Nokia 9500 Communicator Preview

A long time ago, the only phone on "All About ER6" (which was the original name for the site) was the Nokia 9210. Nokia's Communicator series has been around for some time, but the 9210 was going to carry the new Symbian Operating System, and do everything a mobile businessman would need. Now, with an updated version on the horizon, All About Symbian paid a visit to Nokia to check out the Nokia 9500 – the Communicator for the 21st century.

The Nokia 9500 is going to be Nokia's big business phone. Not the biggest in sales, but the biggest in sheer size. The Comunicator line up has always been the brunt of the 'brick' jokes, but to get in the functionality of the PDA, and the benefits of a usable qwerty keyboard for touch typers there needs to be a certain amount of size and volume.

If you're keeping track, the 9500 is smaller than the 9200 series phones, but retains all the familiar hallmarks of the previous device. It has the same basic user interface (although with a prettier UI skin) throughout device. We have the four command buttons on the right hand side of the (not touch sensitive) screen, information/ status bar on the clamshell design, a 640x200, 64K colour screen and an almost, but not quite perfect, keyboard.
If you're looking for a big quantum leap in devices, then you'll be disappointed. While the 9500 may have all the latest bells and whistles such as GPRS and Wi-Fi), it's defiantly an evolution of the 9210, which in itself was an evolution of the 9000 and 9000i. This is actually one of it's great strengths, a focus of purpose.

The Phone

But first of all, the 9500 has to be a good phone. This is probably more important than any other of the business phones in the Nokia range. The 9500 is geared towards mobile business, and doing as much as possible. And like it or not, that means good old fashioned voice calls.
Probably them most important ergonomic change is what you'll notice here. Like very other mobile phone in the world (it seems) you now talk into the front of he 9500, placing the outside screen against your ear.

The number pad is very reminiscent of the Siemens SX-1. Not that's it's all over the shop and is laid out in a funny way, more that the outer keys seem to be cut from the same 'one sheet' of plastic. Call quality was comparable to a Nokia 6600 in the pre-production model I was testing, and this should be similar on the production versions.

The Keyboard

I was all set to have a hairy fit with Nokia for yet again putting in an almost unusable button cursor, before looking to the left of the round nipple. After four iterations of the Communicator, Nokia have finally put in some regular cursor keys. Brilliant! Of course we still have a 'wacky' ring cursor if we want to have nightmares, but I confidently predict that everyone will be using the regular key cursor from, oh, the second minute.

The qwerty keyboard (just like the outside number pad keys) seems to have been cut from a single sheet of plastic, which gives it a very stylish look, but beyond the 'hunt and peek' typers, it can cause problems when doing a lot of typing. There's not a huge amount of tactile feedback for touch typers, and having no space between the keys means that larger fingered users are going to continually miss keys. I know it looks more futuristic and clean than the individual keys of the 9210, but I can't see any practical benefits to the user in changing the keyboard from the 9210.

Along the top of the keyboard are dedicated buttons for each application or group (eg Desk, Internet). A nice addition from previous models is “My Own," a key you can set to your own application from inside the control panel.

The Styling

It's very futuristic looking, in a sort of mid-seventies Science Fiction show set in 2005. The mix of colours and materials on the outside help to reduce the apparent size of the device. Opening the device, there's not much you can do with a clamshell design, so they keys are on the bottom andthe screen is on the top, but the dark keyboard, silver edging and very bright screen gives a nice contrast and helps you focus on where you are working.

Compatibility

I've already mentioned the fact that the 9500 is a clear evolution of previous devices, and Nokia re clearly thinking that a lot of existing users of the older 9210's will be upgrading to the 9500's. One of the built in applications allows you to take your data from a 9210 (either through the Ir DA? port or backing up via an MMC). Touches like this will be appreciated by old users who are being provided a clear upgrade path, something not present in any other Symbian OS devices.

The 9500 can happily beam information between my Series 60 phone over both bluetooth and Ir DA, including camera images, contact information, java applets and calendar information.

Connectivity

While all the other connectivity options in the phone have been upgraded to the current 'recommended specification' (ie we have Bluetooth, GPRS, Tri-Band Connectivity, a 'legacy' Ir DA port, and proper MIDP Java support), the big news for the 9500 is it comes with Wi-Fi built in.

The Wi-Fi on the 9500 is purely for TCP/IP, so if you have Wi-Fi providing access to the Internet, then you'll be able to use that for your connectivity, rather than pay for a GPRS or GSM-Data call – the uses for this are legion. We have a small Wi-Fi network at the AAS Office, so we're going to be able to use the 9500 while we're here for no cost on our mobile phone bill. And on foreign trips, it's not difficult to spend £1 and get an hour of Wi-Fi access at City Centre hot spots.

This feature alone is going to make the 9500 an attractive business machine. Compared to devices like the Pocket PC's and Palms of this world, there are very few of them that are competent phones, and have Wi-Fi, and offer a great application suite.

Lots of Toys

I'm not going to delve into the software too much here in the preview, because a few hours isn't enough to really test out the functions, and I didn;t want to spend the time taking a million screen shots showing something that's roughly identical to the existing 9210 Series 80. What I do want to look at is some of the extra features that have been added since the 9210 in both software and hardware that got me excited about the new Communicator.

Digital Camera
Does the 9500 Series need a camera? Strictly speaking, probably not, but given that they've squeezed everything else into this machine, it'd be a shame not to try. We've got a perfectly adequate VGA Camera at 640x480 resolution, with a x2 Digital Zoom. Exactly what the Nokia 6600 has, in fact. It works with the phone in the closed position, and sits slightly above the bottom surface so it isn't scratched when using the phone in the open position. I suspect that some Marketing Drone decided that a high end phone needs a camera or it won't sell – I'm not complaining, but it feels superfluous.

Presentations and Powerpoint
The built in Powerpoint viewer now has another string to its bow. It can send a VGA signal over Bluetooth. This means that with an adaptor (manufactured by Erin, but available through Nokia) you can send a Presentation direct to a projector from your phone.

Series 40
The outside of the phone, when closed, also presents an interesting problem, because you need to have something on the screen to interact with, to see who's calling, to find mobile numbers, or simply to check the time. Nokia have taken the interesting decision to put a full phone Operating System on the outside as well. Nokia's Series 40 runs in the 256 colour 128x128 external display, so a host of Java games, full access to your address book, and all the functionality of a regular mobile phone are available. This is a huge improvement over any other Communicator, so congratulations are in order for this.

Hopes and Dreams

I want one.

There we go, a nice clear opinion. The size of the phone doesn't bother me (it will bother some though). I've carried a PDA since 1992 so used to a small Filofax sized box of electronics somewhere close to me. The 9500 hardware changes are everything that the 9210 users have wanted (but note that there's nothing stunningly new outside of the Wi-Fi option). There's a lot of functionality that's not been changed, purely because it already exists and works very well thank you.

The software changes still need to be examined in depth over a period of a fortnight (at the very least) and I'm looking forward to trying to break the review unit (all in the cause of research for you lot, you understand). Till then, the 9500 appears to live up to all the promises it has been making. With an early Q4 launch date in the UK rapidly approaching, there's not long to wait now.