Nokia E90 Review

So after having had a number of mobile phones over the last decade a few months ago I got a Nokia E90. In an executive summary I'd say it's certainly not the smallest phone I've ever had (nore the largest - since I first got a mobile back in 1998) but it is certainly the best as a central point to run my life.

When I chose this phone I had the following constraints:

• Not a Windows Mobile device - friends who have had those proved to me it was too slow and unstable.
• Not an Iphone (No I won't use Apple's bastardisation of the English language) - Too trendy
• Needed to be good for web browsing
• Needed to have a full keyboard
• Needed wifi

Which pretty much said I had to have this phone or a Blackberry, and the Blackberry was too corporate for me to have it for my personal phone.
So decision made, what are its good points and bad points:

Good Stuff:

• Between the supplied tool to sync with outlook, goosync and google calender I can synchronize my private life calender and working life calender allowing me to always know when I am available and friends/family to check my busy status without needing to ask me.
  
• Built in SIP client is damn handy
• The notes application + keyboard is brilliant to suppliment my aweful memory for everything from Birthday present ideas to things to write a novel about.
• Always having a web browser, GPS, WiFi capable device with you is a godsend.
  

Bad Stuff

• Camera shutter button doesn't start camera application- which is annoying when you just want to take a quick picture.
  
• During a phone call going into tools/active keys crashes the phone
  
• Birthday detail in contacts does not show up in calender.
• Pictures (flickr etc) don't scale properly, you can't zoom in either which with the aspect ratio of the internal screen makes them unviewable.
  
• Web browser doesn't remember logins/passwords
• Search in contacts only searches first and last names, other details are ignored.
  
• Cannot change default calender or contact settings; e.g. Alarm on, sync type etc
• No timer application
• Deleting all note content deletes the note - I'm sure this is an intentional feature, but for things like my shopping list note it's bloody annoying.
  
• Phone number or text in txt messages cannot be copied into the clipboard, same for web pages. This means that if someomne sends you a text with a phone number in it, you cannot dial that number. Likewise if you get a web page with a postcode on it you cannot feed this into the mapping application without remembering the postcode yourself.
  
• Wifi cannot be simply turned off. Once it is connected it is neigh on impossible to shut it down.
• No spell checker for anything
• Any applications you have installed are uninstalled on a software upgrade
• No indication of where the infra red port is in any manual or webpage I could find - had to find it out by experiment.
  
• Would be nice to have multiple web browser windows open in a similar manner to tabbed browsing.
  
• Being disconnected from a wifi point doesn't give you a handover option to an alternative connection - you have to re-start everything you're doing.
  
• Calculator has no advanced functions e.g. Sine pi square

To summarise it is the most functional phone I have every had and I wouldn't want to be without it and know of no phone/solution that would do a better job. However it really is suffering from traditional Symbian problems and the integration between applications is so poor as to be a joke; sharing data between applications is clearly something that was added on at the last minute rather than a clear design objective.
It occurs to me that this is where the Iphone is strong, they have got the integration working and so seens much stronger than it might otherwise be.
I fear that most of the problems though mostly aren't a question of polish, but of a fundamental design flaw in the Symbian architecture so we won't see a fix anytime soon, even the replacement model I would expect to be equally inconsistent.