smartphone which has had various features added and altered to make it an exercise phone, and it seems to work. The S60 side is pretty much what you get on other current S60 3rd Edition models, so this review will concentrate on what the 5500 adds, and takes away, to make it a durable out-of-doors device.

The basics first though: the 5500 is a tri-band GSM Symbian S60 3rd Edition smartphone with EDGE, Bluetooth, infrared, pop-port, 8 megabytes of internal memory, a microSD memory card slot (which officially can take up to 1 gigabyte cards, but I’ve had reports of people using 2 gigabyte cards as well) and a 64 megabyte microSD card containing extra applications and licensed music tracks. The phone includes a 2 megapixel camera, an FM radio, a pedometer (step counter) and an LED torch. For those who want a more detailed point-by-point technical rundown on the 5500, you can find it on Nokia’s official 5500 page, and you might also want to also take a look at Rafe’s excellent hands-on preview of the 5500 prototype from May of this year.

According to Nokia the 5500 is “designed to withstand knocks, dust and water splashes”. I didn’t test these claims personally, but a Russian website called mforum.ru put the 5500 through its paces in some rather extreme situations, and it seemed pretty much indestructible. You can find out more about their tests by clicking here.

(Incidentally, if you’ve already have a 5500, make sure you insert the free microSD card and let it automatically install all the software on the phone as there’s some very handy things on there including several features discussed in this review.)

What’s It Like?

The 5500 is available in grey/black or grey/yellow, and there’s a third colour scheme, copper/orange, on the way.

The phone is fairly similar in size to ordinary non-smart monoblock/candybar phones, and comes encased in stainless steel, plastic and rubber. It feels very solid indeed, and as I found out, this is a phone designed to not just take knocks but actually be controlled by them (more on that later in the article). The steel and rubber battery cover is tightly sealed and requires a coin in order to turn the lock open. The SIM card and microSD card are both kept underneath the battery for extra protection, so obviously there’s no hotswapping possible. There are no gaps at all in the main casing, the buttons including the keypad are all under rubber surfaces, and there’s a rubber flap that covers the pop-port and charging jack.

The keypad buttons were surprisingly nice to use, they press easily and produce a satisfying click, despite being totally covered by rubber. For those who were worried about the narrower bottom keypad row, it works ok, I had no problems. The small buttons at the top had me worried when I saw a photo of the 5500, but in real life they also work fine as they’re at different levels on the surface so your thumb can distinguish them easily. The direction pad is smooth and easy to use, and it changes colour to let you know what mode the phone is in. The pen (edit) key has been moved to the right side of the phone, so you can hold it down with one hand while typing a message with the other. There’s an infrared port next to the pen key, and a mode key above it which switches between the standby screen, the music player and the pedometer fitness application (each mode also makes the direction pad glow a different colour: white, yellow or red). The mode button uses task switching so you can press it to start the music player and then press it again to access the pedometer, changing modes doesn’t kill the previous application. On the left side of the phone there’s a pair of volume control buttons and a Push-To-Talk button.

It’s also worth mentioning that the 5500 comes supplied with a hands-free pop-port headphone adaptor which contains a microphone, call answer button, volume control, standard headphone jack (standard headphones also  included), controls for the music player and radio, and a Push-To-Talk button.

Following in the footsteps of new PCs that expect you to burn your own Windows CDs, there’s no PC Suite CD with  the 5500, because you’re expected to download the latest version from Nokia’s web site (and to be fair, Nokia’s  software updates do seem to come more often now than in the past).

Using the phone as a phone feels good, it’s small enough to slip into any compartment in a bag or jacket and it feels a lot less nerdy-looking in public than something like an E61. The sound quality on calls is good, and the battery life is decent for a smartphone, there are about two or three days of use (including phone, texts, exercise app, email and radio) between charges. Thanks to using S60 3rd Edition the speed of the menus and applications are good, close to the speed of a normal phone, and greatly improved from the slow days of S60 1st edition phones. The 5500 also has Push-To-Talk capability, with a dedicated button on the phone itself and a button on the
hands-free adaptor.

Let’s Get Physical!

By far the most interesting and important exercise feature on the 5500 is the pedometer or step counter, which uses a 3D sensor to track the distance you’ve run, walked, rowed or cycled, and it can also be used on a step  machine (there are separate settings for all five of these exercise types). As far as I’m aware, this is the first and so far only phone to include a built-in pedometer. It’s not quite as precise as an expensive high quality separate pedometer, for example it doesn’t ask the user to measure their average step size, but crucially it is consistent, it registered more or less the same distance when I took the same route (I didn’t try it with cycling, rowing or a step machine though). It’s this consistency that makes it a useful fitness tool because you can use it to track and gradually build up your level of exercise over time so you can get fitter, which is exactly how pedometers are meant to be used.

To measure your current fitness you can also use the 5500 to help perform the Cooper test (for running and walking) and an exercise bike test, although you’ll need access to a stretch of ground of a known length for the Cooper test, and obviously an exercise bike for the bike test. You can set goals which you wish to achieve in several categories (distance, calories, time, number of exercises) along with the time period in which you must achieve them, and you can also switch on an optional voice commentary to tell you how you’re doing at regular intervals during the exercise so you don’t have to keep checking the display.

There’s a diary mode which lets you look back on how much exercise you’ve done in the past month, and the 5500 is also compatible with the Nokia Sports Manager application for Windows. The application lets you store the diary data from the pedometer on your PC, and view detailed graphs of your speed over distance or time during any particular exercise session you’ve ever done. Nokia Sports Manager can be downloaded for free from Nokia’s web site.

Included in the box is a special clip-on holder which lets you attach the phone to your clothes in order to give extra-accurate measurement using the pedometer, although I found simply keeping the phone in my
pocket was usually accurate enough.

Other Features

The 5500’s built-in music player (compatible with MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA and AMP) is the same application found on other S60 3rd Edition phones and can be controlled with the keypad, but thanks to the pedometer sensor it can also be controlled by just tapping the phone twice on its sides to skip forward or back, and on the front to pause or play. Just to emphasise that last point, you don’t actually push any buttons, you just tap the relevant part of the casing. It seemed to work fairly reliably, although it took a lot of getting used to and there’s a couple of seconds delay while the phone works out that you’ve tapped it. As a third option you can also use the included handsfree headphone adaptor which has FF, RW and Pause buttons on it, and works with standard walkman headphones. The built-in FM radio can also change stations using all three methods, and has visual radio compatibility too.

There are about a dozen exercise-themed licenced music tracks on the included microSD card to be used while training, or you can of course download and listen to your own tracks from your PC using the PC Suite’s Music Manager software or Windows Media Player integration. The included free microSD card is 64 megabytes, but you can buy your own microSD cards with up to 2 gigabytes in capacity. The sound quality of the music player and radio is good, and Nokia is apparently going to launch a “music edition” 5500 package later this year which includes a copper coloured phone and a high capacity microSD, but is otherwise identical to the standard sports package. The external speaker sound quality is also good but in mono as there’s just one external speaker.

If you get a message while running and don’t want to stop, you can make the phone read out loud any new text messages by tapping it twice. There’s a variety of language and voice packs for the speech function both built-in and available to download from Nokia’s web site (although curiously there’s no Finnish language pack yet), and judging by the names included with the packs it seems they want to turn speech packs into another way of customising your phone, like wallpapers or ringtones. Perhaps we’ll see celebrity speech packs appearing one day?

The pedometer has one final trick up its sleeve, it can sense the orientation of the phone when you’re standing still, and this function is exploited by the built-in Groove Labyrinth game. It’s a sort of real world update of Marble Madness, where you have to tilt the phone itself to steer a ball through a maze while collecting bonuses within a  time limit. The game is simple but fun and innovative. Conventional non-tilting games on the phone include the brilliant N-Gage game Snakes, and the frighteningly ubiquitous Sudoku.

The 5500 has a 2 megapixel camera which, like most cameraphones, is at its best in daylight and very brightly lit rooms, but goes grainy when used indoors at night. This can be helped to some extent by using the night mode option, although it’s still not as sharp as in daylight. Videos (at a much lower 176×144 resolution) with sound can also be captured using the camera. Pictures and videos can be sent as multimedia messages, transferred over Bluetooth and infrared, sent to your computer through the PC Suite application, or attached to emails. There’s no bundled photo editing software, but of course you can edit the pictures on your PC.

Here are some unaltered photos taken with the 5500’s camera, the first two in daylight and the third one inside a well-lit room: Example One , Example Two , Example Three

Screen Test

The screen is possibly the most controversial feature of the 5500 for those wanting a pure smartphone as it’s  physically much smaller than other S60 screens. A large screen would be more vulnerable to damage and the designers of an exercise phone clearly don’t want it to feel fragile in any way, so this may be a good tradeoff if you intend to use the 5500 for its stated purpose as a rugged outdoors phone. The screen is a technical improvement on previous generation S60s (208 by 208 pixels, 262 thousand colours) but the physical size is smaller, it measures about 3cm by 3cm, and the size of the text in some applications may be too small for some people’s eyesight. The fitness app uses very large font sizes so it works fine with no problems, and writing a text message produces no problems either, but things like viewing web sites on the smallest font setting may be tricky for those who have trouble reading ingredients lists on chocolate bars. You can install S60 3rd Edition apps on the 5500, but as they’re usually designed with a larger physical screen in mind, they can be tricky to read too. The standby screen is also a bit crowded if you have a music track running and calendar appointments and to-do notes visible.

The excellent new S60 HTML browser included with the phone loads most pages quickly and accurately, usually pretty much as they would appear on a PC browser, as the S60 browser is compatible with things like javascript and frames. If your eyes can cope with the smallest font size on the 5500’s screen, the browser can fit about 50% of a page’s width on-screen, so you don’t have to scroll too much. Unfortunately in a moment of madness someone at Nokia decided that the default browser on the 5500 wouldn’t be S60, but the awful outdated Services browser instead, and a link to Services appears on the main menu screen and the standby screen’s row of icons. It’s likely that most people will never even find the S60 browser as it requires an installation from the included microSD card and even then is buried in the “My Own” folder. To add to the confusion, the icon for Services is almost identical to the S60 Browser icon. It’s a mystery why Nokia persists in including the hopeless Services browser when a much better replacement is also included.

Symbian In The Closet

This leads to the most intriguing mystery about the 5500: why is Nokia keeping its smartphone status a secret? Nowhere on the official 5500 tech spec page does it mention “Series 60” or “smartphone”, yet the 5500 is technically speaking just as much an S60 smartphone as an N93 or an E61, you can even install S60 3rd edition programs on it. Does this phone represent some experiment to do with using Symbian across Nokia’s entire phone range? It can’t happen quite yet, the battery life needs to be extended and the S60 user interface needs to be made more intuitive, but that’s relatively fixable in future models (and the 5500’s colour-coded mode button seems to be a first step). What’s remarkable about the 5500 is that it has shown that you can cram so much into such a small, light and durable package: a smartphone almost as fast to use as a normal phone, a thick steel-rubber-plastic casing, a pedometer, a 2 megapixel camera, a memory card slot and an FM radio. It proves that smartphones no longer need to be bulky, and given this achievement it wouldn’t be at all surprising if we saw a RAZR-style S60 appear in the near future, especially as Nokia has recently announced that its priority now is to make thinner phones.

At The End Of The Day…

So, should you get a 5500? It depends on what you want. For some people it will be absolutely perfect, while for others the features won’t match their needs.

If you primarily need an exercise tool or a durable companion on the road, this is the bee’s knees. It’s clearly been designed to be a jogger’s friend, it has a music player and radio to keep you company, it’s the most well-protected and durable smartphone on the market, and it’s also (as far as I know) the only phone with a pedometer in it. You don’t even need to look at it to change tracks, alter stations, take calls or hear texts, so it’s good for keeping in your pocket or clipping to your clothes while you concentrate on collecting kilometres.

If you primarily need a pure smartphone, with mainly visual or high bandwidth uses, and want to browse lots of web sites, watch lots of videos or run lots of third party S60 apps, this probably isn’t the phone for you as the screen is physically so small and there’s no Wi-Fi or 3G compatibility.

If you need a mixture of these two extremes, then it’s up to you to weigh up what features are most important to you. Don’t get me wrong, this is a decent smartphone in its own right and it’s better than anything from previous smartphone generations, but obviously it has to be compared to other brand new models as well. The 5500 has been largely designed to work around you, rather than begging for your direct attention, and in this field it’s absolutely great.
In short, the Nokia 5500 is the first truly durable and portable smartphone, but that durability inevitably brings certain restrictions with it. If the E61 is a Limousine and the N93 is a Ferrari, the 5500 is a Range Rover.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_5500_Sport_Review1.php

Nokia N73 (2)

You really can’t accuse Nokia of failing to differentiate their range of S60 3rd Edition devices – each one has been wildly different from the rest, at least to the trained eye. The N73 has been widely touted as a natural successor to the best-selling S60 2nd Edition-powered N70, but that’s only really half the story.

The truth about the N73 is that it’s all about the camera. And what a camera, 3.2 megapixels with greater clarity, far less compression artefacts and better colour than even Nokia’s own flagship N93. Where the N70 was perhaps 70% smartphone and 30% camera, the Nokia N73 is a true half and half. With such a strong imaging focus, it won’t appeal to the ‘why do I need a camera in my phone’ brigade, but I doubt Nokia will mind.

In truth, the N73 is less than perfect as a smartphone, as you’ll see below, but for the target market the photos it takes will more than make up for this. But let’s start with a little proof:

(click each thumbnail to see the full size image and watch for your browser trying to resize. Best of all, right-click and choose ‘Save target as’)

In the first photo, zoom in on the trickles of water at the base of the ball and prepare to be impressed. As Rafe commented to me a moment ago, with quality like this there really is no point whatsoever in taking a separate digital camera with you, for daytime work, at least.

The N73’s camera has the obligatory Carl Zeiss optics, a mechanical shutter and a good autofocus lens, though not with optical zoom (as on the N93). And, in case you were wondering, video capture is at the Nseries ‘standard’ of 352 by 288 pixels and 15 frames per second, OK for casual clips of family and friends but ultimately blocky. So if you buy the N73, it’s going to be for the stills capability.

It’s worth noting that, as alluded to above, camera performance in dim conditions is less than stellar, as with virtually all phone-based cameras – there simply isn’t enough light to produce good results on such a small CMOS sensor. Still, the N73 is no worse than other similar cameras and in fact I was quite impressed with results in pitch black conditions using the built-in LED flash, which is used both for auto-focussing and taking the actual picture.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The N73 is a successor to the N70 in terms of form factor and looks, at least, with an almost identical form factor, size and key layout. It’s light at 116g. There are lots of detailed differences though, many of which aren’t necessarily positive, so bear with me while I talk you round the hardware.

The most obvious difference is the screen. It’s a full 2.4″ diagonal, the same fabulous display as in the N93 but thankfully this time not waving around on the end of two swivel joints. Resolution is 240 by 320, a definite improvement from the old 176 by 208 pixel standard, even though fonts do still look a little blocky on the large screen.

Away from the screen things are not quite so rosy. The overall construction of the N73 screams ‘plastic’ at the top of its lungs. The silvery keypad feels cheap, with a horrible ridged top to each numeric key and a joystick and surround that look as if they belong in your local ‘pound’ shop. Squeeze in the side of the N73 and you’ll feel a distinct flexing, with an accompanying ghastly creaking noise. And to keep this noise company there’s a rattle from the camera slider on the rear of the phone, which doesn’t seem to have been made of sturdy enough plastic.

Below the keypad is  the miniSD slot, hidden behind a very close fitting door. The manual says to use a fingernail to open it, but in my case I had to resort to a jeweller’s screwdriver and a few scary moments in order to get at the card slot. Admittedly, few of us change cards very often, but I can’t see why so great lengths are taken to protect the card slot when the just-as-vulnerable Pop Port and power socket are completely exposed a couple of millimetres below.

On top and bottom of the phone are cosmetic ‘grilles’, hiding both stereo speakers and microphone. Maybe it’s just me or maybe these are supposed to be ‘retro’ but I found them unattractive.

The right hand side of the N73 is devoted to buttons. Several of them. At the top is a rocker switch, marked with a zoom icon and designed for zooming in and out in the camera and in displayed Gallery images. It also, sensibly works in telephony, for changing volume, and with the same function in the Music Player and RealPlayer.

At the bottom is the main camera shutter button, in the same location as the ‘alternative’ shutter on the N70. This works well, in conjunction with the camera interface, working exclusively in ‘landscape’ mode. So far so good.

The middle button is for ‘Review’, i.e. Gallery>Images and Videos under an assumed name. Now, while I applaud the extra hardware shortcut to an application that’s going to be heavily used in such a device, there’s a problem. Unlike the zoom and shutter buttons, which you can press by accident 99% of the time without incident (with the camera shutter closed), the Gallery button launches or switches to the application, as designed, which in normal candy bar/portrait mode is almost certainly not what you want to happen when you simply pick up your phone. Here’s hoping that this button also gets locked out with the shutter closed in an upcoming firmware update.

Nokia have been rather clever with the way Gallery has been implemented on the N73. It’s actually impossible to ‘Exit’ it, with the application merely being sent to the background. I’m pretty sure this is to speed up thumbnail creation. With images at 3.2 megapixels and over 1MB each, it takes 20 seconds or so at least, for each thumbnail to be built, so by arranging for Gallery to chug along in the background, the processor time can usually be sneaked in between whatever else you’re doing, so that when you next press the button, up pop the thumbnails, all ready for viewing.

There’s a new, advanced ‘slideshow’ mode here, with the option to automatically ‘pan and zoom’ around your images during playback. It’s a gimmick though, because the photos shimmer and wobble as they change on the small LCD display. There are a variety of photo editing effects, as on the N93, but each of them is also pretty limited and back in the real world, you’re going to be doing more serious things with your images on your desktop. The most you’ll be doing on the smartphone itself is using the ‘Web upload’ facility to send original or downsampled images to an image service such as Flikr (the only one with shortcuts built-in here).

At least all three buttons light up when the camera slide is opened, a nice touch. Indentations on the slide help you open it one-handed, after which you’re well and truly in landscape mode, with the N73 held like a traditional digital camera. Held in two hands like this, the top buttons are in just the right places and the new Camera application, as debuted on the N93, is now streamlined and well implemented. Switching between image/video modes is now the default action on the navigator and shown on the strip of pop-up icons overlaid on your camera image.

Just as on the N70, there’s a good LED flash system, with it activated during focussing and during actual image capture. And, just on the N70, I’m sure a utility will be along shortly letting you keep the LED on to use the N73 as a torch.

Back in portrait/smartphone mode, there are less innovations, though this is still a very solid multimedia smartphone. It’s S60 3rd Edition, of course, and Nokia have continued the trend of fiddling with the placement of application icons in every single device. Whether this is simply because they believe different devices need different application emphasis or whether they simply aren’t happy with the ‘mix’ yet, I couldn’t say. But at least some thought is going into the initial user experience, with the first six icons being Contacts, Messaging, Calendar, Music, Gallery and Games – pretty much what the newcomer would want to try first. Below these are three Internet shortcuts (Search, Services and Download!), with three folders endnig out the ’12’ and providing homes for the majority of the S60 mini-apps. All pretty logical, though I really hope Nokia standardise on a layout sometime soon. Maybe this one is ‘it’.

In use, the N73 isn’t particularly speedy, but it isn’t slow either. Any experienced S60 user will feel very quickly at home. The design choice of the joystick won’t be too everyone’s tastes though and some games, in particular, will suffer – the N70’s navigator key was far, far faster for game use.

After booting, the N73 follows the S60 3rd Edition trend so far by having just over 20MB of RAM free, although doing anything that involves landscape mode (e.g. starting Camera or Gallery) will knock 4MB off this immediately. So, the usual multi-tasking caveats apply with regards to the really heavy RAM-hungry applications, such as Opera Mini, Web or a sat-nav solution.

In terms of connectivity, there’s infrared and Bluetooth but no Wi-Fi, another differentiator from the N93. Not that I missed it, normal GPRS/3G data seemed to work just fine. And the N73 is quad-band, so the one model should work more or less anywhere in the world, which is good to see.

This being an Nseries device, there’s Media Player 10 integration and WMA file support, along with stereo audio output. Music quality didn’t seem as crisp as on other Nseries devices though, despite me fiddling with the built-in ‘Equaliser’ and the maximum volume of playback was only just sufficient in a quiet office – I sincerely doubt that the N73 could currently power music playback in a noisy environment such as a train station or on a bus. Visual Radio is also here, though why they persist with this rather than simply calling it ‘Radio’, I really don’t know.

It’s a fairly standard Nseries software bundle, with the viewer component of Quickoffice and Adobe’s PDF reader. There’s also Yahoo Go!, if you’re a big Yahoo fan, though watch your data useage and battery life if you do use the application. There’s also a completely pointless application shortcut to F-Secure’s Anti-Virus, included presumably to do a favour to their fellow countrymen – guys, you’re saying ‘Hey, we’ve got a new OS and it’s fabulously secure’ but then also saying ‘Err… better check out some anti-virus, just in case’. There’s a mixed message here that could do with resolving.

I’ve been through something of a roller-coaster ride with the N73. My first impressions were awful, with the over-plastic feel and noisy case, plus tacky joystick and number keypad. But then I was completely bowled over by the stills camera and the pendulum swung in the other direction.

The N73 may yet be an adequate successor to the N70, provided the Gallery activation key problem is fixed in firmware and provided a little more attention is paid to hardware quality control back at Nokia’s manufacturing plant. Other niggles, such as the low volume of the built-in Music player may have to be solved in a component change for future manufactured devices.

With the way firmware updates can significantly improve the performance and functionality of a device, especially in these days of DIY updating, it’s tricky to give a one-off verdict. The N73 certainly has potential, and the form factor and general camera capabilities are extremely impressive.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N73.php

Sony Ericsson M600i

Design

The M600i has an understated elegance in its simple block form factor (which it shares with the W950). Angular edges are offset by rounded edges and the overall impression is one of compact solidity. The M600 is available in black or white. Both colours have cyan highlights set into the casing, stylus and keyboard lettering. For a business-focussed device it’s stylish and in common with many other Sony Ericsson devices its looks should draw attention.

At 107mm x 55mm x 16mm the M600 is smaller than many of its competitors and is far nearer the tradition phone monoblock form factor than other thumb keyboard-equipped devices. When compared to an E61, Treo or Blackberry the difference in width is noticeable. As a result the M600 feel much more comfortable in the hand when used as a telephone and, weighing in at 112g, further reiterates the idea that the M600 is a much more pocketable device.

The relative thinness of the phone impresses too, because although it is a matter of only a few mm of difference, proportionally the difference is quite significant when compared to other smartphones. The M600 is thin for a phone and even thinner for a smartphone.

The front of the phone is dominated by the keyboard and the large QVGA, 262,000 colours TFT touchscreen. The keyboard is a cross between a traditional number keypad and a full QWERTY keyboard. Instead of the usual single letter per key, the M600 has keys with split personalities. Each key is concave (each edge is raised up slightly) and each edge (left and right) can be clicked individually. Consequentially each key has two letters on it (A and S, E and R, T and Y and so on). As a result, fewer keys are needed to cover the alphabet and each key can be bigger. In effect two smaller keys have be merged together to make one larger key with the resulting key being able to be pressed down in two separate ways either side of a pivot.

The central 9 keys operate as a normal number keypad in certain situations. In these cases the keys can be pressed down on one edge or in the centre of the key to get the appropriate number. In full QWERTY mode the numbers can be accessed via the ALT key which also gives access to the secondary elements such as punctuation. The shift key operates similarly to give capital letters.

The bottom row of the keyboard has five keys, including the ALT and SHIFT keys on each end, one key in from these are the left and right arrow keys (also doubling as the star and hash keys on the number keypad). These are used to give left and right control at various points in the UI, such as navigating between tabs or moving through the list of potential predicted words when entering text. The arrow keys, together with the scroll wheel, back button and the finger-operated on-screen softkeys are all that is needed to navigate around the phone’s functions. This one handed usage works well, although it is hampered by the need to switch the thumb between the various buttons which are (physically) some distance apart.

The end result is surprisingly effective and, although not as quick as full key variants, it is a good compromise in view of the space the keyboard occupies. Furthermore the onboard word prediction software, licensed from the Zi Corporation, makes the most of the keyboard and helps increase the speed of text entry.

I found in testing that the M600 keyboard was not as quick as the E61 or other ‘pure’ thumb keyboards, but the difference is small, and after an initial learning period anyone should be able to achieve acceptable results. As with other thumb keyboards, those with larger fingers may have problems, although the M600 will probably be less problematic than others because of the generously sized keys.

If you do not like such keyboards or plan to do a large amount of text entry then the M600 may not be suitable, but for short message replies and limited data entry the keyboard is more than adequate. It is worth noting that the M600 also supports input via handwriting recognition (good) and an on-screen keyboard (poor), although these are best seen as secondary options.

On the left hand side of the device there is a three-way scroll wheel (up, down and in) and the back key. These are used to navigate through the phone’s user interface, and the majority of functions can be accessed using these. The basic principle is that the scroll wheel is used to highlight and then select items from a list while the back button is used to go back to the previous level. On Sony Ericsson UIQ 2 phones this functionality was assigned to the five-way scroll wheel, and the separate back button on the M600, although less confusing initially, feels like a backward step. In order to use the back button you have to take your thumb off the scroll wheel which adds time and may be fiddly for those with less nimble fingers.

The top of the device has the stylus slot, an infrared window and the power button. On the right hand side is the one customisable hardware button. By default this launches the Web browser but this can be changed to other actions in the settings. Unfortunately the hardware button is a little small and this somewhat limits its usefulness. Immediately below the hardware button is the access for the M2 memory card slot. This is hot swappable and provides memory extension options. The M600 ships with a 64MB card which, in contrast to the respectable 50MB of internal memory, is of limited use. If you plan to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the device you will need to invest in a bigger card. The bottom of the device has the connector port for power and USB connections.

UI Concepts

The M600i is the first device available on the market using UIQ 3, which is the first major public revision of the UIQ interface. UIQ 2 was a pen based/touchscreen user interface used by Sony Ericsson, Motorola and BenQ and aimed at high end smartphone devices. By contrast UIQ 3 can be used by both touchscreen (pen) and non-touchscreen (keyboard) based devices.

In the move from 2 to 3 there have been a huge number of changes, and many of the UI paradigms in UIQ have been radically overhauled. We will be looking into some of these changes in later articles. What really matters to the average user is that UIQ 3 is now a lot more flexible, supports more features and can be run on a greater variety of device types.

In contrast to UIQ 2 (which was something of a ‘one trick pony’), UIQ 3 is now an important part of Sony Ericsson strategic plans. Other UIQ 3 devices that have already been announced are the P990 and W950 and it is likely that there are more on the way. This is good news for users as it should be possible to transfer between devices with similar operation and because it should encourage the development of compatible third party software and services.

While Sony Ericsson are not, yet, committing to UIQ 3 to quite the same extent that Nokia has with S60, it is set to become a major platform for them. In essence, Sony Ericsson’s platform strategy is based on two major elements – a standardised Java platform for all devices and secondly UIQ 3 as a platform for mid to high end devices. Therefore the M600 is something of a watershed for Sony Ericsson and very much looks to the future.

UIQ 3 comes in three flavours: SoftkeyStyle (non touchscreen, keyboard with softkey navigation), PenStyle (touchscreen, with pen navigation) and SoftkeyStyleTouch (touchscreen with pen and softkey navigation). SoftkeyStyleTouch is a mix of both PenStyle and SoftkeyStyle and in theory can be used either one handed (using the keyboard), or two handed (using a pen and the touchscreen). The P990i uses PenStyle while the M600i and W950i use SoftkeyStyleTouch. This is a very important difference as it gives the M600i and the P990i a notable difference in style and operation to both the P990 and its P series predecessors.

This difference is immediately apparent in the screen layout which, in contrast to the P990, provides for both one handed and two handed (pen) based usage. UIQ 3 provides for a lot of customisation of UI elements (such as layout and position of elements) and the implementations of the UI on different devices can vary considerably. This is most noticeable between the PenStyle P990 and the SoftkeyStyleTouch M600 and W950, but there are differences even between these two devices.

In practice, what this means for the M600i is that it is possible to use the phone in three distinct ways. Firstly as a one handed device using the hardware keys in conjunction with fingers on the touchscreen softkeys, secondly as a two handed device, using the stylus together with either handwriting recognition or the keyboard and thirdly a mixture of the first two options at different times.

The M600i does work as a one handed device, but the hardware design does let this down to a certain extent. Unusually for a device that is designed to be used one handed, the M600 has neither a direction pad nor physical keys for the on screen softkeys. The lack of physical softkeys is not an issue once the initial reluctance not to use fingers on the touchscreen has been overcome, but the lack of a direction pad does mean that navigating the UI can seem cumbersome. The scroll wheel, back key and arrow keys do the same job but their physical separation is inconvenient. There are some places in the UI, such as configuration dialogs, where arrow key behaviour can appear to be inconsistent because of different UI widgets, and the lack of a directional keypad is noticeable when moving through large blocks of text.

In two handed, or pen based usage, the M600 performs very well. While it lacks the immediate convenience of one handed usage, the touchscreen user experience is both extremely intuitive and quick to use.

In practice you will probably find yourself mixing the two styles depending on the situation. The pen-based approach makes more sense when working on documents or on a significant task whereas one-hand usage makes more sense for quick tasks such as answering the phone or sending a quick message. The inevitable result of this dual usage approach is that instead of optimising for one particular usage scenario both must be catered for and this does result in both software and hardware compromises. As a result, there can be something of a feeling in both hardware and software design of falling between two stools.

UIQ 3 is relatively unusual for smartphones in that it is not associated with a simpler or alternative UI. For example Windows Mobile has clear links to PC Windows, while S60 has usage patterns inherited from Series 40. This UI baggage has both advantages and disadvantages. The upgrade path to UIQ 3 is not clear, nor is there is a familiar ‘PC like feel’ to make new users comfortable. Instead there is a learning curve which may initially discourage new users. Switching UI or platforms is not always an easy thing to do as existing usage patterns must be forgotten and new ones have to be learnt.

However UIQ deserves a lot of credit for creating a mobile task-orientated intuitive user experience that is reasonably easy to pick up. More crucially there are also a multitude of powerful extra features and shortcuts lurking beneath the surface, which become apparent with increasing familiarity.

The new UI is not perfect – there are occasional inconsistencies, but UIQ 3 is more approachable for novices than many other mobile platform user interfaces. Users who are more familiar with existing platforms may not be as happy as they will find that UIQ 3 does not always do things in the same way as their existing device.

UI Reality

In looks UIQ 3 is reminiscent of UIQ 2, but there have been major changes. The softkey bar (with up to three items) and the status bar are shown at all times with the middle four fifths of the screen changing depending on the circumstances.

The softkey bar is the key to navigating the device. It can have between one and three buttons. The default action (pressing in the scroll wheel) is the central button, the right hand button is mainly used for the ‘More’ action which brings up a menu containing further options. The left hand button is used for secondary actions or shortcuts. In addition to these softkeys there is generally either a back button or close (x) button on upper right part of the screen.

The ‘home’ screen of the device is the activity screen which is similar to the today screen or Active Idle screen found on other devices. It has two major elements – an expandable list that summarises calendar entries, new messages, due tasks, missed calls, and currently-playing music – and a line of four icons to quickly launch applications. All of the elements are customisable in some form so it is possible to tailor the home screen of the device to personal preferences quite effectively. The activity screen can be accessed by pressing the back button repeatedly until the UI returns to the home screen, or by holding down the back button for a second or so. In real use it is never more than a second or so away.

One of the shortcuts of the activity screen is the main menu icon which takes you to the main menu (application launcher) which can be shown as a list or a grid and will be familiar to anyone who has used a mobile UI. The combination of the activity screen and main menu screen works well.

The status bar, positioned at the top of the screen, contains the usual indicators for new messages, battery strength, Bluetooth status, and many more, but it also has two additions – the status bar menu and a shortcut to Task manager.

The status bar menu provides quick access to creating new tasks or actions (such as calls, messages, appointments, notes and contacts), to connections (Bluetooth, USB, IrDA), to volume control, and to keylock. Since the menu can be accessed at all times this provides for very quick access to common telephone-related tasks. Unfortunately this menu can only be accessed using the touchscreen which hampers its usefulness in one handed mode.

Task manager is much more than the name implies, but at a basic level it allows you to quickly switch between applications. Unlike UIQ 2, UIQ 3 doesn’t tamper with an application’s state when you switch away from it – this, together with Task manager, means the M600i is a true multi-tasking device. Task manager can be accessed from the shortcut on the status bar (again not easy in one handed mode) but it is also present in most application menus. It is also possible to set the hardware button on the right of the device to point to Task manager, which is something I would recommend. Task manager is made up of two tabs – recent and open – both of which list applications. The recent tab has a shortcut to the activity and main menu screens together with a list of recently used applications all of which can be switched to with a single key press. The open tab is a more traditional task manager – it lists the currently running applications and allows you to switch to them or to end them. The end result is an effective way to switch between applications in a way that is more flexible, intuitive and fast than a traditional application launcher.

Finally in UI usage terms it is worth examining the approach to links between applications. There is a strong emphasis on application chaining, which is the calling of one application from another to carry out a specific task path. For example in contacts it is possible to send a message from the contact record screen, this calls the messaging application, once the message has been sent the phone return to the contact record. For the users this means thinking less in application terms and more in task orientated terms. For a mobile device this approach makes a lot of sense (as on most other Symbian OS-based devices to varying degrees) and it is this strong application chaining that underlies much of the ease of use of UIQ.

Messaging and Office

The M600i is first and foremost a messaging device and it is this element which must measure up in the first instance. Fortunately the M600 has an excellent unified messaging application. Voicemail is now integrated into the Messages application as a shortcut. New messages, regardless of type, are created from a single shortcut point which is quicker and more straight forward than creating messages from within the appropriate inbox.

SMS, MMS and beamed files are combined into a single Messages inbox. The M600i supports both POP and IMAP standards and allows for the use of IMAP Idle and scheduling of POP downloads to bring quasi push email to standard email accounts. The comprehensive scheduling options and the ability to download just headers, emails below a certain size or a limited number of emails give great flexibility in email retrieval.

Push email is also supported, with all the major vendors promising M600i support. At the time of writing, both the Blackberry and Microsoft Exchange solutions were available. The Exchange solution is provided as a free download from the Sony Ericsson web site (the SIS file is also on the memory stick that ships with the device) and is a branded version of DataViz’s RoadSync solution. The Exchange sync works as expected and allows for the synchronisation of email, contacts, calendar and tasks. Unfortunately there is no option to automatically switch off push or sync at weekends or in the evenings. As with other mobile solutions, email sync is limited to the basic inbox, sent and drafts folder.

It is also possible to set up a PC Sync email inbox which syncs emails from a PC email client such as Outlook.

Each standard email, push email system or synced email box has its own Inbox and set of folders. As a result the M600i offers a flexible messaging device even for those with multiple email accounts. Each Inbox can optionally be shown on the activity screen giving an at-a-glance view of new messages. New messages are also heralded by a new message dialog which pops up on screen, optionally with an accompanying sound alert.

The M600i’s attachment handling out of the box is impressive too, thanks to the inclusion of Pdf+ (mBrainSoftware) and Quickoffice, which between them should cover the majority of email attachments. Quickoffice is able to both view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Quickoffice is an impressive achievement and is one of the best office suites available for mobile devices. The UIQ 3 version has received a number of upgrades in both the document round-tripping and functionality departments. The large majority of users will find that if they use Quickoffice to edit their documents on the road they will be returned to the office with full original formatting intact. New features include an impressive landscape mode which makes the most of the screen when editing larger spreadsheet files.

PIM Applications

UIQ has always had strong PIM application and the M600i continues this tradition. The Calendar application makes good use of the available screen space. The touchscreen is well utilised too – it possibly to move events by dragging and dropping them to a new time. Folders (or categories) continued to be supported in UIQ 3 although rather than being part of the menu bar they are accessed via the More menu. Calendar is well specified and boasts an impressive list of features including recurring events, tentative events, meeting requests.

The Contacts application is similarly well laid out and the contact database allows comprehensive information to be stored for each contact. The search functionality is a little disappointing allowing only first name, last name, or company name to be searched at one time. This means you either have to switch the sorting to the appropriate type or remember the last name of your contacts when searching. On the plus side a long press of any of the keypad keys bring you to the Contacts application from the activity screen and there is good integration with the rest of the phone’s applications.

In addition to Contacts and Calendar there are basic Notes and Tasks applications. The Notes application supports both text and handwritten notes. A few additional applications are provided in the Tools Folder including  Calculator, Converter, Time, Stop Watch and Timer applications.

Web

Access to the Web is courtesy of a branded version of the Opera browser. The browser supports a full range of web standards and is quick to render most pages. Pages can be viewed either in ‘full web’ mode or can be viewed in ‘fit to screen’ mode. The second of these can be hit and miss, but is generally much easier than scrolling around a page in full web mode. The browser can be used in portrait of landscape mode, with the second option generally giving a better user experience.

The browser lacks the wow factor of the Web browser on S60 3^rd Edition phones (no page overview, no visual history), but is otherwise fully featured and Opera is the best of the more traditional mobile browsers.

A basic RSS reader is included with the M600i. Features include the ability to schedule updates and there is good integration with the browser both for adding new feeds and opening feed items. However the lack of an import option means it is best used for mobile specific feeds or for a few of your favourite desktop feeds.

Multimedia and Entertainment

For a business focused device the M600i has impressive multimedia support. Music (MP3, AAC, AAC+), video (3GP, MP4) and web streams are supported via the Media player.

Video performance is good, with full screen landscape playback a single touch of the screen away. Getting video files into a compatible format may prove more troublesome for users as the M600i is quite picky about the MP4 codecs that it supports. The music player is particularly impressive with a well laid out application that includes a comprehensive set of features including playlist management (including editing), music library management, album art, equaliser presets and a mega bass feature. A nice touch is the ability to filter the music shown in the music library to exclude lower quality files or specific file types.

The quality of the stereo output is excellent through the supplied headphones, although a proprietary connector is used. The M600i supports the A2DP Bluetooth Profile for stereo music playback over Bluetooth and the music application includes a nifty feature allowing you to control where the audio is sent (headset, handset speaker etc).

Other multimedia applications include Picture gallery for viewing and editing images, Play Now for accessing online downloads, Sound recorder and Music DJ for creating ringtones.

Picture gallery is an impressive application with comprehensive image management features and a useful folder slideshow feature. Integration with the rest of the phone is good – from Picture gallery you can add pictures to contacts, set images as wallpapers and send MMS messages. The editing features are good too, with photo correction, image cropping and the ability to add clip art, text and frames to images. However, because the M600i lacks a camera its potential use is relatively limited. MusicDJ is a curious inclusion in the software bundle – I wonder how much use it will get on a business focused device is open to debate.

Two games are included out of the box – QuadraPop – a derivative on the tile falling/moving game genre and the inevitable businessman-friendly Vijay Singh Golf game.

As a Phone

With everything else that is packed into the device, it is easy to forget the M600i is a phone too. Thanks to its slim proportions the M600 is comfortable in the hand and feels like a normal phone. However the screen does tend to get covered in finger and ear prints, requiring the occasional cleaning.

All the usual phone functions, such as speakerphone, hold, reject with SMS, calling cards, call log, speed dial, voice control, conference calling and more are present and easily accessible. Voice features remain a central part of the device and call quality and signal strength/connectivity are good.

The voice control (accessed by holding the jog dial in on the standby screen) does required the recording of voice tags, which seems out of date compared to speaker independent recognition systems found in competing devices.

The call log includes a number of useful functions including the ability to add notes to a call entry, remove or edit specific entries, make follow up calls or send follow up messages and view total call counters.

There are no profiles on the M600i, although there are offline (accessed via the power button) and silent (accessed via a long press on the # key) modes.

Connectivity

As a dual mode UTMS/tri-band GSM phone, the M600i has good connectivity for the European and Asian market. However, the absence of the 850 GSM band (USA usage) and EDGE (fast data on non-3G areas) is disappointing. The absence of WiFi is perhaps not surprising given the device dimensions, but it would have been a welcome extra.

Local connectivity is very well catered for with USB, Bluetooth 2.0 and IrDA options. USB can be used in phone mode or file transfer mode. In file transfer mode the device’s memory stick appears as a USB mass storage device when plugged into a PC. The USB cable doubles as a charging cable which is a welcome features for road warriors. The Bluetooth implementation is impressive with fast and stable transfers and support for multiple Bluetooth profiles including the more unusual HID and A2DP.

PC Suite has much functionality, stability and ease of use improved from earlier Sony Ericsson smartphones. The phone can be synced locally with Outlook, Lotus Notes, Lotus Organizer and the Windows Address Book (Outlook Express). Wizards walk you through the set up process and during the testing period there were no problems with the PC Suite Sync software. The phone also has a full SyncML client which can be used via a local connection or over the air.

Other features of PC Suite include a backup manager, file manager for viewing and transferring files to and from the phone, an application installer, a MMS message composer, and a mobile networking wizard. The mobile networking wizard lets you use the phone as a modem when tethered to a PC.

Sony Ericsson also supply the Disc2Phone software to assist with getting music from CD and the PC onto the device, Adobe Photoshop Album SE to manages images, and the free Quicktime for video playback.

Real world usage

On the whole the M600i is very responsive and a definite improvement over earlier UIQ phones which tended towards sluggishness. There are occasional slow pauses between actions, but these were generally not at critical junctures.

The M600i has a reasonably generous amount of RAM, but I did find that on some occasions (such as when opening large web pages with multiple applications running in the background) that applications would close in the background, indicating that memory was getting low. While this is not a major concern, it can be irritating when multi-tasking especially with the PIM applications. Thankfully, applications open quickly and the task manager allows fast access to recently open applications, which goes some way to dampening this issue.

Battery life is acceptable with the M600i managing a full day of heavy usage with continuous push email messaging functionality. With lighter usage the battery will stretch to several days, but is unlikely to approach the claimed 14 days of standby time.

As with other advanced smartphones, early adopters have reported that there are a few bugs. For example, attempting to create a new task from the activity screen throws an error. Fortunately the M600i has user upgradeable firmware and those with early firmware will certainly benefit from updating the software.

As mentioned earlier, the M600i is the first UIQ 3 phone on the market, and as a result the amount of third party software available is limited. This situation will improve over time, especially as additional UIQ devices become available, but may be a consideration for early adopters. Sony Ericsson have included a Try and Buy icon on the phone which is a shortcut to an on device web page which lists a number of third party applications which are stored on the memory stick. These include the Mobipocket Reader, the excellent Handy Safe and Handy Day from Epocware (although this bundle is better value), and various other applications and games. It is encouraging seeing Sony Ericsson make such a move as it introduces novice users to the idea of installable third party applications. Further applications can be obtained from the Sony Ericsson Application Shop (web based) which also enjoys a shortcut on the phone.

Conclusion

The M600i is an immensely powerful device loaded with functionality. If you are looking for a small sized messaging orientated phone then it has a lot to offer. While the absence of a camera and additional connectivity options may put some people off, the M600i meets its target audience head on. In contrast to earlier UIQ phone, this is not a ‘do everything’ device, rather it is one that through a refined hardware design is targeted at a specific user niche. This niche targeting strategy has been very successful for Nokia’s smartphone range and I expect Sony Ericsson to replicate this success.

Thanks to both the keyboard and the software, the M600i is a capable messaging device. In use it does not entirely measure up to a pure email device such as the Blackberry, but it offers a great deal more functionality in other areas. It is an excellent personal information manager, has strong multimedia credentials and good voice capabilities.

In the M600i, UIQ 3 gets its first outing and although there are a few inconsistencies there is, for those willing to spend some time on the learning curve, a first rate user experience.

The one handed usage is let down by poor key design and placement, but the pen based usage excels. Combining one handed usage and pen based input together means the M600i offers a great deal of flexibility which will make it attractive to a wide range of potential users – from ex-PDA types to feature phone upgraders.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Sony_Ericsson_M600i.php

Nokia N93 (3)

You’ll hopefully have already read part 1 of this review, concentrating on the camera and multimedia side of the N93, its main focus. You’ll also have noted the three month delay between the very first review and this tweaked article – this was firstly to allow us time to use the N93 in real life, intensively, to find out any gotchas first-hand, and secondly to allow Nokia time to fix the intial teething problems and get us some kind of stable firmware (our main test unit ended up using firmware v11.0.034, released by Nokia on 16th October 2006). The wait has been worth it and the number of serious problems we encountered has been drastically reduced, with no spontaneous resets and no more erroneous ‘Out of memory’ errors in Gallery – the N93 now feels very stable.

So – the huge black (or silver) bulk of the N93 as a general day to day smartphone. Does it work? It’s compact enough when closed, in that it’s only slightly wider and longer than most other S60 smartphones, but when opened it’s around 8 inches long and that’s an awfully big implement to wrap around your face when making a call. Still, when your friends or colleagues start laughing at you, just twist the screen round and have it in camcorder mode in under a second. And then twist the screen again and turn it into a landscape-screened mini-laptop. That should shut them up.

You do get used to the size of the N93 after a while, but you’ve also got to be happy with using a smartphone that’s a clamshell, i.e. where you have to open up the device simply to see the main screen – at the end of the day, the cover ‘status’ screen isn’t really good for much more than telling the time and date, and changing the current profile. When texts come in or alarms sound you have to open the cover to see any details at all, unlike the N90 predecessor which had a large enough cover display that these basic textual items were shown at a glance.

The N93’s case is a mix of plastic and metal and, although you’d think that the double-axis screen twist mechanism would be incredibly fragile, the device actually feels reassuringly solid. Yes, there’s a small amount of ‘play’ in the overall screen mount, but the (mainly metal) rotate open mechanism feels professional and reassuring. Also, if you’ve just spent £500 (or tariff equivalent) on this uber-cameraphone then you’re probably not going to be chucking it in your jeans back pocket. As with most high tech, a good (holster) case is always recommended. Nokia provide a trivial cloth pouch, but this doesn’t do any more than keep the dust out.

Either side of the main N93 body are examples of good and bad design. On the left is a most appalling expansion card slot cover; made from a soft, thin plastic and lying exactly where your index finger falls when holding the phone, it never quite fits right and you’ll be pushing and prodding it much of the time, trying to push it properly into the card aperture. On the right hand side of the device is the flash control button mentioned in part 1. Being able to press (or double-press) this for the different LED torch modes is incredibly useful when using the N93 at night – a trivial feature that definitely punches heavier than its weight.

Part 1 of the review also covered the various camera modes, both in terms of software and in terms of form factor, including mini-laptop (TV-Out) mode. This mode works very well with all other S60 3rd Edition applications – I was particularly struck by Rafe’s comment about how it could be used as a poor man’s video conferencing system – and it’s also pretty cool when used in conjunction with a Bluetooth keyboard, as shown here. Despite being ‘only’ 320 by 240 pixels, the screen’s bright, large(ish) and clear and it’s certainly a pleasant way to use the N93, especially when typing ‘Notes’ or using the word processor in the third party Office Suite.

You’ll have read much about 3rd Edition by now, with the usual highlights (security, speed) and downsides (‘like it or love it’ RAM-hungry Web browser, plus the forced lack of compatibility with 2nd Edition apps). The N93 includes a few notable additions and gotchas. Visual radio is part of most of the Nseries and works as well (or as badly, depending on your area) as ever for general FM listening though without its Internet-enhanced ‘visual’ services in 99% of areas. Barcode is a reader for encoded URLs and email addresses, apparently littered through magazines although I couldn’t find any to test it on. As with Visual Radio, I suspect this is a technology who’s time is yet to come.

Quickoffice, or at least the viewer component of it, and Adobe Reader add some heavyweight functionality to the N93, whilst three high quality games, SRE (System Rush Evolution, alluded to in part 1 of this review), 3D Snakes and Card Deck, provide plenty of playable entertainment.

Music playback is another N93 strongpoint, this being one of its Nseries and designated as an XpressMusic branded device. The CD-based install routine adds an extra driver to Windows, so that when you hook up the N93 by USB and choose ‘Media Player’ mode, Windows Media Player 10 on the PC then picks the device up as a sync option and getting your playlists across to the smartphone is as easy as clicking one button. It helps to set up Media Player itself properly, of course, and I was very happy with the WMA music quality when ripped at 64kbps, equating to around 30MB per music album, a paltry amount compared to the huge amounts of disk real estate needed by the main N93 video camera. Bass and treble came across superbly and the HS-23 stereo headset provided will be perfectly sufficient for all but real audophiles.

Connectivity is very strong, as with almost all S60 3rd Edition devices, with 3G, EDGE, GPRS, infrared, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, in addition to the UPnP mentioned already. In our tests, Wi-Fi wasn’t particularly sensitive (though on a par with the E61 and E70) but it should cope with basic home and office wireless Internet connectivity.

So much to talk about, so many plus points. But, as alluded to in part 1, there are a few software issues that are worth mentioning. For starters, there’s the way that camera stays active when you twist the screen back into clamshell mode, prior to closing it, with the result that you see yourself as the screen closes and again when opening it next time – you have to manually ‘Exit’ the camera application; Nokia may argue that this is a ‘feature’, but everyone I’ve seen with an N93 hates this behaviour. Then there’s the fact that there’s currently no way to reject an incoming call with the N93 closed.

With the recent 11.0.034 firmware update, the N93 has around 24MB of free RAM after starting up, and this is generally sufficient, even when zooming into images or trying to browse large web sites, without having to close all other open applications every time. Thankfully, ‘Out of memory’ errors now seem consigned to history.

The stills camera produces results arguably better than most (but not all) other smartphones in the world, despite problems with compression artefacts and noise, especially evident in anything except optimal light levels. The optical zoom and auto-focussing work very well and produce sharp results. On the video side, the VGA video capture is  extremely watchable on a full-size PC monitor (or TV screen, via the TV-out cable), with almost no dropped frames despite the mammoth 28MB/min data rate. Fast panning is still somewhat jerky though and there’s a distinct rattling noise from the stepper motor used in the zoom mechanism. The recorded audio soundtrack is surprisingly immersive, but suffers from heavy distortion when put into a fairly loud environment. Neither stills nor video are of ‘professional’ quality but they’re still fully up to the job of recording the lives of your family and friends, with no embarassment over blurry video images, and the N93 is clearly the vanguard of a whole new era in home video recording on phones.

The rest of the smartphone is powered surprisingly quickly along, as you’d expect with a 330MHz processor, with no major issues. The over-large clamshell form factor, very much a personal taste, allows for a large numeric keypad with beautifully sculpted keys and a very useable navigator key, just right for both PDA apps and gaming.

The Nokia N93 bears the responsibility of being Nokia’s flagship ‘multimedia computer’ extremely well; at least until the N95 comes along in the first quarter of 2007…

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N93_part_two-the_smartphone_the_summary.php

Nokia N93 (2)

Nokia N93 review: Ringing camcorder

The Nokia N93 has been on the market for some time now and it did arouse a lot of commotion when it was first officially announced. The extraordinary Carl-Zeiss optical zoom combined with a Vario-Tessar lens was enough to rocket the anticipation of Nokia fans to the skies. This combined with video capturing in VGA resolution at a high framerate is an outstanding achievement that not before long was something reserved for the digital camcorders realm. Now the time has come to see for ourselves how good in reality the ground-breaking Nokia N93 is.

Official photos

Key features:

• 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and 3x optical zoom
• Video recording in VGA resolution@30fps
• Twist and Shoot clamshell form factor
• Symbian OS 9.1 S60 3rd Edition UI
• miniSD card slot
• Stereo FM radio
• 50 MB internal memory
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, Infrared, UPnP and TV-out connectivity options
• Rather comfortable keyboard

Main disadvantages:

• Large and heavy
• Picture and video quality not so great
• Optical zoom buzzing gets recorded in videos

The phone is supposed to be delivered in a package along with a Nokia stereo headset HS-23, a Nokia USB cable CA-53, a Nokia TV-out cable CA-64U, a wrist strap, a pouch, and a 128 MB miniSD memory card. All this is market dependent of course, so take that information with a grain of salt.

Dubbed as multimedia computer, the Nokia N93 was highly awaited by our team since the specs sounded more than promising. The eagerness to try it first hand built up as time went on and the first sample pictures and videos captured with the phone started to pop up here and there. The mobile is supposed to be one of the top multimedia phones on the market and it was even voted European media phone of the Year 2006-2007. You can understand our impatience to test it and since you are reading this review, you probably share it, too.

Nokia N93 held in hand

However, it turned out that the striving for making it the utmost multimedia machine has turned the Nokia N93 into the utmost uncomfortable mobile phone to use in your everyday life. The sheer size of the thing makes it a portable device that most probably would end up lying on the shelf besides your digital camera just begging to be taken out on those weekends out of town. What we are trying to say is that the multimedia part of the device has evolved so much that now it’s no more comfortable to carry it with you and take the occasional snapshot from time to time – while this was the original idea when incorporating digital cameras into mobile phones. Nokia has just crossed the line and went too far this time – venturing into an entirely different product category. But when you take a not-so-good digital camcorder, combine it with a not-so-smart smartphone, add up a size that would easily make you start thinking of carrying a bag, and finally put a price tag exceeding that of the latest PocketPCs and smartphones on the market, then… you are in for a highly dissatisfying product.

Nokia N93 is available in two colors – silver and black. Our phone we got to test was the black one.

Nokia N93 silver and black version

Nokia N93 compared to the compact Nokia E50 smartphone

Taking a closer look…

Right in the center of the outer panel of the flip you can see the small secondary display. Below it is the loudspeaker grill.

Nokia N93

On the bottom rim of the flip you can see the Infrared port which blends nicely with the phone’s design and is barely noticeable for an inexperienced eye as well as a rather large eyelet used for the wrist strip supplied with the retail package. We cannot imagine that someone might hang that monster of a mobile on their necks.

Bottom side

The upper part of the handset’s body is taken by the zoom lens. Unlike Nokia N90, the lens cannot be rotated. There is a plastic protective cap, which you might lose soon if you don’t use the supplied string. The swivel joint for the upper part of the clamshell is positioned on the right side of the lens tube. Besides the camera lens and the LED flash, the left side of the handset incorporates the miniSD card slot and the Pop-port for data cable connection and TV-out functionality. Both are hidden underneath protective rubber caps. Right next to the Pop port is the standard Nokia charging port, the tiny one. The miniSD card slot has hot-swap functionality but it’s recommended that you exit all running applications before taking the card out.

Left side

The top part of the phone is rather bare in fact and incorporates only the On/Off key.

Top of the phone • on/off key

The right side of the clamshell is more interesting as it houses the zoom lever. Inside it is a button marked with a red dot. It is used as a shutter key. Below it is a key that is a full copy of the navigation D-pad on the numeric keypad. It’s very convenient to use it with the screen rotated in camera mode. In fact, when you rotate the upper part of the clamshell that way the camera application gets automatically started and the main navigation D-pad gets disabled so you can navigate through the available options only with the side D-pad. Below the side D-pad there is a key used for changing between still camera and video camera modes when you are using the handset as a camera. In any other case a longer press on that key locks the keypad. Below that key there is yet another key that is used to turn on/off the flash. It works even with the clamshell closed, this way allowing you to use the LED as a flashlight.

Right side • Shutter key and zoom lever • side controls

Delving even further…

Opening the clamshell reveals the large, and rather comfortable, we must add, keypad. Besides the navigation keys, there are the standard Nokia smartphone keys such as the Pencil key, the Menu key, the Multimedia key and the correction C-key.

An interesting object you may notice on the one of the close-ups is a small hole in the upper left corner of the keypad marked with “L”. That is the left microphone used for recording the stereo sound in video clips. There is another, “R” or right microphone on the opposite back side of the phone. In fact Nokia N93 doesn’t have any other microphones besides those two little fellows so the “L” microphone is the one used in calls. Keep this in mind when you hold the phone to your head.

Nokia N93 keypad

The keys are evenly illuminated in white color.

Nokia N93 keypad in pitch dark

Above the main display there is the secondary VGA camera used for video calls and a light sensor used for dynamic changing the brightness of the screen in accordance with the current light conditions.

The N93 main display has a pleasant blue tint when the backlighting is off

Mechanics revealed

The swivel joint of the upper part of the clamshell allows it to take several working positions. Besides the normal flip opened mode, there is an imaging mode and a view mode. The imaging mode is used for taking pictures or video. It’s a shame that you cannot use the rotating flip in order to make self-portraits. Indeed you can turn the display in all directions but you can use the camera only in the imaging mode. The second additional mode is the view mode or as we like to call it – the notebook mode. A similar mode is seen in mobiles such as Samsung D550, Samsung D300 and the scrapped Motorola MPx. Although we have to say that the rivals’ implementation is more convenient. Firstly, those three are equipped with a QWERTY keypad. And secondly, the Nokia design has two substantial flaws. On one hand, forgive us the pun, the camera lens in fact gets in your thumb’s way when trying to operate the navigation D-pad in view mode and on the other hand, the upper row of keys – “3”,”6″,”9″, and “#” are in fact almost unusable because the flip covers half of them.

Imaging mode • a set of pictures of the view (notebook) mode

Holding the phone in view mode

Tightly knit construction

The back of the Nokia N93 is occupied by the large battery cover. It has an exceptional construction with several mounting points which allows for a greater stability. It seems possible that this cover won’t become loose even after several years of use. Below it is the SIM card bed and the Nokia Li-Poly BP-6M battery with capacity of 1100mAh. Although we couldn’t find any official information, it seems that the SIM card bed has hot-swap functionality.

Nokia N93 back view • battery cover opened • SIM bed

Being a very large phone, Nokia N93 seems quite solid at first sight. When you actually touch and feel the phone the first impression you might get is of the plastic material it is made of and that leaves a bad memory after all. However, N93 proved us wrong in the end as it turns out to be a device with rather good construction. Its twisting and opening parts worked great and made clear sounds whenever such were expected.

No problems occurred with its top clamshell part and it functioned perfectly. The spinning display seemed well put in place too and there is not risk in suddenly falling down broken. Speaking in general, the construction of N93 may have been slightly better, mostly due to its plastic covers, but the phone is in no way as bad as the N90 model. In fact, it is much better made.

Power-hungry as ever

The battery is supposed to provide the smartphone with up to 3.7 hrs of talk time in WCDMA networks and up to 5.1 hrs of talk time in GSM networks. The expected stand-by time is up to 10 days. Since we had the chance to do a dedicated battery test it turned out that the handset lasted 58 hours when using it in a rather extensive way as follows:

• 3 min of video call
• 25 min of calls
• 20 min of web browsing via Wi-Fi
• 5 min checking email via Wi-Fi
• 15 min playing Snake 3D
• 10 min using the Gallery
• 20 min watching video clips
• 30 min listening to music via the headset
• 40 min listening to radio via the headset
• 5 min using the still camera
• 15 min capturing video
• 10 min connected to PC Suite
• The rest is stand-by

Having those figures in mind it seems that the smartphone is rather power hungry when put though its paces since even a large capacity battery like the BP-6M wouldn’t keep it going for more than 60 hours. Anyway, when left on stand-by for the same time – 60 hours, the phone lost just one of the six battery indicator levels.

The little thing on top

The external display of N93 is an 1.1″ one with 128 x 36 pixels resolution and 65K colors. It indicates the battery status and the signal reception bar as well as icons for missed calls and received messages. This small display has another extra line which is for the caller’s name or number. It also serves surprisingly well as a music player indicator. Legibility in direct sunlight is not a problem once you’ve found the right looking perspective.

The external display

And the large one inside

The main display of the phone is a 2.4″ in diagonal which makes it on of the biggest on the market. Nokia have decided to put a QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) resolution in this model instead of the 352 x 416 pixels resolution from N90. The phone’s display is capable of displaying 262K colors and has a great sunlight protection glass. It also offers a very wide vieweing angle.

Nokia N93 main display • Nokia E50 and N93 display size comparison

Colors and images on N93 are vivid and clear and Nokia deserves compliments for the great job with this model’s display. Pictures taken with the camera are viewed perfectly. The backlighting is also great and has no faults. Only when you browse the web you will notice the difference compared to the highest resolution displays of Nokia N90 and E70.

It does make calls, you know…

Nokia N93 signal reception is just what you would expect from a high-end smartphone – flawless. The loudspeaker of the phone is also good but is not the loudest we’ve seen. Ringtone volume, however, is sufficient enough and is audible even in crowded places. The vibration of the phone is also strong enough. The phone has brilliant speaker quality and the sound during conversations is very clear and without any interferences.

Dialing Dexter’s number

But it doesn’t end with that..

Nokia N93 user interface is identical to the interface used in all other current Symbian smartphone. That is why we are going to use several paragraphs from other reviews.

Nokia N93 runs on Series 60 user interface of third generation. The Symbian operating system works very well on the phone and is quite fast. The only exception is the starting of the camera application, which takes a couple of seconds to load. Generally, there is a nice performance increase in comparison to the previous 2nd generation S60 user interface. We are quite pleased with the response of the operating system and would recommend it sincerely if it wasn’t the incompatibility with the applications written for the previous versions.

Currently, there aren’t that many applications written for this version of Symbian and that seems to be a problem for the owners of any phone with that OS. We expect that this shortage of 3rd party software would be remedied by the end of the year. More and more applications come up every day since all new Nokia phones come with the new version of the OS.

The active display contains information about the network coverage, the battery status, date, time, operator name. If you change the graphic theme you may find different clocks to appear on the active display. There is also the stand-by display row which shows 6 applications you can set and the calendar’s today’s tasks and events. The next lines can be filled with information about missed calls, received messages or e-mails, or the song you’re currently playing.

The phone has an Offline mode which works as an Airplane mode, switching off the phone functionality of Nokia N93 but allowing the user to use the other capabilities of the device. The Offline mode can also be used if you don’t insert a SIM card in the phone. While in offline mode the phone can still provide WLAN and Bluetooth connectivity.

Active stand-by display while phone is in Offline mode

The phone’s main menu can be viewed either in matrix grid of 4 x 3 icons or in list view. If you choose the list view you will be able to see 5 items at a time. Most of the submenus also allow changing the type of view. The same options are available when viewing the menu in landscape mode.

Main Menu icon view • Main Menu list view • Main Menu landscape mode

The Multimedia button brings up on the display a picture of the four ways of the navigation button and the appropriate applications assigned to the four directions plus the confirmation center button. The assigned applications are customizable, of course.

Multimedia menu

Nokia N93 has 50 MB internal memory and a miniSD memory card slot . The phone will come with 128 MB card enclosed in the package. Nokia’s choice of the miniSD card type is very good for the users as those cards are cheap and reach up to 2 GB capacity.

Another great feature of N93 is the voice recognition system which can be used both for dialing contacts and starting applications. It doesn’t need to have your commands pre-recorded, in fact it handles most of the voice commands you give it. The shortcut for starting the voice application is long press of the right soft key.

Voice recognition menu

There are several preinstalled themes on the phone but they don’t seem to make significant changes to the user interface. They change the wallpaper and the color scheme only.

Some of the available themes

Nokia N93 has six default ringing profiles (including the Offline mode). The user can create custom profiles as easily as can modify the existing ones.

Available profiles

There is an interesting option in the settings menu called Reject Call with SMS. It means that after you reject a call, the phone automatically sends a SMS to the caller, explaining why you have rejected his call. This option can be very useful, indeed.

Yes, you’ve seen it already

The phonebook of Nokia N93 looks just like a normal Nokia Symbian phonebook. It has no limit of the contacts as it uses the phone’s free memory and thus can hold an enormous amount of entries. They can be ordered either by first or last name and can be searched by letter-by-letter typing of the desired name.

Phonebook info

New contacts can be assigned more than 30 different fields and numbers. Naturally, you can assign ringtones and pictures to contacts of your choice, but we couldn’t find an option to assign a personal video clip. Synchronization with PC works seamlessly, too. You can actually rename the predefined fields of the phonebook and thus customize them to your needs.

Various fields • Renaming a label

The Calls log of Nokia N93 contains three tabs for Dialed, Received and Missed calls. Every tab can hold up to 10 call records with their date and time. However, if you enter the Log application in the My Own submenu, you will find yourself in a list of all call records and data transfers and sessions which have taken place in the last 30 days. This includes even the WLAN connections.

Calls log

Key taps

Writing messages works like a charm. Being so large, the keypad is very easy to use even for first-timers.

The SMS editor displays a counter of the characters left of the 160 limit. It also displays in brackets the number of separate messages the message will be divided into. The display allows 6 lines to be shown en bloc. Delivery reports appear on the screen when the keypad is not locked. After that, they are stored in a separate folder in the Messaging sub-menu.

Messaging menu • Writing SMS

The MMS editor is very intuitive and easy to use. Multiple email accounts are supported. N93 works with POP3 and IMAP4 protocols. The email client can download either the headers only or the full messages. Attachments are supported as well. This email client manages most user needs regarding email communication but does not take full advantage of the great display.

E-mail inbox • Reading e-mail • Writing an email

Players all around

The Music Player of the N93 is very good. It has an equalizer, supports Playlists and the phone’s loud speaker is very good and loud. The supported file formats are MP3, AAC, m4a, eAAC+ and WMA. Of course, the player can run in the background. When the clamshell is closed, the Music Player can be controlled with the help of the external display and the side D-Pad. The controls of the player are very intuitive. It also manages M3U playlist format seamlessly and can even handle the file automatically if it is placed in the same directory as the music files. A good advice to the users is to use USB 2.0 card readers for transferring music files to the memory card as this way is much faster than the Nokia Pop-port transfers.

Nokia N93 music player • Options • Equalizer

The phone also has a Real Player and a Flash player preinstalled. The FM radio application is very good and the only problem is that it lacks RDS. You can preset and save your favorite stations or you can switch them manually. Nokia N93 radio application is Visual Radio, which means that it can download information from the radio stations about the current song and artist. There aren’t many radio stations that support that service, though.

Gallery

The Picture & Video gallery is a great one and offers very fast response. You can view the pictures and videos both in portrait and landscape framed mode as well as in full screen mode with no visible borders at all.

Gallery • Image & Video gallery in portrait and landscape mode

Once you pick a picture you can zoom it in up to 4 times and view it in detail. The actual zooming is generally fast as is the overall multimedia performance of the smartphone.

Zooming in on a picture

Otherwise the gallery has nice file-manager functionality, meaning that you can select and send multiple files. Besides that the smartphone has the usual file manager that doeas its job pretty satisfactory when it comes to filtering files according to the memory used, marking, moving, copying and managing applications. As for application management there is also a separate Application manager.

Symbian OS file manager

And here at last…

The camera seems to be among the most interesting things about Nokia N93. The 3.2 megapixel matrix along with autofocus and 3x optical zoom with Carl-Zeiss optics has made many people curious about the capabilities of the device.

Nokia N80 3 megapixel camera • view-finder • taking pictures

Just to sum up for the most impatient – we are not so pleased with its performance. Read further on for more details.

Otherwise, the view finder application is very easy to use. It can only operate in landscape mode. The camera supports self-timer pictures, sequence of pictures, different shooting modes (+night mode), white balance, exposure value, different color effects (sepia, black & white, etc.), sharpness, brightness, contrast, color saturation, flicker cancellation. Nokia has chosen to use “scenes”, called “shooting mode”. You can select scenes like Portrait, Landscape, Sport or Night Portrait and the camera will hopefully adjust to the situation. There is a possibility to define your own scene setting.

Camera settings

2.7333x optical zoom

Fitting a zoom lens in a mobile phone is an achievement, no doubt about that. Everyone with digital camera experience knows how much more fun is a camera with zoom. The digital zoom most of the camera phones are equipped with just doesn’t count – using it with full resolution still images makes no sense, you just fill your phone’s memory with useless interpolated data. On the contrary, the optical zoom lens reveals more details when zooming on the target.

While making the zoom test we were surprised to find that the Carl Zeiss 3x labeled lens is actually not exactly 3x. The EXIF data shows that in wide position the focal length in wide position is 4.5mm and in full tele it is 12.3mm. This makes the zoom something like 2.7333x. If however we choose to believe the label on the front of the lens, which states focal range of 4.5-12.4mm than the zoom is 2.7555x. We also measured the zoom by comparing the size of the objects taken in wide and tele position, which confirmed that the zoom range is less than 3x. Comparing the Nokia N93 lens range to a digital camera with known 35mm equivalent focal length revealed that the phone has a 35mm equivalent focal length of about 35-97mm, quite typical for an entry level digital camera.

To test the quality of the lens we made two types of photo sample series. The first one is making a series of photos from one and the same position, this way showing how much more detail the tele position of the lens reveals.

100% crops
wide • mid-zoom • tele • simulated digital zoom

From this test you can see how much more detail the zoom lens resolves. The sharpness of the lens is very good for such a small physical size. You can also see the results of the optical and the digital zoom, of course, there is no comparison. (The simulated digital zoom is produced by resizing the wide sample in an image editing program, a method guaranteed to give better results than the in-camera real time processing).

More zoom samples in full resolution
wide • mid-zoom • tele

The other type of samples are taken from different position and with different lens focal lengths, but framing the object the same way. These tests will show the quality of the lens in tele position – how much details you lose by using the zoom instead of getting closer to the subject. We expected a significant difference in the quality of the wide and tele position for a lens this small, even a Carl-Zeiss branded one.

100% crops
wide • mid-zoom • tele

Well, not surprisingly the best quality is achieved at the wide end, but the results at tele are not that bad. The conclusion here is that if you can, it’s better to use your feet instead of the zoom lever – you will get higher quality photos.

More zoom samples in full resolution (explanation in the text)
wide • mid-zoom • tele

Noisy environment

If you have expected that the more expensive Nokia N93 model would produce higher quality photos than those by the N73 model in all circumstances, than you are wrong. The reason is the zoom lens. The zoom lens in general requires smaller physical size of the image sensor. The smaller size leads to more cramped pixels, which results in higher noise levels. The processing Nokia uses doesn’t help at all, in fact it seems that the sharpening routines even exaggerate the noise. Indeed, you can see that noise is high in almost every picture.

The noise levels are too high.

The noise is not that much of an issue if you are going to use your photos in lower resolution, for web publishing for example. The downsampling is known to mask the noise. The samples in 1024 x 768 pixels resolution look very good.

Nokia N93 photos downsampled to 1024 x 768 pixels

Indoor, where the light is weaker, the noise increases, but not as much as we’ve seen is some other camera mobiles. The indoor photos taken by Nokia N93 are altogether usable.

Indoor samples

When the light is really weak, you can rely on the build-in LED flash. The problem is that the LED is effective only within close range (less than 1m) and only in wide zoom position. We didn’t managed to make even one usable photo in tele position.

Using the build-in LED flash

Macro mode

Nokia N93 is able to take good macro photos without switching to the dedicated close-up mode. In fact the dedicated mode is not very usable, because it switches the auto-focus off. The best macro coverage is achieved at the tele end of the zoom, quite convenient, because there is not need to get really close to the objects, which sometimes blocks the light on the subject.

Macro samples

Nokia N93 produces quite realistic and pleasant colors. The only problem we have noticed is with the flowers from the macro samples – the orange colors in reality looked different. The auto white balance system also works reliably; we didn’t notice any significant problems. The auto-focus system, while not very fast, is reliable, we had just a few out of focus pictures during the testing.

More samples in full resolution

Wide

Mid-zoom

Tele

The secondary VGA camera works in portrait mode because it is supposed to be used for video calls and thus is in portrait orientation.

Video

One of the highly advertised features of the N93 was the DVD-like quality video recording meaning that it shoots in a resolution of 640×480 pixels at the whopping 30 frames per second. Interesting additions to the video recording functionality are the two microphones on both sides of the body used to produce stereo audio for those precious videos. Nokia N93 has various settings to make the most of the video application to suit the user’s taste perfectly.

Some video settings

The phone allows the users to zoom while recording. The sound from the zooming mechanism is also captured in the record although the phone decreases the sensitivity of the microphones while zooming and this way masks it a bit. If you don’t want this sound in your movies, you have the option to disable the optical zoom during filming and rely on the digital zoom only. Anyway, don’t expect the Nokia N93 captured videos to look as smooth as a DVD movie or minDV camcorder footage. What you can expect though is a better video quality than any other phone on the market.

Video samples VGA 30 fps, optical and digital zoom
6.5 MB • 7.3 MB

Video samples VGA 30 fps
digital zoom only 5.1 MB • no zoom 3.4 MB

Nokia N93 uses the free memory and thus has no limit (apart from the memory card free space) for the video records duration. To be able to record longer, you can switch to lower resolution – QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) or reduce the frames to 15 per second.

Video sample QVGA 30 fps 0.9 MB

Indoors, with limited amount of light, Nokia N93 shows surprisingly good results. The movies don’t lose much quality due to the lack of light. In complete darkness, however, the situation changes. If you have hoped the LED will be able to emit enough light for the movies, well, you may be disappointed. Even from as close as 40 cm from the subject, the video camera can be used only in wide lens position and even then the quality is terrible. If you want to use the optical zoom (look at the sample) than you are out of luck, the camera records completely black scenes. Switching to night mode doesn’t help either, it just adds some green tint to the black.

VGA 30 fps indoors 3.8 MB • QVGA 30 fps using LED 0.5 MB

The video camera has image stabilizer function. We must admit that we expected a bit more from it. We made several tests under different conditions and we didn’t managed to see any significant difference when switching the stabilizer on.

QVGA 30 fps
Stabilizer off 1MB • stabilizer on 0.8 MB

In the end, we must repeat that Nokia N93 has excellent video recording capabilities for a phone. Currently, it has no rivals on the market. If we seem a little harsh on the phone, this is only because of the high “DVD-like” expectations.

You’ve seen it on TV

Further on, the smartphone has a TV-out feature which allows it to connect to any standard TV set with the TV-out cable included in the retail box. Once you connect it to the TV set, you can view your pictures and videos on the large screen. The TV-out functionality supports both PAL and NTSC and screen ratio 4:3 and 16:9.

TV-out options

The TV-out functionality has a very nice implementation. The handset starts transferring the current screen image directly to the TV screen as soon as you connect it via the cable. The cable itself transfers video and stereo audio signal.

The Nokia TV-out cable

The TV image is exactly what appears on the phone’s display both in portrait and landscape modes. When you view pictures or video through the Gallery application the TV set receives the multimedia files in a larger resolution than the one on the mobile screen. Thus you can view the VGA (640×480 pixels) resolution videos in their full glory. Unfortunately, that doesn’t hold true for the office applications and the Web browser.

Viewing content on the TV screen

Connectivity – full

The phone supports GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, UMTS, PTT, Bluetooth and Infrared. Nokia N93 works with Bluetooth Specification 2.0. Unfortunately, the A2DP profile is not among the supported profiles which makes impossible the use of stereo Bluetooth headset with the phone. But then again, there is only one Nokia handset currently available on the market that supports that profile – the Nokia 8800.

USB 2.0 is also supported with the USB cable supplied in the retail box. When connected to a PC, one of three modes can be chosen for the handset: “Mass storage” – memory card is available as a removable USB drive, no drivers are required; “PC Suite” – standard mode; “Picture Bridge” – direct access to printer, which supports PictBridge.

The fast data transfer can be used via GPRS, EDGE or 3G UMTS. You can also try the Wi-Fi connectivity, in which case you have to be near a Wi-Fi hotspot.

You can set the phone to detect and connect automatically to such hotspots or you can search them manually. When you are connected, N93 automatically creates an access point for the hotspot and starts using its Internet broadband. The connection speed depends on the distance from the hotspot and on the provider. The signal is displayed as the network signal strength.

WLAN Options

Further on, the phone is UPnP (Universal Plug & Play) enabled. The UPnP technology is the wireless alternative to the well known Plug & Play standard that allows seamless connection between different devices. In the future the UPnP enabled devices which have some sort of wireless connectivity options such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth could easily communicate with other intelligent devices without the need of drivers or user configuration. Thus in several years you could be commanding you entire set of home appliances with the help of your smartphone or PDA only – and what’s more – you could do that from your office.

Browsing the web

Web browsing with Nokia N93 is a sheer delight as is the case with all current Nokia smartphones. There are two separate web browser applications. One of them is much simpler and reminds us of the browser implemented in older models. The second one is entirely a different story. It makes even very sophisticated pages fit on the screen and displays web pages just like on PC. There is no doubt that the great display helps a lot for this.

There is even a mouse cursor which can be operated through the four-way navigation button. Surprisingly, it works great and is very easy to control. A semi-transparent mini-map of the page shows up on the screen when scrolling a webpage. The mini-map can also be accessed by a shortcut – the “8” key. You can zoom in and out on the page using the “•” and “#” buttons. It’s amazing to see how small the text can be and still remain readable.

Most of the sites we visited (including gsmarena.com, take a look at the screenshots) looked exactly like on the PC. Even when loading complex pages, the web browser was operating fast and there was no slowdown in the scrolling speed. The browser also loads Flash clips (not all of them, pitifully) and has no problems dealing with Java Scripts. All-in-all, it’s an impressive job from Nokia. Generally, it’s the best mobile browser we’ve seen.

A great web browser

Note it, plan it, task it

The phone has various organizer applications and features. It features a dual clock. You can set two different times and dates in two time zones. The Calendar has Monthly, Weekly and Daily view. You can assign Meeting, Anniversary, Memo and To-do tasks in the Calendar. You can also put alarms on those assignments.

Calendar: monthly, weekly, and daily view

There is also an Office icon in the main menu and it leads to a folder with Notes, Converter, Calculator, Recorder and Quickoffice. The Converter converts Currencies, Area, Energy, Length, Mass, Power, Pressure, Temperature, Time, Velocity and Volume. The calculator is very simple and easy to use. Regrettably, the Recorder has a one minute limit for voice records. This seems quite illogical since the phone has such powerful features, enough internal memory and a memory card slot.

Converter • Calculator • Recorder • Sample note

The Quickoffice opens various office files such as ones created by MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint and Adobe Acrobat. They can be viewed seamlessly. Zooming, Scrolling, Resizing are supported as well. Regrettably, you cannot modify them in any way. There is also a Data Transfer application in the Tools submenu. It is used to transfer contacts and organizer items from one Nokia phone to another.

Word file • Excel file • PDF file

Further on, the phone has an excellent Tutorial tool which describes in a very user-friendly way the main functions of the phone.

Available tutorials • “DVD Creation” help file

There are several applications preinstalled in the phone: Catalogs, Barcode reader, “Lifeblog”, etc. “Catalogs” is a free application for downloading catalogs of paid content for your mobile such as tools, videos, ringtones, and games. The Barcode reader application is used to decode different types of codes (for example, barcodes and codes in magazines). The codes may contain information such as URL links, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. The Nokia Lifeblog application is used for publishing to your blog directly from your phone. It works with most of the major blog service sites in the world. There are also some printing applications such as the Image print application for printing images from the camera.

Nokia N93 also has Online sharing support. Using it you can share your images and videos in online albums, weblogs, or in other sharing services on the Web. You can upload content, save unfinished posts as drafts and continue later, and view the content of the albums. In order to connect your mobile directly to a service provider such as Flickr you must download a configuration file.

Barcode reader, Nokia Lifeblog

One of the main issues of Nokia N93 is that the relatively new Symbian 9.1 OS is not compatible with applications written for older versions. Thus you would have difficulties finding additional software for this phone. We could only hope that by the end of the summer new 3rd party applications would begin to gradually emerge on the market.

Yet again, a snake pit

N93 has two preinstalled games: Snakes and Card Deck. “Snakes” is a 3D version of the popular Snake game of the Nokia phones. It is quite enjoyable and we found it very amusing. Card Deck is a simple Java game that features a package of several card games like Klondike, Golf, etc… Of course, you can install additional games.

Snake game in portrait mode

Card Deck games

Final words…

Cumbersome and expensive are two words that best describe the Nokia N93. There is no doubt that it is a smartphone with exceptional capabilities. But it would remain a product for the tech buffs only. The advances in digital camera technology are a great thing but in the end it seems that those cannot find their place in a device that you would use conveniently in your every-day life.

Nokia N93 photos

Nokia N93 screenshots

Nokia N93 sample photos

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n93-review-107p10.php

Nokia N93

Foreword

Before getting started, a word of explanation about this review and why it’s in two parts. The N93, perhaps more than any other Symbian OS device, has one huge, dominating raison d’etre, the camera and camcorder functionality. Allied perhaps with the multimedia playback both on-screen and via UPnP and wired TV monitor. This part of the review will cover these areas and is scored as such.

Part two, with its own score, will come in a week or two’s time and will cover the Nokia N93 as a whole, i.e. how well or badly it does as a day-to-day smartphone, in addition to any ad-hoc camera requirements. If you’re desperate for an overall score, you might like to average the two…!

Introduction

At first glance, the Nokia N93 is huge. Closer inspection reveals that, er… it IS huge, but that there’s a good reason for it. The camera module, across the top of the device, has fixed dimensions and these rather dictate the overall thickness and width of the rest of the smartphone. In case you’ve been out of the solar system and out of touch with the smartphone world, and in terms of multimedia relevance, the features you really need to know about are:

• The camera. 3.2 megapixels (2048 by 1536 pixels), with a unique (for S60) 3x optical zoom. What this means in practice is that you can zoom in to a factor of 3 before any digital zooming is applied. So, right up to that point, you still get the full 3.2mp resolution at full quality. Even the Nokia N90, its spritual predecessor, didn’t have an optical zoom.
• The camcorder. The same CMOS array is used, with the same Carl Zeiss optics but without the auto-focus, to capture video at VGA resolution (640 by 480 pixels) at 30 frames per second. Note that this isn’t technically ‘DVD-quality’ (usually 720 by 576 pixels in Europe), but it’s close enough for most practical purposes.
• The screen. The 2.4″ display on the N93 is fabulous. Really. The colours are gorgeous, the contrast is to die for, even outdoors in bright sunlight, and it’s a great complement to the camera functionality.
• The internal and external memory slots. 50MB of internal flash memory is where who should install most of your third party applications, so that you can keep the miniSD card for video capture. You’ll need it. 10 minutes of video (typical for messing around with your family during a day out) will need 280MB. Take the N93 away for a week and you’ll almost certainly be using up the lion’s share of a 2GB card, especially when you factor in photos at over a megabyte a time.
• UPnP. The N93 can connect to and interact with UPnP devices via WiFi. This includes the ability to share files on the N93 so they can be accessed via other UPnP devices or to access files on other UPnP devices (the N93 can copy them to its own memory). The N93 also acts as a UPnP remote control allowing you to control the media shown or played on other devices.
• The Pop-port and TV-out lead. A first for a smartphone, the N93 can drive a TV (or any other AV equipment) directly via the supplied Pop-port to Composite (Red/Yellow/White) lead. This works brilliantlyand from any application, from RealPlayer to general applications to games. A dedicated ‘TV out’ utility lets you choose the TV standard to use (PAL/NTSC) and screen aspect ratio.

The Camera

There are plenty of design issues worth commenting on, too. Having the camera module as part of the main body of the smartphone is more robust than the N90’s multiple-hinge design, but it also limits what can be shot. In order to film something you’ve got to lift the smartphone, open it out into the vertical and then keep the device’s lens pointing straight ahead. While this all sounds sensible, it’s worth noting that the N90 allowed shooting at almost any angle (including behind you) and also allowed photos while the clamshell itself was closed. Thus the N93 seems a lot more restrictive in this regard, but putting it into perspective with humbler smartphones, at least the screen itself can be angled, so that you can position the N93 up high or down low and still be able to use the screen as a viewfinder.

The main shutter button is positioned directly behind the lens, meaning that the very act of pressing it (gently at first to kick off the auto-focus, then harder to take the image) tends to nudge your aim downwards. With practice you can allow for this and brace your grip, but it’s disconcerting at first when taking photos. Video recording merely requires a press to start and a press to stop, of course, so it doesn’t really suffer from the same problem.

The N93 comes with a clip-on lens cap. I haven’t lost mine yet, though it tends to pop off somewhat violently and I’d guess that Nokia will be selling packs of 3 replacement caps on its web site shortly. There’s a little lanyard in the box, but to be honest it’s best just to stick the cap in your pocket when the camera’s being used. There’s also an even more fiddly Pop-port cover that’s, alas, even more loseable.

The 3x optical zoom is operated via a ring jog dial that circles the shutter button. This works well as you easily adjust the zoom before taking a photo. Beneath the shutter button there is a four way navigator. It is used to change the camera settings via a series of pop out icons. These settings include shooting mode (automatic, user, close-up mode, landscape, night and night portrait), white balance (automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent and fluorescent), exposure (+2 to -2) and colour tone (normal, sepia, black and white and negative). This secondary navigator effectively duplicates the main four way navigator of the phone. However, in camera mode only this secondary direction pad can be used.  Due to its position on the side of the phone, it’s necessarily small and is a bit fiddly to use.

Further options can be reached using the options menu, accessed used the second softkey buttton. Although the buttons are on the opposite side of the screen to the other controls, it’s more intuitive than you might think, as you ‘ll be holding the device in two hands most of the time anyway when taking pictures or videos.

In this camera mode, the the options menu includes sequence mode, self timer mode (2, 10 or 20 seconds) and other settings, including captured image size. In video mode, the settings include both video size and an on/off toggle for video stabilization and audio recording.

Beneath the secondary navigator are two buttons (camera/video mode and flash mode). Pressing the latter in camera mode cycles the flash mode between automatic, on and off. In video mode, the button turns the flash LED light on or off. As a bonus, it also works as torch when the phone is closed, a function that’s surprisingly useful.

To use the 3.2 megapixel camera, you must swivel the screen through a right angle, with this action starting the camera application. However in any other mode, ‘Camera’ uses the secondary (VGA/video calling) camera. It is a shame that you cannot switch back to the main camera, to take candid images and videos to your left hand side. One related annoyance is that when you rotate the screen back into clamshell mode, after using the camera, the application stays active but switches to the secondary camera, meaning that you’re taken from your peaceful photographic experience of your subject to seeing an image of your own face – which can come as a bit of a shock!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course, especially with this review’s focus on the multimedia performance. Before going any further, let us state that there’s no way the N93 is good enough to displace a standalone digital camera of similar specification for even semi-professional use. The lens and CMOS array are just physically too small and the handling of extremes of light and dark just isn’t flexible enough. In very bright light there are slightly washed out colours, and in dim conditions (e.g. indoors) there will be lots of picture ‘noise’ and blur on any moving objects. Contrast this with a standalone camera, which will have a large enough lens and enough sensor intelligence to gather and cope with an awful lot more photons of light.

The same applies to video recording, where movies captured on the N93 will be fine for inclusion on home movie DVDs or for transcoding and putting up on web sites, but for any kind of semi-professional use you’ll be disappointed. Quite apart from ‘only’ being VGA resolution and not employing focussing (so you can’t shoot anything closer than a metre away without it being blurred), the MPEG-4 encoding used by necessity means that dark areas of the video picture show all kinds of compression artefacts – fine for showing your uncle Joe and Hilda but distinctly unimpressive when showing off a short video to your boss. There are also minor issues when zooming, with the ‘steps’ in the zooming mechanism very visible optically and audibly (there’s a slight ‘rat-a-tat-a-tat’ noise).

BUT – don’t be disheartened and think that we’re being unduly negative. The N93 is still the best camera/camcorder smartphone we’ve ever used, by quite a margin. And that alone makes it worth considering if you’ve got plenty of stuff to shoot in addition to your normal smartphone requirements. For the majority of people, the results produced will be more than good enough, either for display as desktop wallpapers or in slide shows or as paper prints. The N93 out performs budget digital cameras (~£100) in most areas. What you shouldn’t underestimate is the ‘always with you’ factor. While a digital camera may often be left at home, the N93 will not and as such you are much more likely to be capturing every day life with the N93, not just the camera-ready staged moments.

To illustrate the quality of the N93’s pictures, here are comparison blowups of identical shots of the same object taken on four Nokia smartphones: the vintage 6630, last year’s N70 and N90, and N93. Resolution, quality and detail increase as you’d expect, though the difference between the 1.3 megapixel image from the 6630 and that from the N93 is so marked that you wonder how anyone could be satisfied with the smaller camera. Yet, to put things into perspective, the Nokia 6630’s camera is leagues ahead of the 1.3 megapixel cameras used in many competing feature and Windows Mobile phones, making the N93’s quality even more obvious.

Nokia 6630, N70 and N90:

Nokia N93:

To give you an idea of finished sample photos and videos, there’s a big selection below, along with comments. Playing them back on the N93 itself works very well indeed, thanks to the size and quality of the main screen. Video playback is in RealPlayer, as usual, but it seems to have been tweaked since the last time I looked around its menus and things like starting playback in full screen mode are now a firm option, thankfully.

As with the N90 predecessor, there’s basic editing support for both pictures and videos accessible from the Gallery application. Photos can have the usual Nseries gallery of effects applied, including Sepia, Negative, Brightness, Clip-art, Sharpness, Contrast, Resize and Red eye reduction. Each effect has an appropriate slider or options gallery and applying each effect is fairly quick. Keen photographers will have plenty to fiddle with here, while waiting to get back to their desktops for greater control.

Built-in video editing functions include cutting (cropping) footage, merging clips together, adding a new soundtrack (from a previously recorded file or music track), adding text titles (very, very slow to render), a ‘slow motion’ effect (with configurable speed) and the horribly slow (within the video editor at least) ‘muvee’ system. You’ll almost certainly be doing most video editing on your desktop though, so on-device editing will in most cases be limited to simply cropping clips to delete wasted footage and preserve disk space. Still, it does offer an impressively complete on-device editing solution.

A simpler form of video and image editing is the creation of muvees, styled video clips which mix videos, photos, graphics and text. The output can be quite effective and can, optionally, be optimised for MMS output which can result in something which is actually worth sending as an MMS message.

Gallery also includes an Open online service entry in its options menu. This is for the Flickr integration that was touted at the device’s launch. The online service uses the Atom publishing protocol and will work with other compatible services such as Typepad. Once you have configured the application with your Flickr account details, photos can be uploaded by adding them to a ‘post’ which is then sent to Flickr. This works well for sending one or two photos, but is time consuming for many photos. A better option may be to Conigma’s Shozu application which is more flexible in its destinations and allows for automatic uploads.

Nokia N93 Sample Photos

All pictures are thumbnails, click through for the full size photo. None of the photos have been edited or tweaked.

In automatic mode the N93 performs best in mixed sunny and cloudy conditions. In very bright light, pictures can be over exposed. This can be corrected by manually changing the exposure and/or white balance (to -1 and ‘sunny’ respectively).

The N93 autofocus is the single best feature about the camera. While the Zeiss optics do produce more detail, the auto focus has the most impact on results for amateur photographer.

Colours are generally accurate, but can occasionally be over compensated. For close up works the best results are achieved when adjusting the settings. For most general shots, making settings adjustments makes little difference. Some startling results can be achieved with the on board negative, sepia and black and white filters.

In tricky conditions (varying light) the N93 performs well, although there are, as with all cameras, some problems with glare.

The N93 copes reasonably well in pitch black conditions (owl example), but the flash is not very strong so the subject must be close to the camera. Where there is some ambient light available results may be better using night mode rather than the anaemic flash. The optical zoom allows detailed shots of objects further away (weather vane and duck examples). It compares very favourably to other camera phones where cropping or use of digital zoom is necessary.

Nokia N93 Video samples

Video 1 (water – 4.5 MB) show a 180 degree fast pan with people and, water, vegetation and buildings. Video 2 (fire – 6.4 MB) shows capture of changing subject and use of optical zoom (you can hear the zoom mechanism in the audio track).

Video 3 (gig – 25MB) shows good optically zoomed picture quality but lousy handling of even moderately loud volume levels – this was an open air concert and not particularly loud, but the bass drum completely wipes out the audio track every time. Video 4 (roundabout – 12MB) shows very good handling of fast motion and, again, there’s the noise of the zoom mechanism near the end of the clip.

UPnP

The Nokia N93 is a UPnP device (Universal Plug and Play). UPnP is a set of computer network protocols set by the UPnP forum aimed at allowing networked devices to connect together seamlessly and exchange information. In the case of the N93, it is used to share and control multimedia stored on the phone or on other UPnP devices on the same network via the phones WLAN connectivity.

In the Connect folder there is a ‘Home network’ application. This allows you to set your home Wi-Fi network,  and whether to share image, music and video files. You can turn image sharing on and off, and this is effectively turning UPnP on and off. Once activated, other UPnP devices can see the N93 and access its files. Additionally an extra category is added to Gallery (Home Network) which allows you to access the content of other UPnP devices. This works by browsing a series of folders (the content of each remote device), and from the menu you can choose to copy multimedia to the N93 (a convienient way to get new content to your device) or show it on the UPnP device in question. This second function acts a little like a remote control allowing you to control (a slide show of) images shown and music played on the remote UPnP device directly from the N93. Unfortunately you cannot choose to play playlists, only to view them, which limits the usefullness of this remote function for music (to play back multiple songs on the remote deice you must select all of them first via a multi-select technique).

For multimedia stored on the N93, there are extra entries in Gallery’s menu; these include the option to copy a multimedia item to another UPnP devices, move an item (deleting it from the N93), and show it on your home network. The first two functions are useful for manually moving multimedia off your phone, but there is also an automatic transfer function which should allow you copy all the images and videos off your device in one go. However, we could only get this to work with small files, not the MB images or multi-MB video files captured by the N93.

This last failure reflects a general problem with UPnP. It needs manufacturer support and is not yet widely used. UPnP devices do not always work with each other and can be slow to initiate actions. At times, the UPnP implementation in the N93 did not work (e.g. other devices couldnot be seen or transfers fail), although it is rarely clear whether this is the fault of the local or remote device. The problem is compounded by the fact that there is no definitive list of compatible devices (our Netgear 101 worked only partially with the N93). Furthermore, although most Wi-Fi routers now ship with UPnP support it is often turned off by default for security reasons. The cumulative effect may be frustration for end users.

For most people the immediate problem will be the lack of another UPnP device. Windows Media Connect (as used by the XBox and now shipping with Windows XP) is a UPnP server for Windows, but it did not work with the N93. Fortunately Nokia have provided an alternative. On the N93’s CD is a UPnP server/client for Windows XP PCs called Home Media Server (a branded version of SimpleCenter). Using Home Media Server you can retrieve media from the phone and copy new media to the phone. You can also remotely control media shown on the PC from the N93, whether it is stored on the PC itself or on the N93.

Since the connection bearer is Wi-Fi, transfer speeds are speedy, rivalling even a direct USB connection. This means when choosing to view an image from the phone on your PC the operation takes only a few seconds and makes running a slideshow of images stored on your phone on your PC practical. On the other hand, the Home Media Server software is lacking in some areas. For example, when copying media from the N93 a list of files is presented with tick boxes to select which files should be transferred, however there is no select all option, which means a tedious chore of ticking many boxes if you wish to transfer all the media from the phone in one go.

UPnP potentially offers fantastic functionality, but it seems it is early days for the technology and Nokia would be well advised to improve both the user experience and the compatibility issues.

TV-out

The TV-out function is much simpler than UPnP (just a Pop-port to 3-way RCA ‘composite’ cable to connect) and works very well. TV out function is made possible by the new graphics chip set in the N93 and its most common use will be for showing of images and videos captured by the phone. Settings can be tweaked via the TV-out application, but this should work out of the box for most people. Captured videos, in particular, are impressive and it is great fun to shoot a video and immediately be able to play it back on the TV.

In fact, the screen exporting works with any application (it is a great way to demo S60 to people). Other potential uses include playing games or browsing the web on your TV. Any application that involves viewing information of the screen as a primary concern can benefit from being connected to a larger screen. It also open up new possibilities, for example with the TV-out function a video call can be shared more easily with more people. Using the N93 in this way might make for a good budget video conferencing system. The on board game, System Rush Evolution, is very playable on a bigger screen and gives a very positive pointer towards the next generation N-Gage gaming platform.

Most of the time the TV will show the same as the phone’s screen. The exception to this is when viewing images or videos in Gallery –  on the TV, these are displayed full screen even when browsing thumbnails on the phone.

The TV-out cable can also be used to connect the N93 to most audio systems (via auxillary inputs). This means you can play MP3s from the phone, controlled from the Music application, over your home Hi-Fi system in full stereo sound and it makes the N93 even more versatile. The quality of audio output is excellent, making the N93 an impressive digital audio player.

In some ways TV-out is the most compelling function of the N93 and I hope we see it again on future S60 devices.

Conclusion

It’s hard to summarise the multitude of good and bad points above in a single paragraph – we’ll leave a final verdict for part two of the N93 review, after we’ve lived with it day-in and day-out for longer. But in the meantime we’d say that the Nokia N93 is the best multimedia smartphone we’ve ever seen – but that it’s also not perfect and in some ways points the way towards its own successor, surely to come in 2007 and beyond, as as the optics and electronics start to converge more seriously on the world of professional standalone digital cameras.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N93.php

Nokia N73 vs. Samsung D900 vs. SE K800: Photo samples

Sample photos

Outdoor

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Buildings

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An auto and a poster

Park

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Digital zoom

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Indoor

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Text

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Night mode and flash light

no night mode

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Close-ups

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/n73_d900_k800_photo-review-102p2.php

Samsung D900

Samsung D900 review: Slim slider extreme

The slimmest slider in the world is already on the market. Samsung D900 (12.9 mm thick when closed) offers almost maximum equipment. It has also been given a special final touch: a 3 megapixel camera and a superb display. Now try to imagine it all in a stylish sliding body. The price, however, is rather high.

Key Features:

• Supreme sliding construction
• Stylish design of mere 12.9 mm thickness
• Brilliant display with QVGA resolution
• Comfortable keypad
• 3 megapixel camera with auto focus
• Multi-field phonebook with thousand entries
• Internal memory of nearly 60 MB, extendable through microSD cards
• Applications for viewing Office documents
• TV out
• GPRS and EDGE Class 10
• MP3 player
• Bluetooth

Main Disadvantages:

• Body is made of cheap-looking plastic material
• Significant resistance of the sliding mechanism
• No 3G
• The phone needs to be activated to visualize missed events
• No ringing profiles
• Limited melody choice for SMS alerts
• Navigation key’s center opens the WAP browser when the phone is on stand-by
• Calls cannot be filtered
• Java applications cannot be transferred via Bluetooth
• Images cannot be saved straight to the memory card
• No FM radio
• No Infrared port
• Fingerprints are visible on the display

Samsung D900

Mobile phones seem to have gone on a diet for good. The slim design first invented by Motorola and applied in its Motorola RAZR V3 model has become very popular among other manufacturers, of which some are slower, while others are even faster than the pioneer. There is no doubt that Samsung is the one who embraced the slim idea to the max. In a short period it has launched a slim model (being also the slimmest ever) in each mobile category existing on the market. After the ultra-slim classic model Samsung X820 and the clamshell Samsung D830 now Samsung is presenting the slimmest slider phone ever: Samsung D900.

Samsung D900 closed • rear side

Samsung D900 was first presented to the public at the CeBIT fair in March this year as Samsung D870. Later however, the manufacturer decided to change its denomination to D900, which the Koreans thought suited Samsung’s ultra-slim line better.

Dark flat fashion-freak

This new Samsung model links to the famous and pretty successful Samsung D500 and D600, and more precisely to their design and functional equipment. Yet, Samsung D900 abounds in changes and improvements. Closed the phone looks like a dark flat square. Its dimensions are 104 x 51 x 13 mm and it weighs 85 g and is thus able to hide into the front pocket of your shirt. Samsung D900 is a little bit wide, which is however compensated by its extreme slimness.

All covers are made of plastic, except for the battery one. Along with matt plastics the manufacturer has also applied black glossy plastics – on top and bottom of the front cover, which make the phone look more vivid. Yet, we find these materials much too cheap-looking for the category the phone belongs to. A bit more of metal details would have suited it better.

The phone is only 13 mm thick • comparison to a credit card • feels good

Samsung D900 brings no crucial surprises in terms of design. It is basically a “flatter D600”. Decorative silver elements have been applied moderately: a band above the speaker, a frame, the central area of the navigation key, and the lateral buttons. On the left side of the phone you will find a dual volume-control key; on the right side is the key that activates the camera (it would have been more comfortable to use if it had been located somewhat higher).

Ultra-slim handsets in competition: Samsung D900 and Motorola Razr V3i

Beside the respective keys, both sides of the handset feature a cap: the left one protects the slot for the microSD memory card, while the right one protects the system connector for hands-free, the data cable, and the charger. Both caps rotate both ways, but I cannot help myself fearing that I might break them too easily. The top and the bottom areas of Samsung D900 are bare.

Side parts feature 2 buttons, a data connector, and a memory card slot

So let us take a closer look at the rear side of the phone. Its top half constitutes of the above mentioned steel battery cover with a plastic manufacturer’s logo. The rest is plastic. In an uneven oval you will find incrusted Samsung’s website; two uncovered screws in both bottom corners are worth mentioning too. The battery cover is not easy to remove even if equipped with a tiny projection for thumb support. When mounting it back it is necessary to open the phone; otherwise the cover would not clap back fully. Beneath the cover you will find a Li-Ion 800 mAh battery, which is supposed to supply 198 minutes of call time or 260 hours of stand-by time. When the battery has left few minutes of life before it dies out completely, the display goes out, the keypad backlighting too, and neither the camera, nor the MP3 player or any Java application would run. This is how the phone saves its last bits of energy; yet in specific situations such functional limits may not be welco! me. The SIM card is inserted into the phone’s body. Its removal with sweaty fingers may be problematic.

Data connector and button for activation of the camera • volume control key and the slot for the memory card protected with a cap

Which button opens this slim beauty?

Let’s finally open the phone… To be frank, my first try took me a few seconds: accustomed to classic sliders I was pushing onto the bottom edge of the front cover without any success. The mechanism applied in Samsung D900 is different though: you need to place your thumb between the functional area of the keypad and the display where a special projection is located and then push up. The difficulty is that the projection is rather small and doesn’t help much to overcome the initial resistance of the sliding part. We happened to repeatedly press the upper way of the navigation key or smudge the display instead of opening the phone.

In other words, instead of using your finger tip you would better slide the top phone part out using your nail, sticking it between the above mentioned projection and the navigation key. Once the initial resistance has been overcome a special spring helps full-open the device. The same holds true when the phone is being closed. The phone can also be set up in a way that as soon as it is closed all running operations are stopped and the keypad is automatically locked.

Camera details • inserting the memory card • the bottom part of the front side does not slide out

Critics regarding construction have rarely been on a daily base when Samsung models are tested. The new model is no exception to the rule. Its sliding mechanism is very well elaborated; no visible spaces or gaps. The rest of its parts firmly stick together too. A creak would not come out even after a stronger press.

One of Samsung D900’s main advantages pops out when the phone is open. I am talking about its 3 megapixel camera with auto focus located in the top area of the back. The camera lens along with a tiny mirror for self-portraits and a LED is built into a bulge silver oblong plate. The rest of the upper part of the phone is just as thin as to fit in the display and its protecting glass.

Keypad is virtually perfect

The keypad is divided into two areas: a functional one, which is constantly accessible, and a numeric one only usable when the device is open. All functional keys are spacey enough and seamless to work with. Along with a standard four-way navigation key with a confirming center here you will also find a couple of context keys, keys for call initiation and termination, as well as a standard cancel key. In other words, SMS can be read, music played or WAP accessed even if the phone is closed.

Typing is comfortable • keypad’s functional area is accessible even when the handset is closed

The numeric part of the keypad constitutes of an even matrix of equally sized keys, the latter being divided one from another by spaces. The keys are large, but utterly flat, which makes touch orientation somewhat complicated. Press is accurate but accompanied by a rather loud click; in result, SMS typing in quiet environment may sometimes be considered disturbing.

Details of the keypad’s functional area • the numeric part is utterly flat

Keys’ legends are illuminated in white. The red and the green keys are the only ones with a different color but white, that is, they keep their red and green backlighting respectively. The keypad backlights can also be set to go on in certain daytime, for example from the evening to the morning; during the rest of the day the phone maintains the keypad backlighting off for energy-saving reasons.

Keypad’s backlights can be active in certain daytime interval only

Superb display again

Samsung handsets have also been distinguished for their brilliantly elaborated displays. Samsung D900 is no exception to the rule: thanks to the active TFT,with its 240 x 320 pixels and 262K colors it stands out in any aspect. Images are detailed; pixels are nearly impossible to distinguish with bare eye. Colors are true, animation is fast, and legibility under direct sunlight is superb.

Display is brilliant • featuring extremely fine images and vivid, real colors

The backlighting intensity as well as its duration is user-configurable from the main menu. When the active time runs out, first the backlights fade away and then the display goes out completely. In case of need to check for missed events it is necessary to press a random key or simply open the phone.

Speaker’s grid is decently elaborated

The display is protected by a glass reaching the very edge of the phone, also covering the black glossy frame with the manufacturer’s logo around the display. On the other hand, the material this protection is made of allows fingerprints to be quite visible and will require frequent cleaning. The speaker grid located above the display is decently elaborated and decorated with a silver band.

Interface and control: background for travelers

Samsung D900 is controlled in a way very similar to manufacturer’s former models. The main menu is accessible from the stand-by display through a press on the left context key. The right context key is reserved for the phonebook. The central area of the navigation key opens the WAP browser, again from stand-by. At the same time each way of this basic key – but the up one – can be assigned the function of instant access to one of 22 items. The up way is fixed to open the My menu, where you can configure your preferable and most frequently used functions.

Stand-by display • main menu in black

The stand-by display offers an extensive number of settings. The top bar is reserved for standard details like signal strength, battery status, GPRS connectivity, ringing mode etc. Beneath that you will see a grey band with the current date and a digital clock. The operator’s logo can be located in the bottom or simply deactivated (its color and font type are user-configurable as well). The bottom bar features description of the functions assigned to the context keys. Samsung D900 could also be set to constantly visualize the month view of the calendar on its stand-by display, which is quite a practical option.

The selected icon is the only one colored • deeper menu levels use pop-up windows

The phone offers a total of 10 wallpapers, each of which can be applied as background of the stand-by display. Any other image could be used as well. Besides, Samsung D900 features a rather unusual animated traveler background with analogue clock, which recognizes – with the help of the respective operator – the country where the phone is being used and subsequently selects a proper background design. If you visit France, for example, an image of the Eiffel Tower will dominate your display. Background wallpaper is animated: birds are flying in the sky, clouds are moving etc. From 7 pm till 6 am it gets wrapped up in night mood: the sunny sky gets dark, while houses start to gleam with lights.

A sample of the white version of the main menu and its deeper levels

The main menu can be displayed either as a matrix of 9 icons or as a standard list. In any case it is colored moderately and has nothing in common with the “cartoons” in other Samsung phones. The menu has two color versions: a stylish black one, where only the selected icon is color-toned, and a more vivid and more colorful white one. The rest of the items consist of text only. Sub-menus are visualized as pop-up windows accessible through the horizontal ways of the navigation key. To my opinion however, the main menu has one disturbing minus: it memorizes the last visited item and the next time you open the menu it shows you the way to this item as a priority-one. In result, you will have to sometimes make steps back in the menu in order to open a different item. Generally, Samsung D900 leads you inside the menu relatively fast. Shortcut keys are available too.

Samsung D900’s camera belongs among the best

Samsung D900’s integrated camera can be without any doubt considered one of the phone’s most attractive applications, mainly due to its 3.2 megapixels. Maximum image resolution is 2048 x 1536 pixels. Samsung D900 therefore enters the elite club of 3 megapixel photo-mobiles, which is not so crowded so far; Nokia N80, N73 and N93 and Sony Ericsson K800 and K790 are some of the members.

Camera view-finder • camera menu

The rest of the camera equipment is no less praiseworthy. Its auto-focus, which provides high-quality macro-pictures, works in a way somewhat different from the auto-focus in other competing mobiles: you have to press on the center of the navigation key, which serves as a release button; then the camera focuses on the image and shoots immediately afterwards. No two-stage shutter release in Samsung D900. The taking of one picture takes 3 seconds from the first press on the navigation key.

Selecting a shooting mode • photo settings

To take a picture you have to open Samsung D900 and hold it in a vertical position. If you don’t, the camera lens will remain hidden behind the bottom part of the phone and either the view-finder will fail to make use of the entire display surface, or only the central area of the taken picture will get visualized on the display. Around the view-finder you will see various icons providing details about the camera settings. You can set image size, insert frames, choose out of 8 effects, activate the self-release function or the night mode, modify exposure compensation or ISO sensitivity level, white balance as well as the degree of image compression. Digital zoom is also available. You could also apply a sequence of 15 shots or create mosaic images. The additional LED can be lit constantly or simply when pictures are being taken. It can also be activated automatically. Once the camera application has been switched off! and then switched on again however, the LED will be off (its standard setting). Even if not very powerful, the LED is helpful, especially when shooting close objects. The sound accompanying the release button (5 options to choose from) could be deactivated if necessary. Alternatively, camera settings could be modified through the use of shortcut keys as well.

Sample photos taken with the camera built-in Samsung D900:

Effects:

Exposure compensation

Mosaic images are only taken in resolution of 240 x 180 pixels

Digital zoom in full resolution

Additional LED is pretty handy for short distances

Shooting text: with and without auto-focus

Samsung D900 makes very good pictures. Yet these could hardly compete with the images created by today’s best photo mobiles on the market: Sony Ericsson K800 and Nokia N73. Samsung D900’s pictures suffer from chromatic aberrations; the details are not clear, color saturation seems far too high. Besides, pictures get blurred under low light conditions. On the other hand scanned text is perfectly readable thanks to the available auto-focus. Ready pictures can be further modified applying effects or inserting icons, rotating the image or adjusting contrast and brightness level. Images can be maximized to a full-screen size or slide-showed. Sending them via Bluetooth is seamless. What’s more, the phone is compatible with the PictBridge standard, which allows direct print without PC.

Samsung D900 also offers a simple photo editor, which applies effects or inserts frames

Samsung D900 automatically saves images into its memory (60 MB), which I find rather unpractical as any transfer from it to a memory card has to be made manually. At the same time the address structure of the phone memory and the one of the memory card are separated and fully independent.

My files • My photos (Photo gallery) • Memory status

The camera also shoots videos with sound in MP4 format with a maximum resolution of 352 x 288 pixels (CIF). Video duration is only limited by the available free internal memory. Both zoom and color effects can be applied during the shooting process.

Sample videos shot with Samsung D900:

• Sample video 1 (Zipped MP4, 3,3 MB)
• Sample video 2 (Zipped MP4, 3,5 MB)

Calling application lacks profiles and call filters

Call functions in Samsung D900 are grouped around its multi-field phonebook with capacity for 1000 entries. Each contact can be assigned first and last name, 5 phone numbers, email address, note, birth date (gets copied into the calendar automatically). Each contact could be further attached an image or filtered by ringing melody. Names can be organized in groups, which however, cannot be used as call filters. Each group could also be assigned a specific image and ringtone. The phonebook displays an overall list of all contacts from both the phone memory and the SIM card, which can be browsed by gradual typing of the initial characters. The phonebook is able to visualize 3 entries including their default numbers en bloc. The other contact numbers remain in the contact’s detail, which can be open by a press on the center of the navigation key. Contacts can be ordered by either first name or last name.

Phonebook menu • selecting the location of a new contact • creating a contact

Speaker sound is good, with sufficient volume to use even in noisy environment. The phone offers a loudspeaker. Incoming calls can be accepted by a simple opening of the device.

Each contact can be assigned 12 fields • searching the contact list • contact detail

Samsung D900 does not support 3G networks, but it is fully usable in the 4 standard GSM frequencies: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. The phone lacks ringing profiles. The latter are substituted by a quiet mode activated by a press on the hash key. On the other hand, from the main menu you can select the way the phone should alert you about incoming calls: with a melody, with a melody followed by vibration, vibrating only, or by a combination of melody and vibration. The phone rings in 64-voice polyphony or using MP3 and AAC files. If you are onboard an airplane you have the option to switch off the GSM part of the device.

Messages: forget about sending 3 megapixel images via email

Standard SMS are written in a block of 6 lines. The editor visualizes the number of available characters as well as the number of written sub-messages (12 at most). Typing is facilitated by T9. As the phone supports EMS, messages could contain black & white images or animation.

Samsung D900 offers 200 positions for messages. Incoming message is announced by one of 10 pre-installed sounds, which can also be set to repeat every minute or every two minutes until the message is read. Received messages are visualized in 8 lines en bloc. At the same time the phone allows you to use zoom in order to modify the font size. Using the tiniest available font the phone displays a total of 14 lines en bloc. Another practical hint is the option to set the editor to delete any message received from 10 preset numbers. This way you do not even come to realize that such a message has ever come.

Messages menu • creating a new SMS • options

Each MMS could carry text, sound, image or video as far as its size does not exceed 300 KB. At the same time it could have more than one page. 3 megapixel images attached to a MMS get automatically reduced before the message is sent. Received MMS and SMS are stores into the same folder. Here once again you can set the phone to block incoming messages from up to 10 phone numbers.

Memory status for each type of message

The email client manages multiple accounts working with POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP protocols. You could download either entire email messages or their headers only. In both cases downloading can be executed in preset time intervals. The email client supports attachments, but once again make sure they are no bigger than 300 KB. Email messages can be filtered by sender and subject too.

Organizer: comfortable browsing of MS Office documents

Like in any other phone, the calendar is the main organizing tool of Samsung D900. It is detailed. It offers a month, a week and a day view. The week may start on either Monday or Sunday. The calendar contains 4 types of events: appointment, anniversary, event, and task, each of which can be assigned an alert. Besides, appointments can be set to repeat daily, weekly or monthly. The phone also has a task editor integrated into the calendar. Tasks can be visualized separately, marked as priority, and marked-off once having been accomplished. Synchronization with MS Outlook is available, of course.

Planner (List of organizing functions) • Samsung D900 offers three repeated alarm clocks • World time application

Samsung D900 has three repeated alarm clocks, which will wake you up with any sound, even when the phone is switched off. As expected, configuration of week days is available, of course. The phone fits in a total of 100 text notes, each consisting of up to 1000 characters at most. Further on, you are offered a calculator, a voice recorder of one-hour limit, a world time application, a unit and currency converter, a timer, and a stopwatch with four mean-times.

Month, week and day view at the calendar

Selecting event type • modifying event details • a complete day list of same-type events

As many other mobiles of the Korean manufacturer, Samsung D900’s document browser works with DOC, XLS, PPT and PDF. Here you can not only surf through documents using the ways of the navigation keys, but also search them and view them in landscape mode. Font size can be modified too. It takes the browser about a second to focus a newly opened page when a document is being searched. Yet we are talking about a pretty handy function, which is seldom found in mobile phones without OS.

Calculator is pretty detailed • Timer

Converter managing plenty of physical measures • Stopwatch with mean times

Fun: minimized MP3 continues to play

MP3 player has finally learned to play when minimized. Besides, it offers four playlists, repeated and random playing, and an equalizer with four curves. When the player is on, one of the two available visualizations can be seen on the display. The sound coming from the loud speaker is relatively good even though certain resonance is noticed at higher volume levels. Apart from the speaker the phone is also able to provide sound through Bluetooth stereo earphones or a pair of standard earphones (should be plugged into the data connector). Unfortunately, I am not able to give you more details about how earphones work as the model Samsung delivered to our office did not include any. The player opens MP3, AAC, and AAC+ formats. Samsung D900 does not have FM radio.

Main display of the music player and its settings

The phone opens and plays videos in 3GP and MP4 formats. Videos can be fast-forwarded and can be maximized with the help of 1 button.

Another attractive option is to connect the phone to a TV set through a special cable (not included in the standard package though). Once such a connection has been established, you should be able to see on the TV screen exactly what is displayed on the phone. Samsung D900 works with PAL and NTSC – both selected from the menu.

For those who get bored easily the manufacturer has prepared 8 Java games. However, it is hard to say if the officially sold version of the phone is going to feature all of them. More games can be downloaded online. If you download them through Bluetooth or a memory card the phone denies opening them.

Here are the results of the jBenchmark application:

• jBenchmark 1.0: 1659 points
• jBenchmark 2.0:   100 points

Data: 3G would have been useful…

Samsung D900 supports GPRS and EDGE, both Class 10. A special icon in stand-by mode indicates which one of these technologies is currently available. To my modest opinion a phone of class and price so high should have also been equipped with UMTS, but it is not. To connect within close range use Bluetooth (2.0 version) or the USB cable enclosed in the original package and phone’s data connector. There is no Infrared port. Before you plug in the data cable you can select your preferred mode: PictBridge, modem, disk space. This way you can access data on the memory card without having to install any additional controller.

Web browser and its menu

The web browser is good and does well with simple internet pages. Web addresses are entered directly. There are 15 positions for favorite web pages. WAP gets displayed in 11 text lines en bloc.

Style costs money

Samsung D900 is a stylish slider with extremely slim design. It is suitable as a fashion accessory rather than a working tool. There is no doubt your friends won’t take their eyes off it. The most attractive among its extensive equipment is its brilliant display and 3 megapixel camera. Yet, it is a pity that Samsung has failed to deliver a few important applications: the phone does not have FM radio or ringing profiles. It is not able to filter calls either. Higher-quality material would have suited it better too. Given its high price Samsung D900 could have also been designed to support 3G…

If 3G is important for you, have a closer look at Samsung Z400 – a phone not so light, but elegantly silver and equipped with video calls support. Another alternative for those indecisive is Samsung D800, which features poorer equipment, lacks a slot for memory cards and “only” has a 1.3 MP camera, but cost at least 100 euros less.

For our reviews we shoot, download and prepare much more pictures then finally appear in the article. They can be interesting for some of you therefore we offer all of them in one place: photo gallery.

Samsung D900

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Pictures of the display

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Photos taken with the phone

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_d900-review-108p6.php

LG KG920 vs. SE K800 vs. Nokia N73: One more photo shootout

Introduction

Recently we’ve got LG K920 for testing; this is one of the first 5MP camera GSM phones available on the market. We’ve decided that it’s a good idea to test it against one of the best currently available 3MP camera phones, and also great rivals – Sony Ericsson K800 and Nokia N73.

The contestants: LG KG920, Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson K800

We, on other hand, just can’t tell you which of the 3 megapixel shooters to choose. However it’s more important for us to tell you what the differences are, so you can choose for yourself.

The Nokia N73 produces over-saturated, over-sharpened, high-contrast photos. For the untrained eye these photos have more punch, more “wow” factor. When shooting a dull scene this approach produces more pleasant results. The problem comes when the scene is colorful and contrasty. Then the extra processing can lead to unnatural looking photos. It’s quite ironic that Nokia N73 won its fans taking the idea of the so called “Sony colors” to extremes. Some years ago Sony used to boost the color saturation of their digital cameras as an extra advantage over their rivals. They don’t do this anymore in their recent models.

On the other hand Sony Ericsson K800 has more laid-back approach – the photos aren’t over processed, which ensures better results if you are going to edit them later.

It’s not fair

Yes, it’s not fair to compare 5 megapixels to 3 megapixels camera. However, we are doing it for you to see what the difference is and if an upgrade is worth it.It’s tricky to compare photos with different resolution as in our case. To be able to compare apples to apples there are two approaches. The first one is to downsample the higher resolution photos to the lower resolution, but this will reduce the advantage of the higher resolution camera, and the amount of the sharpness applied in the post processing might be taken as a real ability to resolve detail. The other approach, the one we chose, is to upsample the lower resolution images to the higher resolution. This method shows about the same results you would get if you print the images. The con is that the jpeg artifacts get enlarged too, which is not fair to the lower resolution cameras, but this is a minor concern.

When viewing at actual 100% size the 5 megapixel photos and even the 3 megapixel ones just don’t fit in the nowadays monitors. You usually see a small portion of the photo and scroll around. In this shootout we are taking a different approach. For all the photos we are showing you 1024×768 versions, downsampled in a special way. We’ve tried to eliminate as much as possible the difference in the sharpening applied in the camera processing. This downsampled photos can be used to evaluate the color and exposure accuracy or the dynamic range. To get however a correct presentation for the resolution of the cameras, you have to look at the crops on the right. As explained above, these are made by upsampling the K800 and N73 photos to 5 megapixels resolution and then cropping the same part of the image.

Studio shots

This test was carried out under the same lighting conditions we use to make the photos for all our reviews. The scene is lit by white light sources.

LG KG920 (full) • Sony Ericsson K800 (full) • Nokia N73 (full) • crops

LG KG920 shows at the same time better resolution, correct colors and lower noise levels. Although the phone manufacturers don’t publish the specs for the sensor used in their camera phones, photos like this make us think that KG920 have a sensor with larger physical dimensions than the ones used in the phones, maybe this is the same sensor used in some low-level digital cameras. The colors of K800 are quite off (especially the green), while N73 has e serious problem with the yellow – the oversaturation sometimes comes at a price, look at the yellow cube.

LG KG920 (full) • Sony Ericsson K800 (full) • Nokia N73 (full)

We are sorry, that we can’t show you crops for this image, because it was framed somewhat differently on the three phones, but we are showing you the full resolution images instead. Again, excellent results from LG KG920. Nailed color balance, lower noise than the rivals and amazing resolution. There is one more thing to note here – look at the highlights of paper clips. LG KG920 shows a lot better control of the highlights, the overexposed areas of the paper clips look more natural in KG920 photos. All in all – great macro results from the 5 megapixel contestant.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops

Outdoor photos

LG KG920 (full) • Sony Ericsson K800 (full) • Nokia N73 (full) • crops

The first thing we notice on this set of photos is the yellowish cast of the KG920 photos. The resolution advantage is here, but it’s not as pronounced as in the previous samples. Sony Ericsson K800 shows the most accurate colors. Nokia N73 has troubles with the high contrast scene this time – look at the arcs, they are overexposed and snow white.

LG KG920 (full) • Sony Ericsson K800 (full) • Nokia N73 (full) • crops

First, let’s look at the tree branches on this photo. Nokia N73 manages to show more resolution than K800 here and it’s very close to KG920. Looking at how sharp the images from N73 are we start thinking that it just doesn’t have a low-pass filter installed, or it’s somehow tweaked. The low-pass filter exists in one form or another on almost all digital cameras; it improves the image quality in several ways, for example eliminating jagged edges, moiré and color shifting. The down side of the low-pass filter is that softens the image.

None of the phones in the tests managed to get the colors of this scene right. The real colors looked somewhat like the result of Nokia N73, but a lot less saturated. In fact the colors of N73 are so much saturated that the train looks like it comes from an animation movie. LG KG920 shows again yellow cast, while the K800 results are slightly reddish.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops

These two sets of images show almost exactly the same results as above.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops

Naturally, the image from KG920 looks smoother than the 3 megapixel cameras, but we just can’t find any real resolution advantage over them. Sony Ericsson K800 presents this scene better than Nokia N73 – it shows the correct colors and handles the highlights in a more natural way.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops

Here again the Sony Ericsson K800 gets the colors right and shows about the same resolution as Nokia N73. LG KG920 gains some advantage over the previous image – it seems the closer the object, the better it performs.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops

LG KG920 shows good results here, you can see the resolution advantage in the crops. Both K800 and N73 shows also good results for their class, but look at the purple color between the branches in the Nokia N73 photo – maybe this sharpness comes at a price?

Indoors

LG KG920 (full) • Sony Ericsson K800 (full) • Nokia N73 (full) • crops

Indoors, where the light is not that strong, LG KG920 has the chance to use it’s larger sensor for a bigger advantage. Indeed its pictures look more like made from a digital camera, than from a phone. The yellow cast is here again, but it’s normal in this environment.

What’s more interesting in this comparison is the Nokia N73 result – look at the holiday lights. In reality they are white, like on the photos of KG920 and K800. Nokia N73 however shows random colors in the lights. This again makes us think that Nokia N73 lacks a low-pass filter. Color artifacts like these in the small white objects, are usually caused by the lack of such filter.

You can see exactly the same here – these lights are white, Nokia N73 just loves to make the things colorful.

Using the flash

LG advertises the flash in KG920 as “strobe flash”, which means that this is not the type of LED flash used in most of the mobiles phones. It’s more like the xenon flash in Sony Ericsson K800, so we expected similar performance. Nokia N73 has standard LED flash only, so even on paper it can’t compete with the others.
LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73 • crops
LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73

The first test was against a white wall from about one meter. Here KG920 shows the best results – the object is well lit and the color of the background is almost uniform.

LG KG920 • Sony Ericsson K800 • Nokia N73

The second test is against a brick wall from about two meters in almost total darkness. For our surprise here the LG KG920 failed miserably. It seems that its flash was not as strong as the one of K800. Moreover KG920 doesn’t boost the sensitivity in this situation to compensate for the insufficient light. In this scene even N73 delivers better results than KG920. So, if you want good results with KG920, make sure you shoot from close range.

Performance

Sony Ericsson K800 wins by a small margin here. Nokia N73 is a smartphone and is expected to be slower, but in reality is not much slower than K800 in both focusing and saving times. The auto focus reliability is very high on both 3 megapixel cameras. LG KG920 disappointed us in this aspect. Yes, it should process a lot more data, as it works with larger photos, but the saving time was just too long. The auto focus is not that reliable as in the 3 megapixel photo mobiles and the shutter works somewhat strange – it you full-press from the beginning, you might not be able to take the photo. We should also note that the shot-to-shot time of KG920 is more than 10 seconds.

Conclusion

As we expected, in almost all of the test LG K920 showed better ability to resolve detail than it’s 3 megapixel rivals. No surprises here. It also showed amazing macro capabilities and better dynamic range. What stops us from highly recommending it is the really slow performance and the yellowish tint on auto white balance outdoors. As for the Sony Ericsson K800 and Nokia N73 – they are equally good photo devices, but tuned differently. It’s just a matter of preference – if you like your photos with more “wow” factor and never plan to edit them later, then your safe bet is Nokia N73. Otherwise, if you want your photos as accurate as possible and preserving as much detail for further editing, then you should go with Sony Ericsson K800.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/kg920_k800_n73_photo-review-125p3.php

Nokia N73

Nokia N73 review: Pole position

Being the best equipped handset ever Nokia N73 has managed to overrun the king of all mobiles – the slider Nokia N80. It features Symbian OS, 3 megapixels backed up by the label of Carl Zeiss, USB Mass Storage, and works with office documents. Nokia N73 has a brilliant phonebook and a good time organizer as well as an exceptional Internet browser. The interest in this new Nokia phone is overwhelming worldwide.

Official pictures of Nokia N73

Key Features:

• High-class display
• Very good functional keys
• Symbian S60 3rd edition
• Active stand-by mode
• 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• A second VGA camera for video calls
• UMTS support
• Infrared
• Bluetooth
• USB Mass Storage
• Great web browser

Main Disadvantages:

• Loose camera cover
• Uncomfortable and cheap-looking numeric keypad
• No memory card included
• Slippery joystick
• No Wi-Fi
• Web browser does not work in landscape mode
• Alarm clock is not repeated

The time has come

Nokia N73 is a smartphone. It features the latest version of the OS many used to blame for lack of applications, namely, Symbian S60 3rd Edition. Well, there is no need to worry about its compatibility anymore as there are already a sufficient number of new or adjusted programs for the above mentioned Symbian version on the mobile market. If you appreciate constructional extravagances, you’d rather turn your attention to the slider Nokia N80. The new Nokia N73 is rigorously classical: its dimensions are 110 x 49 x 19 mm; weight is 116 g.

Nokia N73 live

Nokia N70 has been on the market for about a year now – a period considered necessary in the mobile world for the replacement of one mobile generation with another. For some people the successor of Nokia N70 is Nokia N80, but according to me it is rather Nokia N73. N73 looks like a standard square, but looked from aside it has the shape of a trapezoid. I like its color variants as well as the design of its body: its front side is thin, while both lateral sides together with the rear cover are always elaborated in a different color. The model we were delivered for the tests has a silver front plate and violet-brown back and sides. Another possible color combination is white & red (emanates young and sport spirit).

All-side view

According to our evaluation Nokia N73 is the best mobile phone on the market; it won the competition with the queen Nokia N80 with a result of 93 %. It is clear that no evaluation could be absolutely objective as one always implies their own preferences, but there is no doubt that Nokia N73 has the best equipment among all 200 mobile models that have been tested in our office. It is simply the new mobile king. What’s more, it is by 130 euro cheaper than the former winner Nokia N80. (Please note, that Mobilmania.cz takes different approach in evaluating the mobile devices compared to GSMArena.com, their rates are set by the editorial staff, not by the visitors)

Nokia Company speaks about this phone as of a “multimedia computer” because of its extensive functions: photo camera, simple video calls camera, Web browser, primitive game console, MP3 player etc. I myself prefer to stick to the standard denomination “mobile phone” or possibly “smartphone”. Any cons?

The front plastic cover is not made of stunning material. On the other hand, it does not look as cheap as the material used for the numeric part of the keypad (comment still to come). The only elements on the left side of the phone are the Infrared port and the eyelet, in which a wrist or a neck strip can be inserted. The original package includes a wrist strip only.

The phone held in palm • comparison with a credit card

Infrared port • eye-let for strip

On the right side you will see three buttons: a volume control button in the top and a camera release button together with a key for instant access to the image and video gallery beneath. A longer press on the release button activates the camera interface.

Camera release button and access to Gallery • volume control

A smartphone of a conservative look, Nokia N73 has also been given a sport touch thanks to the original color combinations applied on its covers and the perforated plates on its top and bottom, whose material imitates metal. On the top you will find two stereo speakers, between which is located the Switch On/Off button. A fine grid covering the microphone is located on the bottom side of the device.

Nice imitation of perforated metal plates

Above the grid you will find the Pop-Port connector and the charger slot. The type of charger Nokia uses in its recent models is very easy to break due to its small diameter. Along with the handset, in the original package you will also find a USB cable for connection to a PC and a pair of stereo earphones with a remote control, which can also serve as handsfree. An adapter for a standard charger is present, of course. The package also contains a cleaning cloth with a Nokia logo and slogan, and a CD with PC Suite and drivers.

Accessories from the original box of Nokia N73

Nokia phones have rarely been spoken as of devices of ideal body construction or perfect part hold. Yet, Nokia N73 appears to be an exception to this rule; its construction is very good; all parts stick together the way they should but one – the sliding cover of the camera, whose looseness reminds me of Nokia 6681. More details about this problem can be found in the chapter devoted to the camera.

Battery and SIM card bed. Common use requires charging every second day; during the tests I had to charge the phone every night

Camera cover is naughty as usual

Buy one of your own

The original package of Nokia N73 does not contain a memory card. As a matter of fact, Nokia is not the only important mobile manufacturer to take such a decision recently. On one hand it is explained with the fact that most users who buy “multimedia computers” hardly ever make do with enclosed memory cards of 64 or 128 MB and usually get themselves an additional, bigger card. On the other hand, however, Nokia could have equipped the phone with a 512 MB memory card, just like Sony Ericsson does with the Walkman series.

Step by step Nokia is abandoning the so-favorite RS-MMC format; instead it begins to use miniSD. Please note that both mentioned formats are absolutely incompatible. Already in the review commenting Nokia N80 we mentioned the looseness of the cover of its memory card slot. In Nokia N73 the situation is pretty much the same: the oblong cover hangs on a very thin plastic part as a result of which it may be lost anytime. Just like in Nokia N80 the N73 model features an option (user-configurable) called “Extract memory card”.

Memory card slot • cap is fragile • miniSD card • slot is illuminated

The memory card can be extracted while the phone is running, but its removal requires closing all active applications. Its cover is not easy to open, so longer fingernails are a sure advantage. The memory card slot gets attractively illuminated thanks to the side-effect created by the keypad backlighting. It looks cool. Statements concerning internal memory are contradictory. The manufacturer announces 42 MB, while other websites publish different numbers. The indicator in Nokia N73 shows 47 MB available.

No need to wait for VGA

Nokia has been long stuck to the resolution of 176 x 208 pixels in all its smartphones. In fact, so long that in the end the rest of the popular manufacturers began to score better. A decisive change came last year with the launching of Nokia N90, whose resolution was 352 x 416 pixels, that is, four times more pixels than before. Anyway, most current smart models feature a QVGA resolution (240 x 320), which is also the case of Nokia N73. The display size is overwhelming; due to its 37 x 49 mm it looks like a pretty large screen. The design of the display is so brilliant that it creates the feeling that it simply could not have been made any bigger.

Resolution is fine; its pixels are only visible through the macro eye of a standard camera. The human eye is not so perfect… Besides, while observing the display of Nokia N73 I kind of stop waiting for VGA resolution; it will not be necessary except on bigger displays or should you need to fit onto the display a huge amount of information.

Since Nokia launched its 6681 model the brightness of its smartphone displays has been constantly deteriorating. For example, neither Nokia N70, nor Nokia N80 could compete with Nokia 6681. It has not been till this last model, Nokia N73, that brightness – in highest resolution – it can be again considered comparable to the brightness levels shown by the above mentioned model. Bear in mind however, that legibility of N73’s display remains rather poor under direct sunlight, even though it is far better than in models like Sony Ericsson P990 or Sony Ericsson M600, where direct light makes reading virtually impossible.

Display is large • its screen in the dark

Located above the display are the manufacturer’s logo and the name of the model, both present in most recent Nokia models. Next to the earphone with a tiny silver cover there is a sensor detecting the intensity of the surrounding light. In accordance with the level of this intensity it activates the keypad backlighting. Situated nearby is a new state diode identical to the one used in Nokia N80.

Speaker, sensor of surrounding light, diode, and tiny VGA camera

The time, during which the display remains illuminated (from 5 seconds to one minute) as well as the interval, in which the screensaver gets activated, is user-configurable. The screen saver represents a bar with a clock and updated date; of course, missed calls and incoming messages including their number appear here too. The screen saver can be set to activate in 1 to 30 minutes. In addition, you can activate a power-save mode, in which the display goes out completely and the only indicator of the activity of the phone remains the tiny diode illuminated in blue. No new events get alerted in this mode. The diode winks in unchangeable intervals, which converts it into a mere decorative element.

Once up, once down

Except for the above mentioned three buttons located on the side of the phone, all other keys are situated beneath the display. The phone has a joystick and it is the main navigating tool. It is more slippery than stiff. It is quite a pity that Nokia N73’s designers did not use the solution they applied in Nokia E60, where they covered the head of the control element in rubber. Context keys as well as the earphones for call control beneath them are perfect. The context keys are spacey and look as if truly made of metal; press is exact, mechanic elaboration is excellent.

One of the most attractive elements of Nokia N73 appears to be the glossy plastic frame around its keypad. Hidden in it you will find a key for access to the menu, an editing pencil, the cancel “C” button, and a pretty new key for all S60 models – the so called “multimedia” key. The latter first appeared on Nokia N70 and later on Nokia N80. A press-hold on it opens the respective pre-selected application. Or you can press it short and then use the four-way key to run one of the four applications assigned to each way (their distribution is schematically visualized on the display).

Keypad details

All four keys inside the glossy bar are very comfortable to use. What I am not going to praise is the numeric part of N73’s keypad. Every time I need to write a message or type a new number, I wander whether Nokia designers had forgotten everything they were taught at school about ergonomics when they were working on Nokia N73. Why? Instead of differentiating keys (by cascade distribution for example) they have separated them by projections. It has been a week now since I started to test the phone and I am still not able to get used to its keys; I am making typing errors all the time. Besides, the numeric part of the keypad looks rather cheap as the plastic material used for its elaboration is not appropriate for such a high-class handset. To sum up, I recommend you to test Nokia N73’s keypad before you decide to buy the phone.

Main block of keys

Keys backlighting is good. Everything works as it should: the green and red buttons glow in their typical colors; the area of the joystick is illuminated too. The rest of the keys are illuminated in deep blue. As we mentioned earlier, the memory card slot is also backlighted.

Keypad backlighting

Backlighting of lateral buttons

More equipment

Nokia N73 uses the latest version of the OS Symbian 9.1 and the S60 3rd Edition user interface. This Symbian version is both more extensive and safer. On the other hand, nearly all programs, including the cheapest ones, compatible with it, require special certificates. In this new system one can update firmware by air, that is, through the use of mobile networks (not tested yet though). Nokia N73 also offers USB Mass Storage and a brilliant Web browser.

Most customers reacted quite negatively to the new interface applied together with the new OS, as it requires the installation of all applications all over again and most of all – their additional purchase. No program designed for older Symbian versions is compatible with the new version. What’s worse, till very recently there were very few programs compatible with S60 3rd Edition. Even though nowadays the situation has changed for good significantly, some popular programs are still hard to find.

The main display of the new Symbian

The main display features the favorite active stand-by display, in which 6 selected applications can be instantly run by the user. Visualized beneath its icons are all events of the day including the nearest oncoming one as well as the tasks that still need to be accomplished. Both the calendar and the task manager can be accessed by a single confirming press. When music is playing or the radio is on, the name of the running file also appears on the main display.

Music minimized in active stand-by display

As work with the active stand-by display requires the use of the joystick, the four ways of the latter can not be assigned other functions in a common manner. This is only possible using the special multimedia key located above the cancel key. For more details, have a look at the above presented video.

Multimedia menu and its settings

The main menu can be visualized either in the form of a classical 3 x 4 grid, that is 12 icons en bloc, or as a standard list of items. The menu is cyclical, alias it rolls on instead of stopping at one of the ends of the display. Some icons in Nokia N73 are organized in a way differing from the menu of Nokia N80, For example, the folder “My Own” has disappeared for good. Newly installed programs are directly stored in a sections called “Applications”. Each item can be cut out and sent somewhere else; or renamed.

Main menu in a 3 x 4 matrix • and as a list

The Applications folder also shares newly installed programs instead of the former section “My own”

With the help of Carl

As soon as we obtained Nokia N73 last week, we grabbed it together with the other two photo mobiles equipped with a 3 megapixel camera and auto focus – Samsung D900 and Sony Ericsson K800 – and immediately ran out to test them. The results were published without any comment from our side. So far more than 430 readers have posted their opinion on which one is better. It looks like a tie between Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson K800, while Samsung D900 camera has significantly less fans. In this comparison Nokia N73 shows very good resolution and low noise levels. The colors are attractive, vivid, but not very realistic. You may or may not like this approach. The high contrast and saturation levels applied by Nokia help for the wow factor, but produce worse results if you have to edit the photos later.

I am not going to discuss the pictures taken with Nokia N73 in details. It is obvious that they belong among the best. What I am interested in is the interface of the camera application, or in other words, the degree of its user-friendliness. Even though it is quite similar to the interface used in Nokia N80, the interface of the camera application in Nokia N73 has undergone several graphic changes and works a little bit faster.

Let’s light it up one after another

Nokia N73 takes photos in landscape mode, that is, like a standard digital camera. The cover of the camera tunes well with the overall design of the phone. In its bottom area you will see 10 bulky dots, whose function is to stop user’s fingers when the cover is being removed. The movement of the cover itself is quite pleasant; two springs help it reach its final positions. The cover is active; its removal starts the photo camera applications, while its closure switches the camera off. Unfortunately, it went loose after mere few days of usage.

The camera cover is quite nice but loose

A splendid illumination of the side control keys welcomes you once you have removed the camera protection cover. They get lighted gradually in the direction of the removal. First to glow is the volume button (here serving as a zoom key), followed by the gallery button and the release button. The order of deactivation of side keys coincides with the direction of the closure of the camera protection. Cool!

Side buttons for camera control

Once the cover has been removed, the elements get illuminated one after another

Yet, there is one detail that should not be left unmentioned: should you leave the lens cover open while you are not working with the phone, the camera application switches to a save mode. In a result all three control keys die out and will not come to life even if pressed constantly. To get back to normal use you need to restart the camera application.

The sliding camera cover reveals a lens of the famous label Carl Zeiss with an auto focus and a mechanical shutter (exceptional for a photo mobile). The optics used in Nokia N73 is Tessar with aperture F/2.8. The lens is accompanied by a diode flash with red-eye reduction.

Tessar optics from Carl Zeiss

Sample photos in full resolution

Icons and joystick in harmony

I am observing the display while taking photos: in the upper left corner is the symbol of the active mode: photo or video; in the left bottom corner is stated the number of the images still left to make in the currently selected resolution and the size of those already taken. The right (here top) context key closes the camera application, while the left (bottom) one takes you back to the default setup, where you can save your images into the image store or into albums, for example. I presume you will not happen to open this folder frequently though.

Camera interface • main menu

Selecting image size • front VGA camera can be activated too

All important functions are veiled behind the icons in the right area of the display. These are tiny but even so quite distinctive thanks to the QVGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels). The design of the legends describing each setting is quite nice. Icons’ look changes in accordance with selected items; hence, it is not necessary to enter icons’ menus repeatedly to check the levels of exposure compensation or the current color nuance, for example.

If you hide the entire icon bar, it will pop out every time you move the joystick and then disappear once again behind the right end of the display. If you select and hold for a second on a particular icon, a short descriptive legend appears nearby – a function that is impossible to deactivate but, fortunately, it does not disturb photo process.

If you wait for a while, a description of icon’s functions will appear on the display

If you use zoom, the icons described above get replaced by a vertical indicator for zoom-in. Nokia N73 has a 20x digital zoom; any zoom higher than 16x works with cutouts only, it is marked red and is easy to detect. Further, you could deactivate the extensive zoom for good and “only” work with a 16x one in full resolution. Anyway, the digital zoom is just a marketing gimmick, if you really need zoom on your phone you should choose models with optical zoom – currently a very limited selection, Nokia N93 and a couple of Sharp models.

Zoom indicator with a red area of the extended zoom

Let me now offer you an organized list of Nokia N73’s camera setup options, which shows how rich camera’s menu is:

• Camera mode
  • Photo
  • Video
• Shooting mode
  • Automatic
  • User
  • Close-up
  • Portrait
  • Landscape
  • Sport
  • Night
  • Night portrait

Shooting modes

• Flash mode
  • Automatic
  • Always on
  • Red-eye reduction
  • Off

Flash mode

• Self-timer
  • Off
  • 2 seconds
  • 10 seconds
  • 20 seconds

Activating the self-timer function

• Activation of the sequence mode
• Exposure compensation (in 8 steps)

Adjusting the exposure compensation

• White balance
  • Automatic
  • Sunny
  • Cloudy
  • Incandescent
  • Fluorescent

White balance

• Color tone
  • Normal
  • Sepia
  • Black & White
  • Negative
  • Vivid

Color tone settings

• Light sensitivity (ISO standard)
  • Automatic
  • Low
  • Medium
  • High

ISO settings

The camera built in Nokia N73 also shoots video records in a resolution of 352 x 288 pixels, which are saved in MP4 format. Their duration is only limited by the free memory available in the phone. Regretfully, video records come out choppy. Zoom application is virtually useless. Audio can be both activated and deactivated. Following please find a sample of a video shot with Nokia N73. Believe me, however, that Nokia 6280 featuring no OS, for example, scores with its VGA resolution far better than the new king Nokia N73.

• Sample video (MP4, 0:59 min, 5.7 MB)

Nokia N73 is good at music

Music player has undergone no modifications. This is no bad news though as we have always considered it very good (see reviews of recent Nokia models). Music files can be visualized en bloc or grouped by artist, genre, by album, or by composer. Volume levels are sufficient; btw, the highest ones are so high that you will hardly ever come to use them. In any case, a pair of good earphones is a must. However, make sure to buy an adapter for a standard 3.5 mm jack, as there is no such on the cable with remote control.

Player functions • selecting a category • updating music library

The music player works even when minimized. The titles of the tracks running appear on the display. Volume is settable straight from the display. Incoming calls hush music down gradually; once a call is terminated, the track continues from the place it was interrupted. Ringtones can be heard in the earphones.

A list of all music files on the memory card • playing a selected one • equalizer • player minimized in background

The earphones enclosed in the original package could also serve as a handsfree set. The remote control located on their cable contains a microphone and a clip that helps stick the cable to user’s clothes, a volume swinging key, and a button for call acceptance or rejection (a long press on this button activates voice dialing).

Original earphones with a remote control located on the cable

The radio installed in Nokia N73 is of the Visual series, even though the visual part is usable in very few spots in the world. The FM frequencies can be typed manually, searched according to signal intensity, or gradually tuned by searching the entire frequency range.

RDS is not available in result of which you will need to type the names of your favorite stations (maximum 20) manually. Broadcast is stereophonic, but may convert into monophonic if the signal intensity gets weaker. Bear in mind that the radio application is only functional when the earphones are plugged into the Pop-port, because their cable plays the role of an antenna.

Apart of my own videos Nokia N73 managed also to play converted video files in 3GP and MP4 formats, both in full-screen mode. Use the joystick to search tracks.

Calls and phonebook

Nokia N73 supports all four GSM bands – 900, 1800, 850, and 1900 MHz. In addition, it supports 3rd generation networks, which – together with the second camera located above the display – facilitate video calls, including instant data. Connection to UMTS is user-configurable from the menu – a useful option in case that energy should be saved.

The quality of Nokia N73’s sound is rather standard, noise levels are insignificant. Unfortunately, its volume capacity is a bit limited; I need to stick the handset very close to my ear every time I am executing a call in a busy environment. The same holds true for the handsfree speaker. Incoming calls can be silenced; during calling you can also deactivate the microphone or start to record the call. To my and overall disgrace, however, Nokia continues to ignore customers’ advice as to the length of its voice records (used for call records) – it is once again limited to a mere one minute.

Received, missed and dialed calls are stored in separate folders of the Log application. Each call record includes date and time. Calls executed to or from one and the same numbers only appear once accompanied by the date and the time of the last try.

Straight from the Log you can make calls, write SMS to a particular number, and save this number into the phonebook. In addition, the Log is able to record the duration of the calls made and data transferred. This last function, however, cannot be run by a mere press on the green key in stand-by mode, but has to be activated from the main menu. The main menu also provides access to a detailed log, which holds information about all processes taken place in the phone, that is, individual and repeated calls, and data transfers. The Log can be filtered both by connection type and selected number.

The phonebook has seen no changes as to former models. All contacts use shared memory, so the phonebook can virtually contain an infinite number of both contacts and phone numbers. Along with first and last name (organized in separated fields), each contact can also be assigned a pile of other fields: company, position, nickname, additional fields, mobile numbers, land-line numbers, video call numbers, Internet numbers, fax numbers, pagers, Push-to-talk addresses, emails, Websites, notes, street addresses, birth date. Each contact can contain an unlimited amount of phone numbers (50 for example).

Phonebook • searching by gradual typing • contact details

Access to the phonebook is user-configurable. As usual, its icon is located on the first position in the active stand-by display, but it could also be assigned to a context key or to the multimedia key. Once you enter the phonebook, just type the initial of the searched contact – the phone will do the rest on its own.

All contacts from the phonebook can be voice dialed. Nokia N73 recognizes any voice, which automatically excludes prior teaching. It works smoothly. When you press the respective key and pronounce the name of the person you want to call, the phone visualizes its image, reads its name with an artificial voice and dials the default number assigned to it. Individual numbers in the phonebook can be represented by a shortcut key.

Countless fields to attach to each contact name • a contact accompanied by an image

Sound

Each name from the phonebook can be accompanied by a custom ringtone and an image, which appears once in the phonebook and once as a tiny icon when call is executed. Contacts can also be organized into groups, which help filtering calls in ringing profiles. Each group can be assigned a separate ringtone (but not image).

Selecting a profile • modifying the selected profile

Nokia N73 has 5 standard profiles plus an additional one for work in offline mode. If you need more profiles, there is no problem to configure them on your own. Within each profile you can set up a special ringtone for calls, for video calls, for messages, and for email. Volume level, vibration, keypad sounds and filtering are defined here as well. When filtering is active, only calls from members of selected groups are alerted of by ringtones. Inside the Profiles application you will find a new function: when a call is coming in, after the first ringing and to your will, Nokia N73 can pronounce caller’s name with its specific artificial voice. It is a pretty useful function, btw, as it frees you from having to look at the display when you are being called. The only condition here is that the respective caller is included in the phonebook of the phone.

Nokia N73 supports nearly all existing ringtone formats, used by common mobiles, with the basic ones being MIDI and 48-voice melodies (Nokia N70 was able to ring with 64 voices). Besides, Nokia N73 manages MP3, AAC, AMR, Real Audio, RealTones, TrueTones, and WAV. The phone’s vibration is not of the most powerful one, but is strong enough to make you feel the device in your pocket; its sound is pleasantly moderate.

Nokia N73 works in both GSM and 3G networks. It manages video calls successfully. Calling process alone has remained the same: once the contact or the number to dial has been selected simply select the option Video call from the context menu. Then you need to look at the front lens. Your image will appear in a tiny area on the display, while the rest of it will be occupied by the image of your video call partner. Instead of sending the opposite side a live image of yours, you could only show them a static picture.

And what about messaging?

Compared to earlier Nokia models, the SMS application in Nokia N73 has been left untouched. The higher resolution used in the phone does not bring along the visualization of more lines en bloc than before, but at least makes each line to fit in more letters than before. Font legibility is good.

Nokia N73 is equipped with T9 dictionary. Sent messages are stores in the “Sent” folder. The number of sent and received messages the phone could archive only depends on the amount of available free memory. MMS are supported, of course. The profile for their sending is preset in the phone. The MMS editor is simple and well organized. Along with a text body a MMS could also contain an image, a sound, or a video.

Messaging folder • creating SMS • options to apply in MMS • creating MMS

In order to set up an email box of your own you need to download its content from the respective server. Nokia N73’s display shows 4 messages en bloc at most. Emails in HTML format get visualized without any problem. The email editor works with accounts using POP3 and IMAP4. Besides, you can predefine whether the phone should download the entire message content or previews only; the download of an entire message body requires an additional click. Attachments (documents, tables, images) are downloaded and visualized afterwards.

Email account • text preview owork with attachments

The fabulous browser

It has been more than a month since me and all my colleagues fell in love with the new browser built in Nokia N73. It is just fantastic. It visualizes pages instantly (3G network is a must) and correctly. Image loading can be deactivated, but even so web pages come out as if real. Naturally, all this requires transferring of a huge amount of data, so make sure you have a flat data contract with your provider. Otherwise, together with browser’s abilities you will also have to admire your month bill.

Typing an address

The main cursor is controlled through the joystick, it is a tiny pointer. Controls are pretty similar to those of communicators: use the pointer to click on preferred item; to scroll the page move the pointer towards the margins of the selected direction. If you continue to scroll, a mini-map showing your position within the current page comes out – a very important function for overall orientation. Even though the browser is brilliant, it has one significant disadvantage: its image cannot be displayed in landscape mode. Nokia N73 does not support landscape images even though the browser application itself contains this option (check the same browser built in Nokia E60).

Web browser

Good secretary

The organizer functions were good enough even at the older Symbian mobiles. Their base is the calendar, which content could be displayed in active stand-by mode, too. The calendar has monthly, weekly and daily view. When in the monthly view you come upon a day with a note, it is displayed in a bubble.

Calendar: monthly view • weekly • details of a selected day

The tasks (To-do notes) are now a component of the calendar, they were separated before. Personally, I think that this is more-practical – in one day preview I can see all my tasks and meetings gathered. The tasks may be ordered by the due date note or priority. Maybe it’s a good idea to add the alarms and notes to the calendar too? I would award a Gold Raspberry to Nokia for its smartphones alarm function – such a long negligence of the repetitive function is shameful. In addition to this, there is no stopwatch again – it has to be installed separately.

Shameful non-repetitive alarm-clock

PC Suite

One of the preset programs in Nokia N73 is QuickOffice – a browser designed to read Microsoft Office formats. Quickword opens text documents DOC, Quicksheet reads tables in Excel, while Quickpoint visualizes PowerPoint presentations.

In the phone you will also find an Infrared port, which seems to be reviving in Nokia smartphones after years of oblivion. It is supplemented by an entire scale of data transfer capabilities: from Bluetooth or USB (phone’s battery cannot be charged straight from a PC) to GPRS, EDGE, and UMTS networks.

Bluetooth settings

Enclosed USB cable

All current Nokia handsets communicate with PC using the software package PC Suite included as a part of the CD delivered with Nokia N73. Its updated version could also be downloaded straight from Nokia website.

PC Suit offers:

• Data back-up
• Synchronization with phonebook, calendar, task manager and notes
• Simpler setup of Internet connection
• A tool for installing applications from a PC into the phone
• File manager providing access to phone memory from a PC
• A program managing contacts
• An application for sending SMS from a PC
• Multimedia player
• A program for photo and video downloads from the phone onto a PC’s hard disk
• A program called Music Manager for work with music

Conclusion

If you see Nokia N73 like a mobile tool for work, then you will probably not show any interest in the Carl Zeiss logo placed on the camera lens on the rear cover of the phone. Nevertheless, you will certainly appreciate the possibility to take pictures of documents and tables, read their electronic images in QuickOffice or check and manage your email box. All time organizing applications in Nokia N73, except the alarm clock, are brilliantly elaborated. The phonebook offers a virtually unlimited space plus plenty of fields for each contact, and an exceptional Web browser. Synchronization is seamless. Satisfied?

You should be. But I know and expect your response: “Where’s Wi-Fi?”… Well, nowhere…The absence of Wi-Fi damns the phone… gives it a black point…and may easily be a decisive matter at the moment of purchase.

If – on the contrary – Nokia N73 is more of a “multimedia computer” for you, you will be fascinated by its camera abilities. The phone makes some of the best photos a mobile phone has ever been able to make; macro is superb, flash is powerful. Nokia N73 does not lack a music player (an additional memory card to be bought separately is a must), nor earphones (adapter required). It plays movies and manages video calls.

And finally, if you need a work phone during the day and a multimedia device at night, then Nokia N73 is ideal for you.

For our reviews we shoot, download and prepare much more pictures then finally appear in the article. They can be interesting for some of you therefore we offer all of them in one place: photo gallery.

Nokia N73

Pictures of the display

Photos made with Nokia N73

Zoom

Close-up

Text

Standard • night • flash

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n73-review-106p10.php