Gadget Lust

Today I got to fiddle around with an officemate's Nokia N91 mobile phone, which was pretty fun. The N91 is the Finnish developers' answer to the Ipod and Sony Ericsson Walkman phones- a Series 60 Symbian-powered Smartphone loaded with a 4 Gigabyte Hard Drive, music playing capabilities and a nice, professional-looking stainless steel exterior. I wanted to see if it was as good in person as it was in paper, and to test the video-playing capabilities (which is pretty much my first priority with mobiles).
For one thing, the N91 is pretty big- it's not heavy but the top-heavy bar shape fills your hand pretty much... and I have large hands. The phone is longer than my O2 Mini, but a bit thinner. On the good side, the phone feels firm and solid.

Loading music onto the N91 is a drag-and-drop affair; plugging it into a laptop or desktop computer with a mini-USB port will turn it into a hard drive. About 3.5 Gigs are yours to use, which you can fill up with photos (shot with the 2M Cam) or vids, or with tunes (the phone supports MP3, WMA and AAC files). While the music played fine (in fact, quite excellently), I unfortunately wasn't able to test video since the phone didn't have Smartmovie installed (which is an additional app, after all... ah, Smartmovie... my best friend in the pre-Betaplayer days...). On the other hand, it's just as well... the N91 has a dinky little screen that hearkens back to the 6600 and 7610 days... watching movies on it would be painful for me now, used as I am to relatively enormous PPC screens.

And so, while it was pretty cool to hold and play with the N91 for a while, Nokia's latest stunner won't be replacing my Mini. Fortunately. Anyone else who is interested in the slick new music phone (and it's 3G capable too, if that floats your boat) should go try one out for size... it's quite a nice gizmo.