vB Easy Archive - Nokia 9290 Communicator

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Nokia 9290 Communicator
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Posted by: chadsmith

As a few of you may know, I work part time selling phones for AT&T Wireless (gsm). Sadly I don't care for the company enough to use their service, but thats a different story. The good thing about working for them is that I get to try out all the cool new phones they plan to eventually sell. Yesterday I got to play around with the the 6310i, the motorola t720, the siemens sx56, and finally the nokia 9290. Its a sweet phone and has a lot of nifty features, but overall I would have to give it a rating of just ;izza: ;izza: (out of 5).

First of all I am a fan of small phones. If you have seen the 92 obviously it does not fit into this category. The phone is fairly heavy and is way too big to fit into a pocket. There are however a few nice features of the phone that I would like to point out.

First storage: The phone has several megabytes of internal storage as well as using a memory card (i believe it is an sd card)
Second: FTP abilities. If you are a hardcore business person that uses word processor feature alot you may find the ftp comes in handy when you don't wish to keep emailing files back and forth. It also serves as a good way to download movies for the media player.
Third: Dialup internet access. This is also a bad feature as well though since the phone does not support gprs. But if you happen to have the unlimited minutes plan with AT&T wireless I guess it doesn't matter either way.
And fianlly: Email capabilities. This phone supports them all... smtp, pop3, imap4, mime...

Now for the bad things -- remember this is just in my personal opinion and is based on my preferences, you are free to disagree...

1) The phone, like any other nokia, supports sms messaging, however this can only be done through the messaging feature on the communicator instead of the phone itself. It has a very confusing way of organizing messages and is a pain to set up so it reads your sim card as your primary memory.
2) The phone doesn't seem to be backwards compatible with contacts saved in caller groups. Just like when I stick my sim in my old 2190, the people i have in caller groups have a ¿ after their name. (I know this isnt much, it is just annoying)
3) No gprs. It would be nice to use the internet provided in my plan but this just isnt possible.
4) When you talk on it you hold the phone the wrong way! I was trying out the call clearity and people were laughing at me because they thought I was trying to talk into the back of the phone. It looks silly.
and finally 5) In my opinion the phone just doesnt seem all that cool. This is just because Nokia has released all the other phones such as the 7210, 7650, 6590, and have all the other phones that will be out shortly seem way better. (I think i'll be waiting for the 7250 or the 5100)

If anyone else has tried out the Communicator please post your comments on it.

Posted by: Warren

I have been using one for close to two months now and really like it. I never use the keypad on the outside of the phone, but dial numbers from the telephone app and use the speaker phone most of the time, which works great. If I need to use it as a regular phone, I just close the phone after the call is answered.

I also find the messaging section to work great, with SMS and email integrated into it. I use it to check two different pop3 mail accounts with no problems, the dial up is not that fast, but for email it is great.

I find the screen to be one of the 9290's best points, it is a TFT 640x200 screen with good color. I am using opera for a web browser as well as Extended internet (for dial up via IR - usually to a t68 for GPRS), Extended messaging, Task Manager, and Active Desk for my desktop. All work great. Put in a 64 or 128meg mmc and I also have plenty of storage for files.

The syncing to Outlook also works very well, no issues with calendar, contacts, or tasks.

The RF seems very good, not quite as good as my 6310i, but good enough.

The ability to use use pictures for contacts in the contact section and wav files for ring tones is really neat, gives many options for rings, alerts, etc.

Battery life is also very good, much better than my iPaq when used as a PDA.

I would like to see them do a firmware update with Voice dialing capabilites (tried NeuVoice but was not impressed), and GPRS if the hardware will support it - Nokia has never admitted to me it will or will not.

Otherwise I think it is a great unit and use it everyday.

Warren

Posted by: demonZ3

I too have been using a 9290 for the past couple of months and have come to the conclusion that the performance is good enough for me to replace my home office fax and land line with T-Mobile's 5000 minute promo plan.

For me there are some negatives though...

A) No vibrate and
B) No OEM voice dial. (I am using Neuvoice and while it is pretty accurate, it's response time is very slow PLUS the button on my hands free doesn't activate it (argh), I have to touch the phone.)

The software I am currently using:

1) Active Desk (Outlook style desktop)
2) Neuvoice (3rd Party voice dial)
3) SideCalc (Financial Calculator)
4) Opera Browser (much better than 9290 OEM browser)
5) Code Vault (Password protected database for accounts)
6) eExtras (file folders for organizing your 9290)

As you can probably tell, my negatives are not that big a deal so I just focus on all of the good stuff on this thing.

Just my $.02.

Posted by: demonZ3

I could kick myself becasue I missed the best app that I use and that is AppMan. It works so well that I don't think of it as an add on, lol.