It's Finally Here: My Own Nokia N91

[Filip Norrgard]

So, here it is: the Nokia N91. Wohoo! I haven't had time to take any pics of it to show you, but all I can say is that it is a very, very sweet package and it looks smaller that in pictures. :cool:

It is a quite well thought out mp3 player phone package, from what I've been learning the few hours. The GSM network range is on par (if not better) than what my previous Nokia had, and all in all good enough for EDGE connection to the net. I'm typing this using just that connection via the bundeled USB-to-USB-mini cable connected to my PC. Supposedly, you can also use the WiFi G to transfer files to the N91, but I have to see if it is possible to share the net connection via that. (That would be über-cool ;) ).

Anyways, I know people out there are interested in the N91 and I'll try to answer questions here. So, fire away with the questions you've got. :)

[Jason Dunn]

Congrats! Enjoy your cool new toy. :-)

[Filip Norrgard]

Congrats! Enjoy your cool new toy. :-)
Thanks! I'm really enjoying every minute of playing with it. 8)

As an Mp3 player, this is one sounds excellent out of the box via the 3.5mm jack. The integrated mono loudspeaker isn't great -- just surprisingly good (to me). It is, however, better than what speakerphone speakers have been traditionally and the sound of vocals, pianos and acoustic guitars is nicely outputted by it. For example, most Franz Ferdinand's songs are horrible to listen to via the loudspeaker, but FF's "Elanor Put Your Boots On" sounds nicely as does Poets of the Fall's "Carnival of Rust".

The N91 is a "PlaysForSure" candidate, AFAIK, since when you connect it via USB you can choose between: media player, PC Suite and hard drive mode. The first option is purely there for synchonizing from iTunes (on Macs) or Windows Media Player on the PC. I haven't yet tried out how well WMP works with transferring music over to the N91, but supposedly the album arts should be successfully transferred and displayed when WMP is used. Also, the WMA Janus DRM is suppoerted by the N91 which is why it should be "PlayingThemForSure". ;) Personally, I like the hard drive mode for manually transferring the music to the N91 (partially because I like to use Winamp more than WMP). I don't own any DRM:ed Windows Media files to test for the moment, so I can't test how well it plays WM DRM files and exchanges the DRM keys.

N91, as I posted earlier, is well thought out as a media player and smartphone smashed together. This is easily noted on the play pad which sort of dominates the design of the device. The normal play/pause, forward, backward and stop buttons are there but my favorite detail is the so called "music button". The music button switches to the music app when you press it, and when you press it again, it switches right back to where you where. Really handy.

If there's something that doesn't feel right at first, it is the time it takes to switch songs. The factory included DRM'd songs and videos (which is 75 minutes from Live 8 ) take some time to start. The delay isn't too big, but it's somewhere less than a second. The un-DRM'd songs and videos take less "buffering time" to play, but it seems to be around a millisecond for them to start. That is, if you don't let them play as they come in the playlist, then they will be playing a lot smootly. I guess this is because the device doesn't let the integrated micro-hard-drive spin forever, but stops it after a while to save battery. So, most likely, the delay stems from the spin-up and seek times of the hard drive.