Nokia E90 Communicator Review

Performance:

Running on 332MHz processor, the E90 acted just as we expected – neither too fast nor too slow. The same processor is used in the N95 and the two smartphones seem to work identically, a step slower than the phones with 369MHz processor and also Symbian 9.2. That OS is very steady and in the testing period restarted just 2 times: once for unknown reason and once after the ‘3d view’ of the GPS software was selected. Keeping in mind we heavily used the phone, this is OK for a smartphone.

No matter how big and vivid the display is, or how many keys the keyboard has, the E90 Communicator is still a phone and it must its performance as such is important. Put in the standard Reception test in an area with gradually decreasing signal, the E90 scored just average 5/10, like the E65.

The battery times are excellent! Nokia claims 5.8 hours of continues talk time but our test exceeded this result and the E90 continued to run for 7 hours. With average usage, a single charge will hold for more than a couple of days, and in our case we charged it daily but with 2.5-3 hours of web-browsing.  This is an excellent result compared to anything currently available on the market. When you have an 800-pixels display and QWERTY you will want to read/write emails and browse the internet and if the battery life doesn’t allow you it will be useless. In this case it is not so and we can consider it as an improvement when compared to the N95, which was blamed for its battery life by many.

We are surprised that the E90 can be used opened during a call. But as nobody would hold it this way next to the head, the loudspeaker must be used in this mode. You will hear with reasonable volume enough for indoors usage, but the other party won’t understand your words even when the phone (microphone) is close to you. Close the shell and continue talking in the normal mode, which offers typical for Nokia close-to-excellent quality. The voices are clear and realistic in both directions and the volume is above the average. It pleases us with business-phone call quality.


Conclusion:

The first reaction when seeing the E90 is that it is HUGE. That’s true, but we can live with this fact, having in mind the features it offers. It reminds of the Ugly duckling – a big and plain phone on the outside, but with huge comfortable keyboard and easy to read display with resolution of 800 pixels on the inside. The combination of the last two turns the E90 Communicator into the ultimate device for internet usage, which thanks to the excellent Symbian S60 browser is visualized as on computer. Add the quad-band GSM, the 3.6MBps HSDPA and the WiFI, and you will see that it can connect almost everywhere. Another smartphone with 800 pixel display is the Toshiba Portege G900 but being a WM6 Pro device is more limited (because of the not popular resolution) and mediocre Internet browser.