A long awaited review I must say, I was expecting this phone in my hands
for ages!
When I got it I noticed that the box isnt as big as I expected, usually
phones of this size have huge boxes such as my 7710. The box is decorated with
a lot of attractive pictures but no fancy graphics and designs.
When I opened the box I saw the phone at the left of the tray and at the
right, a poster with “Here’s your N93”.
I didn’t hesitate and grabbed the phone and noticed that it wasn’t as
heavy as I tought, for a moster like that I can actually call it quite light.
I opened the box even further and found the basics as memory card, battery
and charger, I
open the box deeper and saw 3 books, a dvd, rca cables, a pouch, a stereo
headset and charger adaptor for old nokia chargers.
I try to open the back cover which takes quite a while because I am
afraid of damaging the phone but with some playing around with it I found out
that it was actually suppose to be like that.
The phone’s dimensions are impressively huge, it’s much thicker and
larger than I expected.
I opened the flap and find quite a gap between the top and bottom. I
started twisting the phone, and it’s quite awesome because it turns to
landscape mode both sides. I try to compare it with other phones and my 6600 fits
almost twice in the phone when flap is opened, it totally fits in the bottom
part with the camera section.
There are huge keys and very soft and comfortable ones, and it is very
difficult to get used to them because I am used to small and tight keys. Keys
are divided in three sections, with the main keys such as soft keys, navigation
keys and answer and end call keys on the top section. Just below you can find
edit, multimedia, menu and cancel keys. With a gap below you will find the
phone’s numerical keypad.
At the left side of the phone there is a memory card slot, a very
rubbery and uncomfortable one, which I will speak about later in this review.
There is also a pop-port and the charger input, the camera and flash are also
located in this side.
At the right side of the phone we have 9 buttons which is quite a lot
for a phone’s side. There is the camera’s button, a zoom leveler, 5 navigation
keys, camera flash key and video/camera alternator key.
At the bottom there is a small handle to supposedly hang the phone
around your neck, although not many people would want such a brick around their
necks if not for photographic and video purposes.
On the top you simply find the On/Off key which can also be used to
change profiles and to activa the safely remove memory card mode. In order to
use it the flap can’t be fully open because it blocks the key.
Something that I didn’t like was the fact that when the phone is in
horizontal mode, the keys at the right side of the keypad such as 3, 6, 9 are
very hard to use because they become quite blocked, and the menu shortcuts
don’t work well because they are assigned to the vertical mode, but a firmware
upgrade should resolve this issues, the handset had some version 11 on it and
there have been to upgrades, the latest version lies around version 20. Another
problem factor for me is that the battery indicator looks funny because it is
upside down.
Before I enter the software part I still got some points to make: the
detachable rubber slots both for pop-port and memory card are horrible they
don’t fit easily and are very plastic. The keys on the screen are very
difficult to use because they are very small and inside, mainly because I’m not
used to these type of keys.
The camera comes with a protective cap that u have to remove in order to
use the camera, just like in professional cameras. The flash might feel strong
but it doesn’t cover much distance. It gets red when needed, I don’t really
know why, maybe to act as a red-eye remover. The camera has a 3x optical zoom
which makes some little noise and vibration when zooming.
The pop-port cable is quite difficult to fit in and the charger used is
the same as the new ones used for phones like the Nokia N70.
There is WLAN in the phone, which I didn’t give a try due to conflicts
that my laptop’s WLAN adapter has with my HSDPA datacard (it’s a long story).
The Wi-Fi is quite useful, can be used to access internet through a laptop or a
router. With the advance of programs for the Symbian platform there will be
applications which will let you enjoy Wi-Fi for many purposes such as playing
games at high speed or streaming video.
The device incorporates Bluetooth version 2 which lets you connect to 6
devices at once and OBEX file transfers are done at maximum speeds (around 700kbps).
TV-out is quite clear and it is quite exciting to browse the web or chat
on IM on a TV screen although it is difficult to control they keypad in
horizontal mode, but that can be solved if a Bluetooth keyboard such as the
Nokia SU-8W is used.
The sound is stereo
and not the clearest because it lacks on 3D sound or surround like the Nokia 3250,
but the sound is very loud. Something diferent in the music player is that it
also supports WMA and it comes with FM radio. It is quite nice to use loudspeaker
during calls thanks to the clearity achieved.
When taking pictures there are many options and settings to choose which
can result in a perfect picture or maybe a poor one if there is no time or no
patience. Sometimes in the video shooting position the camera lens can come in
contact with one of
Now moving onto the software part, the phone uses Symbian OS version 9.1
for series 60 3rd edition, which is a very advanced OS, I have spoken about it on My 3250 Review, it funcionalities
like minimizing everything from JAVA programs to Symbian applications to phone
applications. You can also use the phone as a flash drive thanks to mass
storage device capabilty although offline mode will have to be activated.
There is no infrared, the main display is 2.4" 320x480 with 16
million colours. The external display is 1.1" 128x36 and 65 thousand
colours. The external screen is simply great and not ugly as i expected, it
shows time, signal and battery meters, and can display caller ID, music details
such as name and bar graphs visualizations, when the flap is closed while music
is still playing, you can control the music such as pausing, forwarding and
rewiding and even increase volume because side keys because music dedicated
keys, this is a genial function of the N93 because it means that it can become
whatever you want it to become, music player, camera, etc.
Many software capabilites were added to this OS9.1 such as rejection
SMS, when u reject calls, automatically a programmed SMS is sent to the person
explaining why u rejected the call, which is quite useful. Another feature is
that when u close the flap you can set what animation u want to appear in the
external screen, what wallpaper and even a tone to open and close the screen, but
unfortunately there is no default tone.
The gallery comes with
thumbnails for videos and for pictures which is quite good. I tested the web
browser. It is quite advanced and has features like diving web pages in
sections just like Opera Mini does, but this can result in a mess up sometimes.
Vodacom’s 3G network doesn’t support the N93 yet so I wasnt able to test either
video call or 3G internet.
Advantages:
- 3.2 megapixel camera with carl zeiss lens,
autofocus and 3x optical zoom
- Symbian OS 9.1 for series 60 v3
- Twists like nothing on earth J
- Video recording at DVD quality (30fps
640x480)
- Many side buttons dedicated to camera
- Landscape mode
- TV-out (RCA cables)
Disadvantages:
- Removing parts very plastic and
uncomfortable
- Difficult to remove back cover
- Keys in horizontal screen mode dont work
well in terms of control and orientation because they are partly blocked
- No 3.5mm jack
Rating: 9/10
