Remember the time when Nokia N90 appeared and everyone thought it’s the most powerful imaging device. It passed only a year that Nokia N93 came out with similar in hardware design, but improved specifications all round and a new star attraction--video capture capability. Nokia combined the two apparently quite different functions of phone and videocam in a single device and called it a mini Camcorder.
Appearance and design
Dimension: 118.2 x 56 x 28.2mm; Weight: 180g.
The phones body is made of mat silver plastic. On the top along the perimeter of the phone and around the display there is a white stripe that makes a nice clear frame of the insight. This phone is quite comfortable but unusual to use: it’s impossible to open or close it with one hand; and big camera module always leans against your cheek while talking. Also you can’t carry the handset in the pocket because of its weight (180g) and dimensionL. The main advantage of the body is its usability: you can’t see any finger prints on it, nor the scratches.
To take the battery cover off you should slightly press on it and then pull. The left side of the handset incorporates the miniSD card slot and the Pop-port for data cable connection and TV-out functionality. Both are hidden underneath protective rubber caps. Right next to the Pop port is the standard Nokia charging port.
Keypad
Nokia has managed to build in huge number keys and still have room for pretty big softmenu, call and end keys as well as a reasonable-sized navigation button and a row of four additional buttons that include the Nokia menu button and multimedia key. This gives quick access to some of the media-rich applications on board.
To block key pad you should press the photo/video button on the right side of the phone. The highlight is not very bright, but still you can see something. The digital button’s highlight is white, soft-button’s –blue and call/end call button’s – green and red.
Working with such a keyboard is pleasure, really good feeling keys are soft but at the same time it produce a little bit to noise click sound for my taste. The only bad aspect is the fact that some keys are almost unreachable in the laptop form factor.
Almost all additional buttons located on the upper right side of device serve the camera.
Display
Display is not the best one – it loses for example to N80 model of its 352x416 resolution. But what I really like here is that the display it self have incredible good viewing angle of wide 160° and it’s capable to render up to 262,144 colors. So, it’s readable and usable on the direct summer sun light.
There are two modes of the display: General, which shows Signal and Battery indicators, Clock, Operators name and Calendar, and Active which shows the same and also the line of fast functioning icons. The maximum quantity of the icons is 6.
Additional Display
It’s extremely small and disappointing display which resolution is just 128x36 px, physical size is 1.1 and it’s capable to show up to 65, 536 pretty useless colors.
Display is completely useless in practice. It shows Signal and Battery indicators, Clock and standard information such as: BT, IrDA, message indicators, alarm, missed calls and the caller’s image.
Functionality
Camera
CMOS, 2048 x 1536 (3,2Mp), flash, video recorder, additional camera: 352x288
The camera is controlled with several buttons located on the right side of the device. To turn on the camera you should turn the front opened panel 90° to the right. It’s quite difficult close lens with your finger while holding but very easy to forget to take the protective cap offJ. I didn’t like the fact that protective cap is not attached to the body phone and you can lose it any time.
Pressing appropriate button you will turn on the flash. This LED Flash button can also serve as a "Torch button" as it can enable/disable the LED even when the phone is closed. Good idea!
Camera looks pretty impressive and extremely promising on paper. But it’s not true!
The quality of still pictures is OK in good lighting conditions but quickly deteriorates if there is insufficient light. In dim lighting you can expect A LOT of noise, especially in dark areas of the scene. The signal read from the imaging sensor has to be amplified which also amplifies noise and results in drastically worse signal-to-noise ratio. Shortly speaking, pictures taken in poor light are VERY NOISY.
Sizes,Ports and Slots
Besides the camera lens and the LED flash, the left side of the handset incorporates the miniSD card slot and the Pop-port for data cable connection and TV-out functionality. Both are hidden underneath protective rubber caps. Right next to the Pop port is the standard Nokia charging port, the tiny one. The miniSD card slot has hot-swap functionality but it's recommended that you exit all running applications before taking the card out. Menu
Nokia N93 is a Symbian OS 9.1 S60 3rd Edition smartphone. As mentioned earlier, all system menus and applications work in both portrait and landscape mode. The phone has all the usual applications known from S60 phones, including QuickOffice, Adobe PDF viewer, Barcode reader, Rotating Gallery, Music Player, Calendar, Messaging and more. They're essentially the same as in all other S60 devices, so there's no point in describing them again. N93 also has Movie Director preinstalled which lets you create "Muvees" J. All still picture and video editing functions are available in the Gallery application. In case of pictures, you can apply different effects like Sepia or Negative, change the contrast and brightness, resize and crop your pictures and remove red eyes.
Nokia N93 has 7 themes of interface to change, for example: “Theme1”, "Glass", "Lights", "Metal", "Motion", "Stave" and "Waveform". Also you can download some if you want.
The maximum size of MMS of midi format and e-mails is 300kb each that is quite enough.
Speaking about the phonebook, in one entry you can store name, surname, company and job title, home and cell number, fax (home and work), pager number and email. Also you can store additionally the person’s birthday, home and work address. To set a personal ring tone you can use default as well as downloaded or recorded by Dictaphone melodies. The same situation is with setting the pictures.1 of the 7 default groups, picture and a ring-tone.
What I really don't like in this phone is the lack of phone call duration.
Despite this, there is an interesting option, which I really liked, in the settings menu called Reject Call with SMS. It means that after you reject a call, the phone automatically sends a SMS to the caller, explaining why you have rejected his call. This option can be very useful, I would say!
Imaging
3.2 megapixel (2048 x 1536 pixels) camera, Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, 3x optical zoom, MPEG-4 VGA video capture of up to 30 fps
Direct connection to compatible TV via Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-64U, included in box) or wireless LAN/UPnP
Sub camera, CIF (352 x 288) sensor
Video call and video sharing support (WCDMA network services)
Integrated flash (operating range up to 1.5m)
Digital stereo microphone
Flash modes: on, off, automatic
Rotating gallery
Online album/blog: photo/video uploading from gallery
Lifeblog support
Video and still image editors
Movie director for automated video production
Messaging
Predictive text input Т9
Message templates (you can change them or add own ones)
Graphical messages
Concatenated messages (up to 459 characters)
Email (POP3, SMTP & IMAP4)
Sound
Vibracall
Polyphonic call melody, True Tones, supported formats AAC, eAAC+, MP3, RealAudio, WAV
64-tones call signal, mp3, AAC, WAV, NB-AMR, WB-AMR (stereoloudspeakers)
Voice dial doesn't depend on the pronunciation, no need in preliminary recording of tags
Speakerphone
Call duration
Musical composer, assign melodies to names in the phonebook
Entertainment
Java Games
Downloadable Games
Nokia N93 has 2 internal games: Snakes, Card Deck
MP3 Player (MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA formats)
Radio
Video Player (MPEG-4 , H.264/AVC , H.263/3GPP, RealVideo 8/9/10)
Organiser
Images and multimedia can be sent to household devices. Plain "tulips" are used to connect to the devices, and Fast Port to mobile phone. PAL and NTSC are supported.
Stereo FM-radio, Visual radio
User profiles (5), temporary profile
Time, date
Calculator, currency converter
Stopwatch (up to 20 intermediate values), countdown timer
Organizer with support for events of various kinds, reminders
To-do list
Dictaphone
3GPP Video Streaming
RealOne Player: playing RealMedia and 3GPP-compatible files
Special player with support for the following formats: eAAC+, AAC+, M4A, MPEG-4 ACC LC, LTP, MP3, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, 64 polyphonic MIDI, WMA.
Remote controller combined with earphones
Sound is recorded from usual leading-in connection and from integrated radio
Musical profile - the smartphone works only as an MP3 player
Photoalbum - improved gallery
Viewer - works with the following files MS Word, MS PowerPoint
MP3 player
MIDP JavaTM (2.0), 3D API (JSR-184)
Download Java applications
Games
Connectivity
Bluetooth v.1.2
MMS
Synchronization with PC via Bluetooth or a cable
SyncML
SMIL
IrDA
USB 2.0 via Pop-Port (USB Mass Storage)
PoC or PTT
Instant Messaging
VideoCall
Network
eGSM 900/1800/1900, WCDMA 210
Internet
WiFi (802.11 b/g)
WAP 2.0
XHTML
GPRS class 10
EGPRS (Class A, Multislot class 11)
E-mail protocols: SMTP, POP3, IMAP4 - attachments
Memory & Talk Time
Volume of internal memory forms 32 MB, about 50 MB are provided for user data
MiniSD expansion connector (up to 2 GB)
Photos can be assigned to numbers in the phonebook
For each name you can store Name and Surname (two lines), Company name, Position, Phone number, Mobile phone, Fax and E-mail address — totally 8 fields. You can add any number of fields.
Unlimited number of user groups, a name can refer to several groups at once
SIM entries are stored separately, you can't view them with phone entries at once
Call lists, no limits on the number of entries, all records can contain not only time and date, but a call type as well. You can set storage period for list entries (a month by default)
Battery type 1100 mAh Li-Pol (BP-6M)
talk mode up to 5 hours;
standby mode up to 240 hours
Weight & Size
188 gramms
118x55.5x28 mm
Sales Package Contents
Nokia N93
128 MB miniSD card MU-17*
Nokia Battery BP-6M
Nokia Stereo Headset HS-23
Nokia Travel Charger AC-4
Nokia Charger Adapter CA-44
Nokia Connectivity Cable CA-53
Nokia Video Connectivity Cable CA-64U
Protective Pouch CP-83
Wrist Strap CP-84
DVD-ROM with PC software - (containing Nokia PC Suite, Lifeblog, Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition, Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0, Home Media Server software)
User guide, Quick Start guide, Get Connected guide and Add-on Application guide
* Please note different miniSD configurations may be available depending on country or operator configuration
Pluses
3x optical zoom, high quality Zeiss lens
High quality display with anti-reflective layer
REAT 3D graphics
UMTS, EDGE, WLAN, UpnP
TV Out connector
Minuses
Too big and too heavy
18 MB free RAM is certainly too little
Too much noise when taking pictures / recording videos in dim light
PopPort (as a TV out connector) located on wrong side of the phone
Conclusion
So, Nokia N93 is one of the most leading camera-phones now. Perfect communication capabilities and powerful processor boost it up to the high technical level. As for me, the handset is very heavy and uncomfortable to carry in pocket. More over the price is so high that not all people can afford it. But I liked it
