Nokia N93 review

Features
Thanks to the already noted good ergonomics of button positioning, it's really easy to shoot video with the N93. We put the provided 128MB miniSD card into its slot and set the N93 to send both video and stills directly to this rather than saving to the 50MB of internal memory.

You can shoot up to 60 minutes of video at a time, at various rates up to 30 frames per second, and at resolutions up to 640x480 pixels with AAC stereo recording accompaniment. There's a small flash unit next to the camera lens, and this can be used in both stills and video shooting mode, as well as independently as a torch.

Playback on the camera is fine, and Nokia also provides the AV-out cables you need to send video to other devices such as a TV. In fact, you can use this to show more than just video. Connect your handset to the TV and others can watch you Web browse, flick through pictures or do anything else you like on the handset.

There is Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and infrared connectivity too, in case you feel the need to share video or stills that way. Nokia provides some software for Windows XP to help you use Wi-Fi via a UPnP connection.

As the N93 is a fully featured smart phone running Symbian Series 60 version 3, you get a whole host of extras. Calendar and to do list software can be synchronised with a PC and you get the required cable and PC Suite software for this job. Nokia's Lifeblog software is on the handset, as is an FM radio, 'muvee' editor for creating your own mini-video masterpieces, voice recording, unit conversion, music player and a couple of games.

There's also a barcode scanner that retrieves information from ordinary barcodes, which can contain extra details such as phone numbers, email addresses and Web site links. More useful perhaps is the PDF reader and QuickOffice software for viewing Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents, and the Symbian Web browser, which works as well over Wi-Fi as it does using a 3G connection.

Performance
We found the video output remarkably good. The N93 is clearly not up to the kind of performance you'd expect from a camcorder, but it does a very good job, considering it is also a well-featured smart phone and its video is perfectly adequate for showing on a TV or saving to a PC. Stills, too, were clear and the 3.2x optical zoom also functioned well, though the 8x digital zoom is not so hot.

Video and voice calls were both fine and sound output was good.

Battery life was reasonable. During testing we felt the need to recharge daily, and it was only with great self control we got through a two-day period of use. With battery-draining Wi-Fi, music playback and that video capability on board, you're going to need to carry the charger around.

Thanks to Expansys for providing a review sample of this phone.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide