Veritable jukebox

Jumping into the music arena for the first time with N91, Nokia has built a device that's almost there.

Nokia's N91 has finally made it to shops here. Adding a dash of musical twist to the Finnish maker's much-touted N-series multimedia handsets, the smartphone will be predictably pegged against Sony Ericsson's Walkman series "� the only existing competition.

As they say 'Better late than Never', Nokia has shifted gears to produce a 'jukebox' with a 4GB hard drive (that accounts for almost 3,000 songs). The N91's music management user interface may not be a picture of ease but it gives no serious headaches on the hardware front.

Physically, Sony Ericsson's W950 is an ultra-slim phone and at 112 grams is lighter than the N91 which is encased in a brick-shaped body and weighs like one too at 164 grams. It's 113 mm tall, 55 mm wide and 22mm deep, which means N91 is a lot bigger than many other phones available.

As it contains a hard drive, the phone is not for careless users. The series 60-based Nokia N91 has been given a stainless steel exterior that's chic but if you suffer from my-phone-should-remain-scratch-free syndrome, do think twice before picking this one up.

Unmistakably, the phone's software, hardware or any other ware is designed to emphasise its music abilities. So, a dedicated panel for music navigation is quite welcome. This way one can play/pause, back, forward and stop the music player (Windows Media Player 10) with ease. But you would need to get extra plug-ins to use windows media player 10 on the N91 with your PC.

An off-centre lozenge-shaped button acts as a shortcut to the music player software. The panel slides open to reveal a teeny-weeny keypad cramped with micro keys. From here begins the cumbersome part.

The keys are way too small for comfort, especially for people who have been fed on a broader and comfortable set of Nokia keys. The good bit is that one can do almost all functions, barring writing SMSs and dialling numbers, without needing to open the slider.

As far as music support goes, it is fairly comprehensive with formats like MP3, AAC, WMA and M4A. Nokia has also integrated a 3.5-mm stereo headset jack directly on the N91, which is good news for music lovers (one can substitute it with better options like Bose, Harman Kardon and Sennheiser). But it has to be Nokia headsets while listening to the built in FM radio, as the antenna is located within it.

Little things like an 8-band equaliser, Bluetooth stereo audio streaming, the ability to download music over the air or record directly through a line-in connector or from the built-in stereo FM radio of the handset, make N91 almost endearing.

The music playback is integrated quite well with the phone's functionality. So, the music seamlessly pauses when receiving incoming calls and resumes playback after the call ends.

Nokia has left no stone unturned where connectivity is concerned. Inclusion of Wi-Fi 802.11b/g for wireless synchronisation in this tri-band 3G phone is no easy feat. The web pages do not sit comfortably in the phone's screen.

As a result, you will be left doing a lot of horizontal scrolling, a nuisance by all means. The browser, however, allows zooming in on an area of the web page making the navigation a bit easier. During the battery test, it ran a solid eight hours and that was satisfactory.

The Nokia N91 includes a 2-megapixel camera, a feature missing in the W950. Be assured that images would be good (resolutions up to 1600x1200 pixels) and video recording/streaming in the H.263, MPEG4 and RealVideo 8 formats would be a delight too.

Pictures, videos are bound to look good on a 176x208 pixel display. A few people who might try video calling would be disappointed by the absence of a front facing camera for making video calls. You can still make it, but the other side won't be able to see you.

A 4GB memory sounds huge but why cut corners on an external memory slot? Especially if Nokia is selling N91 at Rs 33,000, there seems no reason why an external storage slot should be missing.

There's nothing like a flash memory card reader for quickly shifting files. Sony Ericsson, Nokia have their eyes on the 4GB sweet spot, discovered by Apple. Incidentally, the sweet spot turned so lucrative (iPod Mini debuted with 4GB) for Apple that it has created a legacy of its own.

The writer remains doubtful whether any multipurpose device can 'kill' the iPod but the new generation of phones "� W950 and N91 "� are sure aiming to eat a slice of Apple's market. So, what if the phones lack the ease of use from iTunes' dedicated interface and synchronisation with iTunes?

The battle is set between Sony Ericsson's W950 with a similar onboard storage and Nokia's N91. But W950 will be the sixth Walkman phone for Sony Ericsson whereas N91 is the first dedicated music mobile from Nokia.

The point being, while the former has learnt from its mistakes and has an advantage over Nokia that has a long way to go before a near-perfect music phone is born. BenQ-Siemens has also launched a music phone, EF71 (clamshell), in the international markets that could turn out to be a tough competitor too. The bottomline "� has Nokia succeeded in marrying the needs of the mobile phone user and the music listener? The answer is both yes and no.

The bottomline "� has Nokia succeeded in marrying the needs of the mobile phone user and the music listener? The answer is both yes and no.