Movies, movies everywhere
Sometimes it is difficult not to think Nokia does things just because it can and to show off, rather than because it thinks there is a market out there ready to bite its hand off to get at the goodies being offered.
Take the N93 for example. It shoots video. Now many handsets can stake the same claim, but not in anywhere near the same way as the N93.
For
a start, this handset shoots video at 640 x 480, 30 frames a second, and digital
video stabilisation does what it can to ensure smooth shooting. You can save
video to miniSD cards, which is just as well because the 50MB of internal
memory won’t last long and the 128MB card that comes with the handset
certainly won’t be big enough to meet your needs.
Some PC editing software comes with the phone so you can transform your movies into mega-epics (or at least take out the less wholesome parts), and if that doesn’t appeal, thanks to the provided cabling you can send footage direct from handset to your TV.
None of this is really rocket science type stuff, but the whole presentation and packaging of the N93’s movie like capabilities, the handset’s stills shooting ability, the hardware design and its general handling sit alongside the rest of the Symbian S60 v3 features to produce what is a groundbreaking handset with so much going on that in an ideal world it would take three 3g.co.uk reviews or more to cover the lot.
But we only have one review, so let’s get on.
The camera lens, which also shoots stills at 3.2 megapixels, uses Carl Zeiss optics. It is precious enough that a lens cover is provided. This is a fiddle to get on and off and is not attached to the N93 itself, so you’ll probably mislay it fairly quickly, unfortunately.
When shooting stills there’s a 3x optical zoom and 20x digital zoom on hand along with auto focus, a range of different scene shooting modes, white balance settings and colour tone tweaks to apply.
The optics are a key reason for the somewhat chunky size and weight of this handset, and also for the hardware design. The N93 looks like a giant clamshell with a growth along its top where the lens lives, but instead of opening along a central hinge, there is a dual action pivot on the upper right side of the casing. You can use this to lift the lid clamshell style or lift it laptop computer style.
This second mode is actually quite a nice choice for making video calls with the N93 sitting on a desk as well as for direct viewing of movies you have shot.
You can combine the two pivots, indeed doing so is integral to shooting movies. Lift the lid to 45 degrees clamshell style and it locks in position. Now swivel it counter-clockwise and it faces right angles to what was the right edge of the handset.
Now
the numberpad section of the N93 is a handle, the screen automatically becomes
a widescreen format viewfinder, and sitting under your thumb are several controls.
There are buttons which turn the flash on and off and switch between video
and stills modes. There’s a wheel which activates the zoom. A shutter
button. And a mini navigation pad with central select key which lets you get
to all the other camera controls. Two small buttons to the left of the camera
screen also provide more controls.
When you push the handset into this shape it automatically assumes you want to shoot movies and starts the camera running. It is all very slick and very easy to use, but probably nowhere near generating the wow factor you will get the first time you hook the handset up to your TV using the provided cables and show your movies off to family or friends. What the cable does is send the handset screen to your TV, so you can show anything using this method, movies, photos, a Web site your are browsing - anything.
Optics aside, Nokia seems to have thrown just about everything at the N93. Built in are Bluetooth, infra red and Wi-Fi and as far as the latter is concerned it supports UPnP. What that means is that the N93 should be able to talk to another UPnP device over Wi-Fi for file sharing. Device support for UPnP is relatively thin on the ground currently, but if you have a PC without appropriate support, Nokia includes some on its CD.
An FM radio and multimedia player are here for your audio entertainment, with the latter able to synchronise with Windows Media Player and delivering superb quality and very loud sound from the device speaker. You get a cable for PC connection and the PC Suite software for data synchronisation and file transfer, so you can make the most of the calendar and contacts software on the N93.
Nokia’s LifeBlog software gives you another possible use for the camera, while 3G video calling takes advantage of a smaller camera sitting above the 2.4 inch 320 x 240 pixel screen. The Web browser makes good use of the large high resolution screen, and Nokia has included readers for PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
And dare we omit the barcode reader? Run this and a barcode is scanned with the camera and any juicy titbits such as URLs or phone numbers that might be embedded in it are extracted. Not all barcodes have this kind of buried info, but you can, er, have fun finding out.
A very, very small front display shows the current time and signal status, and will show you who is calling, but it is so very small that it might as well not be present at all, really.
It is very hard for us to make our mind up about the N93. It is no substitute for a dedicated digital video camera, but as a video shooting phone none of the competition comes near it. Its other features are plentiful and impressive – we’ve not been able to run through them all here, but it is one heck of a size and with the handset fully opened to make voicecalls it feels like something from the 1980s.
A fair conclusion would be that as a showcase the N93 is impressive, while as an everyday phone it is probably too much for many people to carry around.
This review covers the above mobile phone only and does not address the performance of any 3G Network. The score is based on a 3G mobile phone checklist.
Copyright : You are advised that this material is the copyright of www.3G.co.uk and is our own personal view only. (C) All rights reserved 2005. Whist every care has been taken in the preparation of this review, the author nor 3G.co.uk cannot be held responsible for the accuracy or authenticity of the information it contains, or consequence arising from it.
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