FIRST NOKIA 9210 USER TEST IN THE WORLD
30.04.2001
This test describes all the impressions and experiences we got after spending last week and a half on testing new Communicator 9210. We describe our opinions about its design, quality, performance and all new features of this model. We will add to this test (as well as to other sections of this site) during the further period of 9210 usage.
1. The look.
Nokia Communicator 9210 looks really modern and stylish. Although it has almost the same weight (5 gram less) and identical dimensions, it appears smaller and shapely thanks to the grahite casing with silver elements. This composition of colors makes the device look slimmer and metallic parts (phone display frame, function keys, silver belt around the casing as well as entire PDA inside) make 9210 look very attractive. So does purple phone display and keyboard backlight and convex, shiny Nokia logo. Phone display (thanks to the backlight) is more legible than in N9110(i).
The antenna in new model is longer, thicker and more rigid. It fits the casing much better and looks much more solid in general.
The battery in N9210 (with capacity increased to 1300 mAh) has a new locking, which holds it much better and stable in its cavity and is much more resistant to damages. SIM card and MMC cover can be opened while the battery is connected, because N9210 supports changing MMC cards during work.
After opening the lid we can see a new PDA display. The best description of its quality is what people say, when they see it for the first time. All my friends who were presented with 9210 said nothing but: "incredible", "fantastic" or "amazing". And that's true, because N9210's display is just like active TFT display used in top quality notebooks - it features pure and dynamic colors, high contrast (adjustable in Control panel and via keyboard) and wide viewing angle, close to 180 degree. Since TFT displays generate light, there is no need for additional backlight - 9210 display lights up itself as well as the keyboard, so we can work with PDA even at night (which was impossible in N9110).
A couple of words about the PDA keyboard: the keys are bigger and more comfortable, although the distance between them isn't much shorter. They have a small concavity, which makes them even more comfortable and prevents fingers from sliding and pressing two keys at the same time. Enter key is now much bigger and features a small bulge in the middle of it. N9210 includes a Menu key, which was moved there from the left side od the display (in 9110). The same applies to Zoom key - now it is divided into two separate + and - keys (along with Chr key). There is also a new Esc key - now it is a separate key and can be used in all applications to close windows, undo changes or as a 'No / Cancel' command. Space key (along with Chr) can be used to adjust display contrast. N9210's keyboard features also a brand new arrow keys - now they form one common device, so we can control cursor just by moving the finger in different directions. It is especially useful in WWW browser's Virtual cursor mode.
2. Quality.
The overall quality of N9210 is very high. The casing is compact, doesn't creak and all elements fit very good. The lid opens with slight resistance, which prevents it from getting loose and allows setting display at any desired angle.
The quality of PDA display was described above. Now there is time to write highly about built-in speaker. It provides much higher sound quality than in N9110 and offers higher volume. The same applies to the microphone. You can check its quality by listening to the sample recording from Recorder application, which can be downloaded here. This is a message of the voice mailbox recorded from loudspeaker phone - 'live' recordings sound even better.
Only good words can be said about system quality, which is really stable. Our prototype N9210 equipped with early beta firmware (V 02.97, RAE-3, 02-04-01) works much more stable than 'final' N9110... Stability of the entire system partially results from its multitasking and error handling of the particular applications - if there is an error in any of running tasks, appropriate message pops up, the application gets closed and the whole remaining software continues to work without any problems.
Another quality points go for battery and power management system. In this field N9210 - both phone and PDA - are just unbeatable! During our test, when PDA part and internal display worked almost without any break, with frequent data transmission between Communicator and PC and with phone turned on and several voice/fax/data connections daily - the battery became low only after two days! We can assume, that in normal conditions (an hour or two of PDA usage and several connections daily) it will provide power for 4-5 days. This is a really great result, beating all other palmtops and phones. It also denies all the rumors, that color TFT screen consumes much more power. Especially that display management is done really great: after given period of idle time (set in Control panel's Display application) the screen gets dimmed and then - also according to our settings - it shuts itself off. Closing PDA cover saves all data and makes Communicator enter the hibernation mode.
The quality of voice calls - both using earphone and speakerphone - is beyond reproach. The sound is clear, loud and dynamic.
3. Hardware, system and applications.
Nokia 9210 uses standard Unicode fonts in TTF format, which makes it possible to use any of the Windows fonts. This is especially useful for users from countries where there is no special language version - now they are able to take advantage of their national characters without any problems. Non-ASCII characters can be entered using Chr key or selected from the table.
New Communicator is built around 32-bit RISC CPU based on ARM-9 series, which is a very fast and powerfull processing unit. But there is some more great features: the performance is boosted by operating memory (8 MB) which uses real SDRAM modules, and also by the system itself, which was highly optimised for the CPU and provides true multitasking. SDRAM memory is hard to overestimate - old Communicators use slow EDO RAM memory. SDRAM is many times faster, which affects the entire system as well as each single application. Now when you run a program, it is copied from 'disk' (Flash) to the 'operating memory' (SDRAM), where it works at full speed. N9000/N9110 users will feel the difference right after few seconds. System performace and comfort of work is hugely determined by N9210's multitasking capability. You can run many applications at the same time and switch between them using function keys or by selecting application from Tasks menu. Multitasking is especially obvious when installing programs, exchanging data with PC, using N9210 as a computer modem etc., because these tasks can be run in the background and we can still normally work with other applications. It wasn't possible in N9110, where the whole system was locked until the end of such operation.
The best presentation of new Communicator's performance is playing multimedia files. N9210 supports NIM files, which can be played using Video Player application. We can also use a PC program included on the CD-ROM (described below) called Multimedia Converter for Nokia 9210, to convert files from many popular PC formats (AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, ASF, WMA, MP3, WAV) and to optimise them for playing in Communicator. NIM - Nokia Interleaved Multimedia is basically a MPEG-4 variant with sound and colors optimized for hardware capabilities of 9210, which makes them even twenty times smaller - for instance a 75 MB DivX file (a 6:58 min movie) was optimized to 4MB. This way you can use a large memory card - for example 64MB - to save a full-length movie converted from DivX. Video files are played very smoothly and the sound quality is very good.
CLICK ON THE PICTURE BELOW TO SEE A CLIP (1:15 min, AVI, 2.6 MB) SHOWING N9210 PLAYING A VIDEO FILE:
Another praise goes to Voice Recorder: the first and the most important thing is that recording time is limited only by free 'disk space'. Secondly, it supports two different compression levels. The higher compression level is suitable for voice or when we need to make a longer recording at the expense of slightly less quality. For music or other quality recordings we can use normal mode, which offers higher quality comparable to portable digital recorders.
CLICK ON THE PICTURE BELOW TO DOWNLOAD A WAV FILE (173 kB) RECORDED USING N9210's RECORDER APPLICATION:
N9210 offers a brand new application group called Desk. Desk can be used as a real Communicator center. Here you can place shortcuts to your favorite applications and documents (which - when selected - will be opened in their applications) and also create Post It-like notes, reminding you about things to do. You can also record a voice memo using Recorder and place a shortcut to it (directly from Recorder menu) on the Desk. You can then check your voice notes just by selecting the link's icon... Desk is highly customizable - you can set any picture as its background and choose a 'wallpaper' for right panel. It looks really great, so you will surely use Desk very frequently.
Now let me tell you a couple of things about Calendar and Clock. They are much more complex than in N9110. One of the new features is setting many different alarms. Alarm clock, besides normal wake-up alarm (also more powerful than in N9110 - with repeat function - for example only in working days), allows setting different alarms displaying entered messages. There is also a snooze function.
N9210 includes Imaging application - it downloads pictures directly from photo camera via infrared. The images can be grouped in albums, printed, sent by fax (the image is automatically scaled and placed in a fax document) or e-mail (as an attachment). You can also send your pictures back to the camera.
Another new feature of N9210 is its Sync application. It allows synchronizing Calendar data and Contacts base via Internet. User can define different profiles for different servers and set synchronization frequency - it can be done fully automatically.
And next new application group - Office. It contains Word, Sheet and Powerpoint viewer. Our tests prooved that they are fully compatible with their Microsoft Office equivalents - all the functions, macros, charts etc. work OK. All applications can be switched to a full screen mode (without title bar and side panels) - in this mode they offer very large workspace.
Presentation Viewer will soon gain another great use. In connection with a SVGA monitor and projector controller for N9210 which is still under development, it will allow to organize presentation directly from Communicator, without the need of using a laptop!
N9210 is equipped with file management tools called File Manager. It is very similiar to Windows Explorer - left window contains a directory tree and the right shows contents of selected folder. File Manager supports all major file commands: copying, moving, deleting, renaming, setting attributes (read only, hidden), creating new files in chosen application, creating new folders etc., and also sending files via e-mail or infrared. File Manager is also a memory card tool: it includes options of backup and restore, formatting cards and protecting cards and single files with password, which prevents them from using by unauthorized persons. There is also a Find function, which can be used to locate different types of files in main memory and on MMC.
Several changes can also be found in Contacts. Contacts cards are now more complex, containing many new fields. We can also set many different templates which can then be used to create new contact cards. Each card can contain a color picture. New Contacts feature a very useful function which was absent in N9110: searching contacts by telephone numbers. Contacts data can contain national characters and will be correctly displayed on phone display, too, because it is equipped with multilingual font.
Short info about Messaging group: now it contains all messaging applications in one: here you can create, send and receive all kinds of text messages: faxes, SMSes and e-mail. There are many new great features, like sending and receiving e-mail messages from all accounts at the same time (and not from the default one like in N9110) or support for e-mail messages in both Plain Text and full HTML.
Great news is that N9210 - as opposed to N9110(i) - supports writing and sending SMSes using a phone keyboard. It is a pity, that SMS editor was not equipped with T9 dictionary, which would simplify writing SMS messages even more...
New WWW browser is - when compared to N9110's one - just like heaven and earth! First of all it is now much faster. Secondly, it also fully supports frames, tables and Javascript, which makes it compatible with most of correctly designed web pages. The best proof for this is that it correctly displays My-Communicator.com pages, which are rather complex (frames, multilevel tables, Javascript etc). The browser works especially great in fullscreen mode. It offers many useful options like resizing frames and virtual cursor mode, in which you have a normal "arrow" cursor controlled by arrow keys. N9210 browser supports external plug-ins which can be used to add new functions.
The same applies to WAP browser - it works fast and without any problems.
We are really upset that N9210 doesn't contain applications like Telnet or FTP client. Maybe they will be added in the final release... If not, let's hope that some third party software house will write them for us very soon.
Now please take a look at the pictures of two games: SnakeEX and Nokia Snowboarding Game. I think, that their quality which can be seen on these screenshots 'speaks for itself' and is the best demonstration of N9210's graphics and multimedia capabilities... All games work smoothly and feature amazing graphics and great sound.
4. Data transmission
We have tested Internet connectivity in Polish Plus GSM network, which provides support for all N9210's data transmission capabilities. We have successfully established connection at 43,2 kbps (HSCSD, V.120 protocol). It can be a real shock for a person which just switched from N9110! Data transmission rate is just amazing and can be compared to normal landline modems! WWW pages load quick, also with graphics turned on. Downloading files is a pleasure!
N9210 is equipped - like older models - with Fax modem application, which allows using Communicator as a computer modem. Also in this case the transmission is fast and trouble-free.
5. Communication with PC
PC connectivity and data exchange is done by PC Suite for N9210 based on Symbian Connect application. This package - compared with old N9110 PC Suite - is a real revolution! First, PC Suite fully integrates with Windows. After successful instalation we can see a new icon on Windows' desktop - "My Communicator", which is very similiar to "My Computer" or "Network neighborhood". This icon gives us full direct access to the entire N9210 memory, which is seen as disks - C: for Communicator memory and D: for MMC.
We can use most of Windows' file management functions (copying, deleting, opening files etc.) using context menus or drag and drop. Files are automatically converted, which makes file operations even more convenient and quick. Transmission rate via serial cable (DLR-2L) is almost six times higher than in 9110 and amounts 115,2 kbps, which is a max throughput of RS-232 interface. Increased transmission rate is really noticable and sending files takes much shorter. Both Communicator itself and PC Suite monitor the connection, so when you connect the cable to N9210, it is automatically recognized by Windows in just a couple of seconds.
New software is installed from EPOC SIS archives. Installed applications appear in Extras menu (and then can be moved to any other application group using menu option) and are logged by Install/Remove application, which allows uninstalling them at any time.
PC Suite offers many other data exchange functions: Calendar and Contacts data synchronization, backup and restore etc. We didn't encounter any problems with these functions.
PC Suite also features a very useful offline mode. In this mode you can use PC Suite just like when N9210 is connected - you can modify data and even install new applications! All changes made in offline mode will be automatically applied right after reconnecting the Communicator (entering on-line mode).
N9210 CD-ROM also contains a very useful application called Multimedia Converter for Nokia 9210 (mentioned earlier). It can be used to convert and optimize many popular multimedia files to N9210's native format. Multimedia Converter supports following file types: AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, WAV, ASF, MP3 and WMA. Audio files are converted to WAV and video clips are converted to NIM (Nokia Interleaved Multimedia). Besides changing file format, Multimedia Converter also optimizes files for N9210's capabilities. It makes them look and sound better and smooth. Additionaly, the files become much smaller (for instance: thanks to resizing video clips to N9210's display resolution).
Multimedia converter offers two video compression levels ("Smooth motion, small image size" and "Normal motion, normal image size") and also two audio compression levels ("Music, normal compression" and "Voice, high compression"), which determine the quality and size of the output file. With higher compression (IMA ADPCM) MP3 file was converted to an almost five times smaller WAV, while with lower compression (CCIT-A LAW) the resulting WAV was two times smaller. The quality of more compressed WAV is similiar to 9110, while with low compression it is really high.
Much higher optimization can be achieved in case of video clips - a 6:58 min DivX movie (about 70 MB) was compressed to: 3,2 MB (high compression) or 4,3 MB (low compression). In both cases it remained smooth and the sound was clear.
6. Compatibility with older Communicators
Thanks to Data Mover application users of old Communicators can easily move all their data to N9210. Just set which data you want to transfer and wait a couple of minutes... All the data will be transfered via infrared, converted to 9210 format and saved in appropriate folders and databases. Data Mover supports: contacts bases, Calendar data, Downloaded files and Own texts contents, ringtones, SMS settings, Internet access points, e-mail accounts settings and WWW browser settings.
7. Tricks
Nokia 9210 supports Net Monitor menu. It can be activated the same way as in N9110 - N9210 works with MBUS cable and all applications using MBUS cable and protocol (like for example Nokia Logomanager). NetMonitor menu is very complex and contains 123 submenus. I found a very useful option in submenu no. 93 - it can configure phone module to be automatically turned on after connecting the battery. N9210 supports smart messaging functions like operator logo and flash/blinking SMS. You can also change the startup screen. Unfortunately, we didn't find any support for picture messages.
8. Summary
Nokia 9210 Communicator is really an admirable device. This description doesn't cover all the news and improvements (more can be found in detailed system description below) because it is just hard to remember all of them...
N9210 is equipped with great operating system. It features a great flexibility, ease of use (because all the new functions and improvements were reconciled with traditional Communicator 'line'), very high performance supported by multitasking and multimedia capabilities and takes a full advantage of powerful RISC ARM-9 CPU and fast SDRAM operating memory.
EPOC system gives us one more advantege: there are hundreds of EPOC applications written for Psions and other EPOC based devices. They can be easily ported to Symbian Crystal. Creating new applications using Visual C++ is also much quicker and easier than in GEOS. Even more programs will be available thanks to N9210's Java language support. This good trend has already begun: even though N9210 is still unavailable, there are almost 30 applications ready and many other are under development! We have now two rival ZIP archivers (from Yellow Computing and Epocware), while GEOS-based Communicators still don't have a single one...
The device provides very high quality and stability. PDA screen just dazzles with its resolution, colors, contrast and quality. Audio cababilities are now much better, too. Smooth multimedia playback, preinstalled RealPlayer application (which allows watching and listening to streaming boadcasts directly from Internet), MS Office compatibility, support for TTF fonts and 43,2 kbps data transmission are only example features.
Of course, there are also some disadvantages... To name a few: N9210 doesn't support GPRS and Bluetooth and uses serial interface instead of common and much faster USB. Lack of GPRS and Bluetooth is determined by the system itself - version 6.0 used in N9210 doesn't include such support. It will be implemented in 6.1 which is said to be available in the second half of this year. Nokia decided not to wait until it is ready, because it would delay N9210 even one year... Let's hope it will possible to upgrade N9210 to version 6.1 just by firmware replacement...
N9210 doesn't have T9 dictionary which simplifies writing short text messages. There is also no voice dialling function, present in most modern Nokia models.
What's new in version 3.03?
Nokia Communicator 9210 gets our recommendation.
To take a closer look at the system and all major applications, please select one of the application groups below. Our description has been illustrated with over 140 screenshots comming from N9210 emulator (because it provides higher quality of pictures than a digital camera).
