By Chris Finnamore on Thursday, 25 October 2007
 The E90 is Nokia’s latest Communicator phone and it follows in the footsteps
of its predecessors in two ways. Firstly, it’s huge and heavy, and secondly,
it looks like a normal phone on the outside, but opens up to reveal a full keyboard
and large screen.
The phone may weigh a fair bit, but it feels very well made. The display’s
hinge feels particularly tough, and lets you place the screen at whatever angle
you find most comfortable for typing. The hinge has two locking points at a
100- and 180-degree angle, though the 100-degree angle isn’t comfortable
when you’re holding the E90
in your hand or it’s sitting on a desk.
The phone is gloriously easy to use. It doesn’t have a touchscreen, but
the Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition operating system is logically laid out for
use with a directional keypad and all of the phone’s main functions are
on the home screen. The directional keypad is a little wobbly, but the Qwerty
keyboard is superb. The keys are chunky and have a surprising amount of travel,
so typing is fast. You can also access most special characters with the Shift
key, so you don’t have to go into sub-menus or remember obscure key combinations.
We had no complaints about the internal display either. Its 800 x 352 resolution
is high for its size and text is clear. Its widescreen aspect is also ideal
for reading documents or emails and surfing the web, as you don’t have
to scroll horizontally when reading. The E90 has wireless networking and super-fast
HSDPA mobile data, and its powerful web browser correctly formats even complicated
web pages.
Unfortunately, setting up an email account on the E90 isn’t easy. The
phone doesn’t automatically download settings for common email providers,
so you have to type in incoming and outgoing server names yourself.
The supplied PC
Suite software lets you synchronise your email, contacts and calendar with
Microsoft Outlook, but if you want to synchronise wirelessly with a Microsoft
Exchange server, then the server will need to have Nokia’s Intellisync
Wireless Email software installed.
The E90 features an integrated GPS receiver along with Nokia’s Maps application,
which will automatically find your location if you have a GPS fix and download
the appropriate maps. Downloading maps is fast over HSDPA
or 3G, and they are stored in the phone’s flash memory for future use.
Unfortunately, it takes ages to get a GPS signal, so we preferred to enter our
location manually and navigate from there.
Nokia’s E90 Communicator has a great keyboard and screen, and there’s
little it can’t do. Unfortunately, it’s so expensive that we’d
recommend looking at other phones, such as HTC’s TyTN
II.
| Price |
£660 |
| Rating |
4 out of 6 |
| Good |
Keyboard; internal screen; integrated GPS
|
| Bad |
Big and heavy; very expensive
|
Buy from
|
Expansys |
Specifications
850, 900, 1800, 1900, 3G 2100, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, 2”
outer display (240 x 320), 4” inner display (800 x 352), Bluetooth 2.0,
802.11g, 128Mb RAM, microSD Card slot (512Mb supplied), Symbian Series 60 3rd
Edition, feature pack 3.1, GPS, MP3 player, 3.2-megapixel camera, Qwerty keyboard
£320 on a £35 a month contract
Size 132 x 57 x 20mm
Weight 210g
Battery life 6h quoted talk time, 336h quoted standby time
|
