Nokia N90 (T-Mobile)

Calls and speakerphone: In general, call quality on this cell phone is decent. However, it’s not the loudest cell phone we’ve ever tried. We rarely used the side volume keys to lower the sound. In fact, we needed to keep the audio set at the max setting to hear other callers. Even more disappointing is leaving Bluetooth turned on diminished call quality drastically. Thankfully, turning off the feature is just a couple of clicks away. The Nokia N90 also has a speakerphone (Nokia calls it the Loudspeaker), which callers could tell we were using but could still hear us fine. As with other Nokia cell phones you’ll need to wait until you’re on a call to activate the Loudspeaker.

Audio Playback: The audio quality of MP3s played using the cell phone’s RealPlayer app through the loudspeaker are acceptable, but not as good as the audio quality found on Sony Ericsson’s W600.

Menu/Phonebook: Nokia’s N90 has the Symbian OS, which is one of three (Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Symbian) smart phone operating systems. The beauty of the Symbian OS is that it was created specifically for cell phones, so using it can be easy. That’s not to say there won’t be a learning curve if you’ve never used it before, but it feels and acts much more like a souped-up cell phone. Note: you’ll need a little patience when accessing features or apps because any smart phone runs a bit slower than standard cell phones.

The phonebook can store multiple numbers and addresses. As long as you have a contact stored in the cell phone’s 30MB of memory, you’ll be able to use voice commands to initiate calls orally. You won’t be able to use that feature for names and numbers stored only on the SIM card. Another bonus is customization; you’ll be able to download Symbian apps to the cell phone as well.

Finally, it supports most e-mail programs (IMAP4 and POP3) so you can get your e-mail on the cell phone too. Though responding using the numeric-centric keypad can be taxing. It also comes with a decent e-mail program and though you won’t need a software engineering degree to set up your e-mail accounts you may need to call technical support to get it working correctly.

Camera/Video: The big selling point on this Nokia cell phone is its 2-megapixel Carl Zeiss integrated camera. If you take this cell phone on vacation you might be able to lessen your traveling load and leave the digital camera at home – you can take photos and record video. We did find, however, that when we used the camera in bright places picture quality was amazing, but the darker the environment the more degraded image quality became (despite the camera’s built-in flash).

Any picture you take on the camera phone can be altered: you can add graphics, make them black and white, or do any other photo editing features using the included Adobe Photoshop for Mobile app. You can also print photos directly from the Nokia N90 using PictBridge. In order to use this feature, you’ll need to use the included USB cable to connect the camera phone to the printer. If the printer has Bluetooth ditch the cable and send photos using the cell phone’s Bluetooth connection.

Music: As mentioned earlier the MP3 playback quality is pretty good, but if you plan to listen to MP3s a lot we suggest using headphones -- you’ll be much happier with the result. The cell phone supports both MP3 and unprotected AAC files (Note: You won’t be able to listen to songs you bought from iTunes). You can use the RealPlayer app to loop songs, play songs at random, or play a single song. However, in order to get songs onto the Nokia N90 your best bet will be to store music directly onto an MMC card and insert it into the side of the cell phone.

Connectivity /Bluetooth: As noted earlier, make sure the Bluetooth feature is turned off when not in use as it causes significant call degradation. We were able to connect easily with a Bluetooth-enabled PC and headset. For a cell phone with this much functionality, you really should consider using Nokia’s free PC Connectivity Suite (Note: you can download this from the company’s web site) to sync files and contacts stored on a computer with the Nokia N90 cell phone.

Look and Feel: The Nokia N90 is far from slim or compact. The good news is you’ll rarely have to fish around for it in a purse as it’s easy to spot and you’ll hardly ever find yourself wondering if you remembered to bring your cell phone as it adds noticeable weight to any bag.

That said, we are impressed with the head swivel design that turns the cell phone into a portable video recorder or camera. It also, incidentally, is how you activate the camera or video recorder – there’s no dedicated key to start the feature. It’s definitely cool and makes it a lot easier to snap pics and shoot video. The displays are also impressive; we usually had no problem viewing either the external or internal screens in any lighting situation.

Keypad: You know what they say about big cell phones? They come with big keypads. The Nokia N90’s is extremely tactile and we particularly liked the raised keys, which greatly limited misdials. In addition to the two soft keys, talk/end keys and the five-way navi-key, there are three more keys used for quick access to some of the cell phone features. The one with which you’ll become most intimate has a bizarre elliptical icon – it takes you to the cell phone’s menu system.

When you have a cell phone with so many battery-intensive features, sub-par battery life is to be expected and the Nokia N90 is no exception. Heavy cell phone users and those who use the camera and media player features a lot will have to charge the phone nightly. But if you use the cell phone to make calls and send/receive text messages, you’ll need to charge it every other day. But when we used the cell phone to make two to three 10 minute calls a day and light texting, the Nokia N90 could last about four days without needing more juice.