Full screen QWERTY hybrids: Nokia E90 vs Nokia N97 mini vs HTC Touch Pro 2 vs Motorola Milestone

Good round-up, Steve.

Like you pointed out at the beginning there can be concerns about the mechanical complexity. This accounts for me, I'm a veteran of broken hinges on Psion handhelds, so I've been nervous of these ever since. I've also need mercilessly damaged N97's in shops, which makes me wonder how sturdy that mechanism is.

It's a shame price couldn't be included here, but it's an ever moving target. Especially in the cae of the E90, which is now sadly of a collectors' item.

....so regretting to have sold my e90!! though two e72s compensate!

I wish I had played with E90 once. Wish I had owned it once. My resources did not allow me to own two devices at once so during the heights of E90, I was toying with N82. That too was pretty hard to part with.
Am trying to compensate that with my Nokia E72 now. pretty happy with messaging as well as cam quality!!

I haven't used the Touch Pro 2, but out of the remaining three my current favorite is the Motorola Milestone, the E90 even with it's gorgeous screen and wonderful keyboard is obsolete and too slow to be useful anymore unfortunately, though it is still my backup device:).
The Nokia N97 is, in theory at least, a great device but it was just too slow sometimes and the UI was a tad schizophrenic, and I have no reason to think the mini is any different.
I've got rather large hands so one-handed use is easy for me with any of these three, even the Milestone.
None of these phones will ever be imaging champs though I find it hard to believe the E90 takes better pictures than the others, without taking resolution into account of course. Anyone of them is better to have along than not having any camera, though :tongue:.
Anyway, a good round-up, Steve.

P.S. I would have said that the N900 was my current favorite but it's too much of a work in progress to be my main device, maybe Maemo 6 will change that?

So: give us E90 with S60v5 and touch-screen!!! It will be winning device, no doubts.

I love my E90. It's no longer my daily phone, but like Steve I change my phones often, and occasionally I whip out the E90 and use it for a week. Having used the previous incarnations, the E90 excelled in finally having the outer screen as full S60 and predictive text operative - great for one handed use for texting on the move.

The downside is that with the current trend for sleekness and slim design I wonder if we will ever see anything along the lines of an E90. Not an N series lookalike but a dedicated business device with full keyboard from Nokia. Although a lot of people called it a brick, it wasn't a phone designed for going out in the evening with, but more a companion for the desk and briefcase.

Unfortunately such a device is so market specific, that like the Sony Ericsson P900/910/990 range, it only appealed to certain users or the hardcore phone geeks. As a result a lack of decent software helped in its own demise, a vicious circle, as without enough sales, Nokia were never going to keep a full development team working on it.

I say bring back an E100, same design, better hardware (graphics chip), better camera and as said above a touch screen and a whole range of decent games and software to make use of the internal screen and I'd still buy it. :)

" better hardware (graphics chip)"

As noted in my piece, the E90 has a full graphics co-processor. It's just that almost no software used it 8-(

In fact, it's fairly impressive how the N97 mini (et al) do so as much as they *do* without any graphics help whatsoever.....

Thanks for the comparison - but disappointing that E90 comes out on top still. It's my current phone and I'm happy with it instead of a laptop, but I *want* a new phone and there's nothing clearly better. Ah well.

Heh, well, keep an eye out for the Google Nexus Two...!

I would have liked to have seen the N900 on this list. It's been the most successful device so far at taking over my digital life. I really don't know what people mean when they say it's a 'work in progress' - I find it pretty much perfectly functional.

Indeed you did, Steve, apologies I missed that, in fact I think I missed it first time round due to the lack of software to really show it off. Can't even remember the games I did have for it originally now. Was there a version of Bounce? Or was that my 9500? And perhaps a golf game.... hmmmm.

The one bonus of keeping my E90 is using its battery as a spare for my N97!

Amazing how long the E90 has been rock solid in terms of usability (still can’t be trumped!). I would still buy the phone again even without a touch screen but with new firmware and a faster processor.

@davidmaxwaterma
I said the N900 was a work in progress because some apps (calendar for one) and features (portrait mode) are clearly not finished, I didn't mean anything bad by it, the N900 is a wonderful multimedia device, and mind you Android is also somewhat of a work in progress. ;)

If only Nokia would read, learn and take note of the fine review and subsequent comments.
An E90 (E90i or E100) with a faster processor and a touch screen would be a winner in it's niche market (and why not bring back 'Data' from the Psion / 9500 while thery are at it!)
A three year old phone (an eternity in technology) that can still compete AND beat it's modern day rivals in so many areas must be worth developing to the next stage!
Ah well, at least I can dream!

The battery/life score is based on the size of the battery alone, what really matters is the use that the device can get out of one charge. It is possible for a phone with a 1200mAh battery to do more for longer than a less efficient device with a 1500mAh.

Another reason that the N900 can be considered a work in progress is the packaging, surely it's an interim development device. It is so obviously way behind the competition who are getting the same kind of tech specs into thinner devices. Take the Droid/Milestone as an example, this is considered a fat bloated brickish lump with its 13.7 mm width. The N900 is a ridiculous 18/19 mm thick! Stick that in your sandwich. I don't want that kind of encumbrance to carry around all the time.

I am certain that Nokia will develop/design out this kind of lumpishness out of the subsequent Maemo devices. It's 2010 not 2003. Of course, by the time that they do (q4 2010?) iPhone will be already be onto dual core processors .

As I type this away on my now ancient E90 as I await the arrival of a replacement for my N900 which had some dead pixels it's amazing how easy and in many respects comfortable it's been, going back to my old handset after 6 weeks of Maemo and such a powerful but thirsty handset. It's not perfect, the browser is miles off MicroB, I also miss the clickier feedback of the N900 keyboard but form factor wise, with it's lovely shortcut keys and perfectly placed exterior buttons and keyboard layout, if it wasn't for the pretty slow processor, functionally it would be a lot faster to use than my N900. I waited around for a replacment for the E90 but none has come which is a shame, barring fixing the completely crap camera button Nokia could leave everything else alone, just up the specification to a modern standard in terms of processor, RAM, drop a touchscreen on it and I'd buy it. Despite what I might get in the future, I'll never be letting this little baby go, it's just too damn good.

I would like to do a little contribution on E90's side . This picture was taken with an E90 in lowest resolution (MMS compatible) .
The workhorses are it's analogy .....
Talking about batterylife , doesn't only include the amounts of mAh , but also about how many bits have to run to get a similar result .....

:) Regards jApi NL

Thanks Steve, I had asked you directly about a real qwerty phone that matches the E90 and you put together this work. I appreciate the review. The E90 still works for me. Sometimes, the battery goes quicker than it used to, but otherwise, I can type papers, reviews, emails in detail. Other phones without as good of typing make me feel restricted in what message I think I can type. I think your review is pretty accurate. The other benefit is reading big articles or books. The E90 (9500 even was better, but too obsolete) is really good at reading books on txt or pdf files.

I have taken great pictures with the E90. Camera is better than N97 mini? Cool!

I think the Sony Xerperia X1 would have been a good competitor here. It was fairly compact, had a good keyboard and camera, even though it ran WM :)

A few notes about batteries and cameras.

Battery: Yes, I'd have included qualifiers about efficiency if I had felt that battery life wasn't fairly represented by the raw capacities. In this case, the two are a pretty good indicator.

Cameras: the N97 mini obviously has a better stills camera than the E90, but I also included video recording, at which the N97 mini sucks because there's no pre-focus set (N95-style). Overall, the E90 wins, I'd say.

So the touch pro 2 and the E90 both get the same life out of 1500mAh. What a happy co-incidence.

Somehow I doubt it.

..................... and by the time you have made up your mind which one is best, and none will be, because you will like some features from one and some from another, so you will have to compromise anyway; and you have signed an 18 mth contract or spent £300/£500 on the device it will then have a few months before it becomes yesterdays model.

Not sure that the N97 obviously takes better stills than the E90 though. There's a lot more to imaging than pixel counts.

I was under the impression that the E90 used the same camera as on the N73, which even after these years still possibly takes better/sharper pictures than either my N95 or N85.

The N73 manual shutter shouldn't make a huge difference, but the optics really do seem better than either of its successors.

Of course I could be wrong - the E90 may not use the same camera unit!

I'm sorry, as a current Xperia X1 user I have to say that the keyboard is fine on paper, but in practise it is made out of four and eight kinds of fail. After about 2 months, it becomes unresponsive, repeat words and ignore input, and all in all forced me to use the software keyboard when I had a hardware one available. :(

Form factor and input method is similar to the TP2 with a souped up navigation cluster consisting of two softkeys, the two call buttons (call and end), a XPanel button, an OK button, navigation pad, and an optical joystick.

In the display section it probably is the worse, 3.0" TFT which is poor in sunlight (yet much better than LG's crappy phone LCDs that totally white out in sunlight [even in shade it is nearly unuseable] - heck, they perform worse than AMOLED!) with WVGA resolution. Unfortunately recessed, but has very high sensitivity.

The 4 row keyboard has nearly 0 travel. Honestly - I AM not joking about the 0 travel part.

In weight, it wins with 145g, the lightest. Yet it feels incredibly solid and expensive, something which cannot be said of the more plasticky Mini I had a chance to use.

Operating system is WinMo 6.1, with the X Panel system.

Free RAM, free user memory, expansion for apps and media is rather surprising, considering that HTC manufactured the X1 - my device has about ~130mb free RAM (yes, 130!) after fresh boot, and 250+mb free memory, microSD, apps or media can be on any disk.

Processor is the same as the TP2, but yet both TP2 and X1 feels more sluggish than the Mini, for some reason. Might be the increased resolution at fault, though. But the screen renders in 16bit, hence the 65k colours, and the Mini in 32bit (for 16m colours) so the Mini should be doing more work.

One handed usage is nearly perfect for touchscreens - Narrow, tall and thin. It looks like a normal candybar phone in the pocket, and with the right keyboard (aka Swype) I always use it one handed, mostly because using 2 is impossible on such a narrow and recessed screen. Shame about the recessed screen, though. It probably wins the N97 Mini as it offers an excellent d-pad, and two soft keys for easier one handed usage.

The 3.2mp camera is on the better side of the spectrum, not too sure how it compares to the others. Sports a single LED that's brighter than the one on my 5700. It captures 30FPS VGA video, unless you got the software crippled X1a version, and focus is user adjustable.

Same as the TP2 for Application load-out highlights (out of the box) and Web browsing/working on the Internet.

Messaging/Email - reception aside, as it lacks HTC's funky frontend it's considerably much more straightforward.

Audio out consists of a 3.5mm jack and a loudish and yet distorting at high volumes mono speaker.

A 1500mAh battery can keep it going for 4 days with moderate usage (honestly.)

Connectivity notes : Quad-band GSM, Tri-band 3.5G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS. Absolute dismal failure at reception. Where my 5700 displays a full bar, the Xperia can range from 2 bars to zero reception. In the train underground means absolutely zero reception - heck, even at home, in school, there are places where I can go from 0 reception to 2 bars by just taking one step forward - WTF?!

Video apps and capabilities mainly consist of the Media Xperiance panel (which is something like the one in the walkman SE phones) and WMPM.

Application ecosystem - Handago comes bundled, but navigation in that app is a mess.

Surprisingly, comparing it like that to the other devices, the X1 scores a smooth 14 points (WTF?!)
Breakdown using Steve's scoring method : (Quick note : Manilla 2.1 = TouchFLO)
Form factor and input method - 0
Display - 0
Keyboard - 0
Weight - 2 (Lightest)
Operating system and interface - 0
Free RAM, free user memory, expansion for apps and media - 2, TP2 becomes 1, and E90 gets 0
Processor, chipset notes - 1 (Same as TP2)
Use one-handed if needed - 1 (Arguably better than N97 Mini, personally I feel it wins the Mini after using the Mini for a day.)
Camera/Camcorder - ? (Debatable, but most likely 0)
Application load-out highlights (out of the box) - 0
Web browsing/working on the Internet - 0
Messaging, Email - 2 (Ties with TP2 - As Manilla 2.1(HTC frontend) can be disabled, TP2 maintains the position.)
Audio out - 1 (Steve favours loudspeakers, so not sure if the 1 is ok, balances the lousier speaker with the arguably better 3.5mm jack. Ties with the E90.)
Battery capacity, life - 2 (1500mAh also.)
Connectivity notes - 2 (Same connectivity as the N97 Mini, which got 2)
Video apps and capabilities - 1 (Tie with TP2, I personally felt that the Media Xperiance panel was better than the Album app(which is probably what Steve deems the TouchFLO player) for Manilla 2.1)
Application ecosystem - 0 (Same with TP2.)

New ranking :
* 14 points - Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
* 11 points - Nokia E90
* 11 points - Nokia N97 mini
* 10 points - Motorola Milestone/Droid
* 8 points - HTC Touch Pro 2


As I've said earlier, on paper the Xperia is an excellent device. Unfortunately it fails as a phone due to reception issues. There are user fixes that supposedly turn it into a behemoth to be reckoned with, but as Steve, I'm going by out of the box performance. The keyboard is seriously and honestly disappointing, cleaning it does make it much better, but why should I even have to need to clean it???

Did I break the thread or something? Amusing to see no reply.