Nokia E90 preview from All About Symbian

Rafe and Steve tag team the Nokia E90 and give their first impressions of the device. I suggest you read the whole thing but here are some snippets that I found of interest:

The QWERTY keyboard is good in comparison to most thumb keyboards, however for most people is likely to remain strictly ‘hunt and peck’ when on a desk, and a thumb keyboard when held. There is simply not enough space to touch type and the keys themselves do not help as they feel quite solid. The E90, in my opinion, almost matches the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 9500 and will give the fastest input speeds of any modern (S60) Nokia device, but I would estimate it is only going to be 20-30% faster than input of the E61i. Keyboard feel and performance in such devices, beyond a certain point, is subjective and a full assessment will have to wait for final hardware and real world usage.

A shortage of keyboard shortcuts (though this will hopefully be corrected in later software, and it’s worth noting that standard text editing shortcuts like ctrl-A, ctrl-C DO work) is likely to be the biggest complaint from users upgrading from the 9300 or 9500. The problem is a result of running S60 on a device for which the UI is not optimised. S60 may be an excellent platform for one handed phone-type devices, but with the E90 moving towards laptop-like usage, at least in clamshell mode, problems are inevitable. The use of hardware application shortcut buttons (Desk, messaging, Contacts, etc.) along the top of the keyboard helps a certain amount and there are software tweaks that could help too. It is also worth noting that a large proportion of day to day S60 usage happens without using the menu.

A 2.5mm audio jack.

The 2.5mm jack includes composite TV support and final E90s should ship with a proper TV out cable.

Subjective tests indicate the E90’s camera will produce similar results to the Nokia N73 in still mode and to that of the N95 in video mode.

For many users, a device such as the E61i will do many of the same jobs (PIM, email, music, apps) in a more pocketable device for half the price. Of course for the true power user only the E90 will be good enough.

Rafe’s E90 pictures from 3GSM have finally made their way on to Flickr.