Nokia E90 cell phone review - Multimedia
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Mark Brezinski Published on September 17, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (2.74)
To test how easily a user can get a song playing on their phone, we again turn to time trials. Here we begin in the standard closed/unlocked/standby position and stop the timer when the song begins to play. The E90 was able to get a song playing in 7.31 seconds. This isn't very fast, even by business device standards. The E90 was hurt by its file structuring, which made the music player a bit of a pain to navigate to. Also, the music player took some time to begin song playback.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Nokia E90 | 7.31 | 2.74 |
| HTC Mogul | 6.06 | 3.30 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 5.48 | 3.65 |
| Nokia N95 | 11.82 | 1.69 |
| Helio Ocean | 5.20 | 3.85 |
| Apple iPhone | 3.10 | 6.45 |
Dedicated Music Controls (0.0)
The Nokia E90 doesn't have any dedicated music controls. What we look for in this category are keys that only provide media functionality, or ones that, when a song is playing in the background, get remapped to multimedia functions. The only key that could be considered to be a dedicated music control is the custom shortcut button, which is set to the media player as a default. These two keys are only found on the inside of the phone, however, and its main function is to be remapped to different software, not open up the media player.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (5.2)
The music software on the E90 is decently comprehensive. It supports playlists, and even lets you make your own, though the process is a bit less intuitive than it is on other phones. The E90 supports Idv3, iTunes, and Windows Media Player tags. Songs can be sorted by artist, title, genre, composer, date, and size. Absent from this list are album and rating. There is an active search, called "Find," which is located under the Options menu.
The music player is found by hitting the E90's menu key, then selecting the media folder. As an added bonus, the default of the custom shortcut button is set to the music player, so if you want a dedicated button, just don't remap that key. Either way, however, you'll need to open the phone to access the key. The music player can play in the background, but you can't control anything other than the volume while it does, and controlling the volume can only be done through the home screen. Following in this trend of half-there functionality, the E90 supports album art, but only if the music file has said art embedded; if the art is in a folder, or anywhere else, the E90 won't pick it up.
Lastly, there is a basic equalizer. In addition to the default setting, it contains five presets: bass booster, classical, jazz, pop, and rock.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The E90 doesn't come with any online song downloading software.
Streaming (0.0)
There's an option in the gallery called "Streaming links," which certainly seems as though it would support streaming links. First of all, the E90 only claims to support RTSP streams, which is a Real Player proprietary stream. Secondly, once we found an RTSP streaming radio station, we just couldn't get the thing to work. The E90 can support streaming audio, but it appears to need a little help to do so. Fortunately, the E90 runs Symbian, which means there are other programs available, such as CorePlayer.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The E90 doesn't include podcast support initially, but Nokia does offer one for download from its site: http://europe.nokia.com/A4160376. This software provides incredible functionality we wish was simply included on the phone. Other manufacturers should take note, because this is a great example of how a phone should handle podcasts.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The E90 can sync up with Windows Media Player via its PC Suite music sync or by connecting it as a mass storage device.
Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The E90 supports a good amount of music formats. You'll have no problem with your AAC, MP3, MP4, RealAudio, or WMA files. As for DRM, the E90 supports OMA DRM v1.0 and v2.0. This means Windows Media DRM services, like Napster or Rhapsody, won't work with the E90.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The E90 has exactly what we look for in music interruption. When the phone gets an incoming call while a song is playing, it pauses the track. When the call is done, after a second or so, the song fades back in. While many phones have music interruption, not many fade the song back in. The result may be jarring, depending on your music preference, so the fade in is much appreciated.
Video
Video Software Access (2.65)
Here we time how long it takes to get a phone to play video. The E90 averaged 7.55 seconds, which is about the middle of the pack. This time is actually not bad considering there weren't any dedicated video shortcut keys. Real Player did take a second or so to boot up, which slowed down the time.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Nokia E90 | 7.55 | 2.65 |
| HTC Mogul | 7.64 | 2.62 |
| BlackBerry 8800 | 6.30 |
3.17 |
| Nokia N95 | 10.22 | 1.96 |
| Helio Ocean | 5.50 | 3.64 |
| Apple iPhone | 3.20 | 6.25 |
Video Controls (4.0)
Unfortunately, the E90 has the same Real Player interface as other Series 60 devices. There is no on-screen display of a control setup. Left and right control the volume, while up and down fast forward and rewind. This is unintuitive; most people are used to volume being up/down oriented while skipping around video seems more naturally controlled by left and right. The left and right soft keys pause or stop, and when paused the left soft key becomes an Options menu. You cannot skip to the next or previous video, or customize these controls.
Video Software & Organization (2.0)
The Real Player doesn't have library support. In the file manager you can create folders for your videos, or sort them (by date, title, size, or format), but you can't skip amongst them. You can play videos in Full Screen mode, but have to pause, then navigate to it in the Options menu. This video playing functionality is really poor, and in no way indicative of the advanced capabilities the E90 promises. We recommend downloading a different player.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
The PC Suite allows you to sync virtually every file on the E90, and videos are no exception. You can also connect the E90 as a mass storage device and sync it using Windows Media Player.
Video Formats (5.0)
The E90 can handle a good array of video formats. It supports 3GPP and MP4 files, encoded in either H263 or H264. Of course, it can also play RealVideo files. It was unable to handle Flash, Windows Media, or QuickTime files.
Video DRM (0.0)
The E90 doesn't support any video DRM.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
For this score, we attempt to play a set of test videos with varying bit rates. The E90 handled all of them without a problem. You will be able to play your 768k files no problem.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The only video you can download onto the E90 will come from Nokia, which unfortunately doesn't offer any significant content in this area.
Video Streaming unscored
We don't score streaming video as there is no standard to judge it against. Regardless, the E90 can handle standard 3GP streaming videos, but not Windows Media streams.
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