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Down and dirty with the Nokia N90 Phone, Part 1

First post and first review.

I received my Nokia N90 today. Cost me $435 bucks (ebay) but it's a damn good price compared to the market price which is about $550. The good news is after selling my new Nokia 6682 (review coming soon!) and my old 6260 it'll be free...sort of. At least if that's how my funky math works...(I never did do that well on my math tests..)

In this review I'll be comparing the N90 to my old phone, the Nokia 6260 (review coming soon!) which is a great phone in itself, no matter what the little punks down at the forums say.

Review start-o!

The Box

At first glance, the Nokia N90 just looks slick and has the box to match. The box colors are a little on the drab side but that's ok. It will rot in my closet for the next year and a half anyway.

Fast forward through the opening ceremony and a couple more pics, and here we have the actual phone. And problem #1.

The Phone




Problem #1 - this first thing you'll notice when actually PICKING up the N90 is that it's ridiculously heavy. And Big. If you consider the 3650 to be a brick, then the N90 is easily a concrete block. For the record the N90 weighs 6.4 ounces which is some major tonnage for a cell phone. In fact I believe this cell phone sets a new record in the flip phone size and weight division. This is the heavyweight of all heavyweight flips.

If you can get past the size and weight then the N90 is simply an amazing phone.

Here's another picture with the Nokia N90 and the Nokia 6260.




As you can see, the N90 is about half an inch longer than the 6260 and maybe 1-2 millimeters wider. Unfortunately, the Nokia 6260 is a large flip phone to begin with. As soon as I get my camera and my dad's RAZR downstairs I'll do a nice size comparison with a phone that most people have seen.




They're about the same thickness.

When I saw some initial pictures of the N90, I could not for the life of me figure out how that top piece moved around. I thought it would move above and below the phone due to that hinge looking piece sticking out. Now I see I was wrong...

The camera and loudspeaker are located inside the top piece of the phone. This piece only rotates about 270 degrees - if you want, you can do turn it around and have the lettering "Carl Zeiss Optics blah blah blah" on the opposite side of the phone.

When you flip the phone open, however, the camera/loudspeaker part moves with the FRONT part of the flip. This means it moves to the back, where most people tend to put a couple of their fingers when opening the phone. Ouch!




I discovered this the hard way. And for some reason I keep re-discovering it again and again.

Aside from the flip and the rotate-able camera barrel, you can also rotate the screen 120 degrees. This allows you to rotate the phone in some wacky directions:




It's interesting to note that nokia has made it so you can't do a 180 with the screen and fold it down with the screen facing up. I have to admit, that was a really stupid idea on the 6260.

And while I'm talking about really stupid and pointless extras, Nokia decided to punch in a silly little hole on the bottom of the phone so you can insert a keychain, or lanyard, or string, or whatever.

Whenever I visualize someone actually wearing this phone around their neck I think of those rappers with those gigantic gold chains that they wear. Hilarious..

Build Quality

The Nokia N90 is very well made. While a lot of Nokia phones tend to be a little plasticky, the N90 has a sort of heavyish metallic feel due to those little chrome colored pieces on the sides.

Note: You can even use the N90 as a form of self-defense - it's that solid and that heavy. It's certainly more effective than Tae-Bo.