Hands-on with Nokia N96
We take the much-hyped Nokia N96 for a test drive in this Hands-On. This phone tops the NSeries line-up index-wise, but does it have the makings of a true flagship? We find out.
| Review of GSM/UMTS-smartphone Nokia N78 S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 Samsung G810 - new flagship |
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Review of GSM/UMTS-smartphone Nokia 6290Sales package:
Generally Nokia 6290 is taken by many as an offering identical to Nokia N75, released exclusively for the American market, but in fact there is a world of difference between these two handsets both in the sense of hardware and marketing, positioning. Artificial division of the range into multimedia computers and smartphones brings the company to the situation when launching Nokia 6290 it poses a threat to Nseries-branded models, specifically those bearing N6x and N7x indexes on them. I shall remind you, that Nseries devices are presented as flagship solutions, especially when it comes to multimedia, with each phone in the range dealing with its own field – for example Nokia N75 is a fold phone for music addicts, whereas Nokia 6290 is practically the same device with nearly wholly overlapping target audience. However in Europe, according to the marketologists’ thoughts, this device had no chances to be noticed, being a US-tailored proposal, which is quite another matter, obviously. But the unyieldingness Nokia is pushing the Nseries forward with has played a mean trick with the company, so that not only the model was noticed, it got demanded, desired for, in Europe, Russian and Asia. Being due-out in December, which is almost three months earlier than Nokia 6290’s release date, has put Nokia N75 in the limelight. 
But after all Nokia 6290 is worth all the hype and waiting-for, as it will be the market’s fist device running off S60 3rd edition platform updated to Feature Pack 1 (FP1). The most attentive of our readers will definitely say that Nokia N95, boasting similar software onboard, was announced prior to the 6290, however it will arrive in the market a month too late, which makes Nokia 6290 the pioneer. Generally speaking, these two handsets carry somewhat identical software, but utilizes totally different hardware platform – we will surely talk about this as we go deeper into the review. Similar solutions by Samsung, namely Samsung i520v, and LG are hitting the market pretty much at the same time, but with other things being equal, the Nokia-branded handset seems to be more preferable, since it makes best use of what FP1 has to offer, while other companies arm their models with software reminding of previous S60-based models, even though they don’t lack real enhancements. Telling you this, I have to make a note that here I dwell on minor things like Bluetooth visibility time span, new menu lay-outs and so on. In terms of importance, this very handset maybe put up against such device as 6630, meaning that the 6290 opens up a whole new line-up in the company’s range. The phone excelled in having much faster interface and being one of the most fetching devices of its time – all this has given it the title of one of the most popular smartphones in the end of its lifecycle. It may come that Nokia 6290 will be the most widely spread S60-powered device among clamshells, and there are many things speaking in favor of this assumption. 
It’s interesting to know that Nokia Mobile Phones division industriously avoids calling this very handset a “smartphone” and in all documents for public use, on the company’s page, Nokia 6290 is presented as a phone. Actually, the same holds true for Nokia 5500, which proves it just one more time - Nokia Multimedia and Nokia Mobile Phones are competing each other by separating generally similar products as much as possible, however this doesn’t bring any considerable benefits. The same intentions stand behind ordinary phones (from Nokia 6290 onwards) having menu layout other than that found on Nseries devices. To me, it woldn’t come as a big surprise if Enterprise Solutions decided to categorize functions in a different way. But at the end of the day, people who go for Nokia 6290 after using any other S60-powered smartphone will have to revise their experiences, in light of the fact all menus, folders and the very layout being not only illogical (as it is a default issue of all Nokia’s phones), but totally different from that embedded in the previous handsets. To make you catch the sense, I will give a simple example – let us take Nokia N80 IE and check out whether the folder structure is any different. Nokia N80. Office. Notes, Converter, Calculator, Sound Recorder, QuickOffice, Adobe PDF. Nokia 6290. Organiser. Calender, Clock. 
It will be sufficient to say that in Nokia N80 both Calendar and Clock are singled out in separate menu items, whereas here the manufacturer considers them to be of vital importance (in Nokia 6290 the Clock item is present in the main menu as well!). And while it makes some sense for Calendar, Clock is somewhat out of place here, especially when you figure out that the Alarm Clock triggers off only one time on the 6290. Now let’s try to track the rest of applications in Nokia 6290 together. Applications item might be the one, but opening it reveals only WorldMate (found in the root), Welcome (initial first-launch setup), 3D Tones (stereo speakers setup). However there are three folders as well, which doesn’t make our hopes to fade – Games, Utilities and My Own (the folder where all custom applications end up in by default). While Games is definitely not the place where we would find QuickOffice, the other two folders are not so easy to pick from. Which folder would you bet on? The right answer – Utilities. Nevertheless, Calculator and Converter have something of utilities in them, but what is the matter with the applications meant for handling office documents? Even My Own would fit this app better! 
The Sound recorder (formerly known as Imaging) is no longer an utility – now it is found in Media main menu item. 
The further we go, the funnier it gets – Tools always housed file manager and other useful apps. But every time I’m for finding the file manager, I have lots of fun – just can’t memorize its actual “address”. In the 6290 it resides in «Settings-Data mgr» folder. To tell the truth there is nothing wrong with the logic here, since such layout allows having all utilities for handling applications and memory in one place. On the other hand, users need the file manager much more often than other programs in day-to-day activities, thus by putting it so deep in the folder structure the company deliberately limits its usage 
I could keep going on and on with the list of differences and ridiculous location of some menu items, but the fact is: taking uncoordinated steps the company comes up not with high-quality, but with artificial solutions. This results in confusion reigning among unsophisticated users, as they don’t see the way to make browsing and playing around with their S60-based devices a breeze, and prefer calling their menu layouts illogical. Undoubtedly, the user can attune the menu and thus the handset gets much easier to use, but this will obviously take a whole lot of time – having a well-categorized menu by default is much more welcome. This is why we are offering you to lend Nokia a hand in creating a really good menu layout and participate in our User-Vendor project. Specifically, we will post full description of folder structures found in Nokia 6290 and Nokia N80 in our forum, so that all you will have to do is place functions in folders, come up with new directories, or, maybe, with more informative titles. The outcome of this work will be sent to Nokia and taken account of in the upcoming products. 
Design, display, battery life
The models keeps up traditional Nokia’s design, being a fold phone measuring 94x50x20.8 mm in size and weighting 115 g – you can’t say that the 6290 is slim or very portable, but overall its shall be attributed to the latest generation of Nokia-branded solutions, being more or less the same to Nokia 6288 in terms of dimensions. On the other hand, against the background of other smartphones running off the S60 it turns out to be quite compact. 
Nokia 6290 comes in two trims – black and silver – for the former color scheme, the manufacturer applied glossy plastic to the front plate, while the rear is coated in soft-touch material; as for the latter option, all silver 6290’s come with glossy plastic all over the surface. Similarly to other phones utilizing such type of plastic, the Nokia’s latest offspring gets soiled in an eye-blink. 
On the front panel are a lens of a 2 Mpix camera and a LED-flash. An external TFT display edged by chrome-plated plastic measures 1.36” diagonally and boasts a resolution of 128x160, being a top-notch solution, but this is what we are talking about a bit later. For now, we will notice that you will find three dedicated keys for managing the handset while it is closed. 
The top end houses sockets for plugging in a headset (2.5 mm) and slim charger, both are covered by plastic drop-out flaps – we have never seen something like that, but it is truly handy and seemingly long-lasting – make no mistake about that. 
On the left you will find microSD memory expansion slot (with an easy-to-use flap as well) and dedicated PTT button (useless in most cases for being impossible to be reassigned to other functions), also you will see a metal grill-covered loudspeaker – worry not it is not the only speaker on the 6290, as its brother-in-arms resides on the opposite side-plate. IrDA window, volume rocker key and miniUSB-socket are mounted on the right. 
Flipping the 6290 open single-handedly is possible, but you will have a hard time doing so for the handset is quite bulky and hefty at the same time. This was especially stressed by women. A rubber pad preventing the screen from touching the keypad is located on top of the internal display, but it doesn’t save the chrome-edged internal display’s protective screen from dirt and fat, meaning that you will occasionally have to wipe it out with a soft fabric. A forward-facing camera for videoconferencing is placed above the screen, allowing for video calls within 3G networks. 
The internal screen shows off a diagonal of 2,2” and a resolution of 240x320 pixels (active area – 33x45 mm), being capable of 262 K colors. The display provides you with crisp and vivid picture, which hasn’t got anything against direct sunlight (TFT). Leaving out Nokia N80 and Nokia E70, the 6290 retains one of the finest screens to date. A built-in illumination sensor automatically alters display’s backlighting, making the best use of the screen’s capabilities without the life time suffering. 
Nokia 6290 carries a new battery type onboard – 950 mAh Li-Pol (BL-5F). As the manufacturer claims, it can keep the handset up and running for 3 hours in talk mode and up to 240 hours in standby. In conditions of Moscow networks the device lasted about 2 days on medium load (45 minutes of calls, up to 2 hours of music playback, up to 20 minutes of games and extra 20 minutes of Net surfing). Should you be heavy on what the 6290 bring to the table, its lifetime will drop down to one day or even less than that. For example web surfing makes the battery cry in 4 hours, while listening to music at full-blast leads to the same result in less than 7 hours; video playback takes all the charge away in 2 hours. So, we have a handset putting up 1-2 days of operating depending on how intense usage is. It takes the 6290 2 hours 15 minutes to charge up from empty to full. 
Hardware features – CPU, performance, Bluetooth, USBInitially the user can manage 50 Mb of memory, which can be expanded with microSD memory cards. As MemMon utility tells us, RAM makes up 47936 Kb (traditionally user-manageable memory is bound to disk “C”).  
Hardware-wise the 6290 bases off a platform by Freescale, being a first of kind in the family of “cheap” 3G smartphones. In fact the differences between the OMAP2420 and the first model incorporating this platform, Nokia N93, are few, it might even seem that these two solutions are totally equal, presenting you with the same prowess in functionality. And the truth is – EDGE class 32, introduced first in Nokia N93 is available with the 6290, ARM11 CPU, working at 348 Mhz is basically no different from that of the N93, but what really does matter is graphics accelerator, missing in Nokia 6290. So at this point you are more likely to think that this is the end of the high hopes for the 6290 – but you will be mistaken. This is the time when a magic word “Feature Pack 1” steps into the limelight. I will take liberties and draw a parallel between handsets and modern desktops – video cards, CPUs, mother boards makers release upgrades to their current models, bringing more power, more features, so rapidly, that applications that can actually make use of all this superiority become available in six months’ or even a year’s time, it might happen that two years shall pass before users can use their hardware to its fullest. The same holds true here. S60 3rd edition was not optimized for the hardware solutions used in the N93 in this handset’s launch. As a matter of they have attuned the platform only in the end of 2006 and exclusively for the new models (both for the OMAP 2420- and Freescale-based solutions) To provide you with subjective proof that software was actually tweaked, we could look-and-feel of the menu – navigating it has become so much speedier, most items can be now called much faster. Literally, the 6290 passed our interface speed test with flying colors – while in Nokia N80 you were to wait a second or so before getting a new item/submenu displayed on the screen, Nokia 6290 delivers new items almost instantly. Overall, the user interface proves to be extremely fast, scoring many extra points for the handset. But facts are better than personal feelings - that is why to prove our words we used Jbenchmark for rating the 6290’s UI speed. The figures acquired for Nokia 6290 may be put up against those of Nokia N93, which would be very revealing. In all tests not involving 3D graphics, the modes come out with pretty much equal performance, except for the interface speed, which has increased, whereas in the 3D department Nokia 6290 has no trumps hidden in its sleeve, and the reason is simple – missing hardware accelerator. However what really does matter is that the phone has got speedier, and this is the first thing that consumers come across. Running a few steps forward, I would like to note that Nokia 6290 is a typical representative of N-Gage 2007 line-up. Those expecting it to put up some incredible performance in terms of 3D might end up disappointed, as N-Gage brand is now getting to be just another label placed on the phones mostly for the looks’ sake. In fact it will include games, some of which might be alive in 3D, whereas the rest will offer you the good old-fashion two dimensions. So, bluntly speaking, the brand of N-Gage puts together users’ gaming experiences, and that’s about it.
It was also very exciting to see how the 6290 did compared to other Feature Pack 1 based device, for example Samsung i520v. We got a tad worse result with Samsung’s device in most tests and slightly better 3D performance (even though the i520v doesn’t have an accelerator onboard, it still boasts support for some standards). On the whole, we can rightfully say that the numbers put up by these models will be typical for models running off Feature Pack 1.
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