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

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.

[jApi NL]

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!

[malerocks]

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

[slitchfield]

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.

[moonshot]

..................... 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.

[clonmult]

Originally Posted by slitchfield

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.

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!

Originally Posted by malerocks

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

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???

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Wall of text

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

Originally Posted by Unregistered

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

Here everybody rarely track old threads. So, normally our shouts dismissed in emptiness by the time.

Didn't comparing bullet pointed lists of specs go out sometime in the late 90s?

[Duncan J Murray]

Interesting to hear all the replies.

I've had an E90 for a while now, and it's been a huge boon for the past two-three years. I think it's capabilities are huge, but you have to get past the ancient interface. My biggest gripes is that it is just too slow. The graphics meddling it does when I flick open the device is the most noticeable - because that's exactly when I need to use it! Text editing on it is also a bit of a chore (it can hang, it's slow, the keyboards alright, but not clicky). But at the end of the day, it's reliable and does what I need it to do (it's gotten me out of plenty of tricky situations).

I've played with the xperia. Like anonymous, I found it even clunkier and slower than the E90.

I think the N900 is a serious consideration. Had a play with it, and I'm pretty impressed. It could do with a larger keyboard with shortcut keys, and a bit more exotic materials, but I do like the look of it.

Duncan.

Originally Posted by Duncan J Murray

Interesting to hear all the replies.

I've had an E90 for a while now, and it's been a huge boon for the past two-three years. I think it's capabilities are huge, but you have to get past the ancient interface. My biggest gripes is that it is just too slow. The graphics meddling it does when I flick open the device is the most noticeable - because that's exactly when I need to use it! Text editing on it is also a bit of a chore (it can hang, it's slow, the keyboards alright, but not clicky). But at the end of the day, it's reliable and does what I need it to do (it's gotten me out of plenty of tricky situations).

I've played with the xperia. Like anonymous, I found it even clunkier and slower than the E90.

I think the N900 is a serious consideration. Had a play with it, and I'm pretty impressed. It could do with a larger keyboard with shortcut keys, and a bit more exotic materials, but I do like the look of it.

Duncan.

My point about the Xperia being quite the device on paper, but SE/HTC screwed up the execution.