Review : Nokia E90 Communicator

• Author: ezpod
• Filed under: Event News & Updates, Mobile Phones & Devices, Software Tools | Tags: 3G, Flash Lite, gms, HSDPA, mms, Nokia, Real Media, S60, ssl, WAP
• Date: Apr 21,2008

This is the first Communicator with 3G, and HSDPA at that. Sadly for us Americans, that high speed data connection is available only on the 2100Mhz band, which isn’t used in the US. That means we have to resort to 2.5G EDGE, which averages 165k on the E90 according to DSL Reports mobile speed test. You can turn off 3G in phone settings to save power as a consolation. Thankfully, there’s WiFi for much faster data when near a hotspot or home/work access point. The E90 is a quad band GSM world phone that supports all GSM bands: 850/900/1800/1900MHz and it’s sold unlocked for use with any GSM carrier by Dynamism and other importers. The SIM card is located under the battery. Though import versions of the E90 aren’t targeted to the US, the Nokia Settings Wizard had no trouble setting up AT&T and T-Mobile settings for data and MMS for us. Call quality was the usual excellent Nokia stuff, and reception is strong (stronger than the Nokia 9300) on both the 850 and 1900MHz bands as measured using PhoneNetInfo and other decibel-reading utilities. The E90 comes with the usual speed dial where you can assign 2 through 9 to numbers in your contacts (1 is reserved for voicemail). Also there is Nokia’s voice dialing which we’ve never found very trustworthy (woe when it dials an overseas contact instead of the intended next door neighbor). Voice dialing gives you only 1.5 seconds to make sure it “heard” and dialed the correct number.

We’ve extolled the many virtues of the S60 3rd edition web browser in several other reviews. Suffice to say it and the iPhone have the best browser in the mobile business, hands down. Pages are generally rendered faithfully, including javascript and most dHTML based on javascript, CSS, tables, frames and more. The S60 browser uses Safari technology, and it also handles WAP sites and RSS feeds. In conjunction with the 800 pixel wide screen display, it’s a most desktop-like experience. Sorry, there’s no QuickTime or Windows Media player but it does support Flash Lite, Real Media and multiple windows along with SSL.

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