Nokia n91 Grey Review - Features

Features

 

Editor Rating: 4.2

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Styling:  2 

Ease of Use:  4 

Display:  4 

Voice Quality:  5 

Battery Life:  5 

Quality/Durability:  5 

The N91's music player does basically everything you'd want a digital music player to do - with the exception of displaying album art and certain flavors of copy-protected tracks.  The N91 can handle mp3, AAC/eAAC+, WMA and FM stereo audio, and processes metadata to organize your collection by artist, album, track, genre, and so on.  Music quality was on par with Sony Walkman phones - and rivaled that of my iPod - with quality earphones and use of the built-in graphic equalizer.  The music player also supports playlist creation and importing m3u playlist files, which is a handy feature.

Syncing music to the N91 is an easy task, thanks to support for USB 2.0 data transfer and both Windows Media Player for WIndows XP and iTunes for Mac OS X.  After downloading a plug-in from Nokia's website, I was able to hook the N91 up to my Mac via USB and sync/manage its music just like I do my iPod - from inside of iTunes.  Very nice.  Protected content including tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store will not play back on the N91 (that's Apple's doing and not Nokia's).

On the non-music side of multimedia, support is included for mpeg4 and Real video, Flash animations, and jpeg photos in individual or slideshow views.  Videos and still images alike looked good on the display, though they didn't pop like they do on the high-resolution displays found on the N73/80/93.

Personal Information Management (PIM) features on the N91 are extensive, and the Calendar and Messaging apps particularly benefit from the Series 60 UI's Active Standby feature.  A row of application shortcut icons is displayed on the standby screen above a list of timely alerts (appointments, new messages, etc.).  Both sets of information are, of course, customizable.  The N91's contact manager can also store more entries than you're likely to ever need, thanks to it's limitless design and the 4GB of onboard memory.

While the N91 is tailored for music fans out of the box, the flexibility of Series 60 allows for near-endless customization by way of user-installable applications.  With some downloading and tweaking, the N91 can be rendered as powerful a mobile office device as it is a mobile music player.  The built-in WiFi connectivity is a huge boon to the phone's potential as a smartphone solution for music fanatics.

Reviewing the N80, I wrote, "Nokia. why a 3 megapixel camera but no auto-focus?  Why, I ask you, why?"  The lack of autofocus on the N91's two megapixel shooter is a bit less egregious, I suppose, but none the less frustrating. 

Also missing from the N91's camera functions are a dedicated access button, flash or assist light, and most software features and settings one would expect to find on a "serious" camera phone.  While I'm sure Nokia had its reasons, I'm perplexed as to why they bothered to build a 2MP sensor into the N91 while leaving off many of the useful, largely software-based accessories?  Other models in their range (N93, N90, N73, etc.) already feature good camera controls, so it's not like Nokia R&D would have been building them from scratch for the N91.  Just port 'em over!

That being said, image quality on the N91's camera was pretty good.  Under good lighting conditions, a steady hand and keen eye can certainly capture good photos using the phone.  But those used to the more imaging-centric offerings in Nokia's N-Series (or SE's k750, w800, or k790/800 models) will likely miss auto-focus, flash, and more advanced photo adjustment options.

The N91 can also record video at resolutions up to CIF (352x288) using the main camera.  Video is recorded with sound, and length is only limited by the amount of free memory available on the device - which should be ample unless you have the hard drive loaded to the max with music.  Video quality was impressive for a phone, and playback looked sharp on the handset's display.