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Nokia's N91 isn't exactly a new product - after all, it was launched back in April 2005 - but it's new to us, having just recently been released to the US market. Most of Nokia's Nseries entertainment-centric smartphones are focused on photography and video, but the N91 is targeted instead at the music lover.

The $599.99 N91's main claim to fame is its extra-large storage capacity, which is made possible by an internal 4 GB hard drive. (Nokia says this is enough to store as many as 3,000 songs, but if you typically encoded your music at a 128 kbps rate, that capacity is closer to about 1,000 songs.)

Owing in part to the hard drive, the N91 is a fairly large and heavy device, at least by mobile phone standards. It measures 4.4 x 2.1 x .9 inches and weighs about 5.8 ounces, and for most will be a bit too chunky to comfortably slip into a shirt or jeans pocket.

It's powered by a Li-Ion battery that's rated for 3-4 hours talk time and up to 10 hours in music-player mode. The N91's battery/SIM card compartment door fits unbelievably tightly-- we found it extremely difficult to remove and almost as hard to replace properly without worrying about accidentally damaging the phone. (Fortunately, most users shouldn't need to do this very often.)

The Symbian, S60-based N91 is a GSM 900/1800/1900 device, and it also supports WCDMA 2100 (Wideband CDMA), which is available in parts of Asia and Europe (but alas, not in the US). Other connectivity options on the N91 include Bluetooth 1.2 and 802.11g/b WLAN.

The N91's large 2-inch diagonal display capable of 262,144 colors, but it's resolution of 176x208 is somewhat low and results in a coarser display than other smartphones. Nevertheless, it's still quite readable. The N91 isn't just about music-- it also has a 2 megapixel camera with a 20x digital zoom that can record video clips (but there's no flash).

Design
One look at the N91 suggests that its raison d'etre is more music player than phone. The device, which is clad in stainless steel and chromed plastic, sports large dedicated music keys front and center. The music key panel slides down to reveal a phone keypad beneath, which by compared to the music keys is relatively small and cramped. There are also a pair of soft keys, call send/end buttons, and a joystick just above the music keys, plus volume controls and a menu button on the left and right sides of the phone, respectively.

The N91 comes with a generous set of music-related accessories, including stereo earbuds, a wired remote control, and a cable that can connect the phone's standard 3.5 mm headphone jack to an external amplifier or speakers with RCA-style audio jacks. You also get a matching metallic dock for charging, but to connect the N91 to a PC for synchronization or transferring music the (included) USB cable connects separately to the phone instead of the dock.

Made for Music
Getting your tunes into the N91 is pretty easy—when you connect the N91 to the USB port on your Windows XP system it's recognized as an external hard drive so you can drag and drop music files directly onto the phone. You can also use Nokia's Audio Manager software or Windows Media Player (version 10 or higher) to copy and synchronize music between your PC and the N91. Nokia also offers a downloadable plug-in for iTunes, but it's only available for the Mac version (OS X 10.4).

For music playback, the N91 has a large (for a phone) stereo speaker on its left side that delivers good volume and decent sound quality. Of course, most users will undoubtedly avail themselves of the earbuds which naturally provide a richer sound than any embedded speaker can hope to.

The N91 supports the most popular music file formats, including MP3, AAC, WMA, Real, and WAV as well as a handful of lesser-known formats, and Nokia expects to release a free plug-in this month that will allow playback of DRM-protected Windows Media files. When you get tired of listening to your own music, you can fire up the N91's built-in FM radio, but to use it you need to have the earbuds attached, since they act as the antenna (you still have the option of listening through the phone's speaker.

Software & Interface
Aside from the music stuff, the N91 also includes a browser, POP/IMAP e-mail client and a several PIM applications like a calendar and contact manager. Very often multifunction devices suffer from the inability to easily switch between those functions, but that isn't the case with the N91 because neither of the device's personalities - smartphone or music player - overwhelms the other.

The phone's main menu is always within easy reach via the right-side button, and conversely, a special button embedded within the music keys always takes you back to the N91's "Now Playing" screen no matter where you are in the interface. We did notice that the N91's response time was a bit lethargic, particularly during music playback.

Conclusion
The N91's biggest problem is probably its high cost. At the time of this writing no US carrier is offering it- you can get one direct from Nokia, albeit at full sticker price. (Interestingly enough, the N91 seems to cost even more at independent sources like Amazon.com.) In any event, $600+ will buy you almost any advanced smartphone of your choice and a 4GB iPod Nano to boot nowadays.

In spite of its bulk and some flaws, there's still a lot to like about the Nokia N91 (not the least of which is its voluminous capacity and built-in 802.11g Wi-Fi) but we'd like it a lot more if it had a lower carrier-subsidized price tag. Still, if you don't want to carry two devices around and are looking for a music-centric phone with lots of capacity, the N91 is worth a look.