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PDAStreet.com > Hardware Reviews > Review: N91 - Nokia's 4 GB Music Smartphone Review: N91 - Nokia's 4 GB Music Smartphone
By Joe Moran
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 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
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 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 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.
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