Nokia 9500 Mobile Phone

Gadgeteer Hands On Review by Harry Hazeel

February 16, 2005

Background

Although the concept of the smart phone pretends to be cutting-edge, it was really created by Nokia back in the early nineties with the 9000 series. It was dubbed the Communicator and by combining telephony, e-mail, internet and PDA functions in one item it lived up to its name. Despite the miraculous convergence, however, it was not without its flaws. For a start, mobile data was only available in GSM flavour and its paltry 9,600kbit/sec rate meant an eternity waiting for anything internet-related. Secondly, it was enormous. I mean really enormous; 9000 owners didn't need to fear being mugged since they could beat off any assailants with their phone.

As a result, the 9000 largely passed by un-noticed whilst the PDA world rhapsodised about Psion and Windows CE. Nokia, however was not discouraged and its engineers used the long, Scandinavian winters to do something productive. Involving phones. Next in the 9*** series was the 9110 which was smaller, lighter and sleeker. Then, there was the 9210 which had essentially the same body as the 9110 but with a colour internal screen, HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) and the Symbian Series 80 OS. The 9210i was exactly the same but with more memory, an Opera browser and a silver (rather than black) keypad on the front. The last point was obviously the deciding factor when I made up my mind to buy one.

I had my 9210i for several years and I loved it even though on almost every logical count it was rubbish. Firstly, HSCSD was only ever supported by one network in the UK (which I wasn't with) and since the 9210i didn't have GPRS, I was stuck with the asthmatic snail that was GSM. Other problems included a case that creaked when you looked at it, a lack of Bluetooth and touch screen, a mail client that didn't work with my account and, to cap it all off, a PC suite that refused to work with Windows XP. Despite this, the phone had two saving graces: a sensible keyboard and a 640x240 screen that made web-pages look acceptable. As a result, it became my own little stand-alone PDA which ran my life for me.

After that little potted history, I can finally get to the actual subject of this review: the 9500. Nokia obviously saw the 9210i as being slightly light on features and, as a result has stuffed the 9500 with everything they could lay their hands on. It has WiFi, Bluetooth, GPRS, EGDE, a camera, an MP3 player, Real player and tri-band capabilities. As a result this probably won't be the most comprehensive review in the world but it should give a reasonable overview of the phone.

The Phone

Hardware Specifications

CPU: TI OMAP 1510 RISC @ 150MHz
Memory: 80 MB Flash
OS: Symbian OS7.0s with J2ME
Battery: 1300mAh
Weight: 222g

First impressions first and, after being used to the 9210, the 9500 looks like a far more polished product its predecessor. It feels wonderfully solid and creak-less and due to its slightly curvy and rounded styling the phone looks and feels smaller than its predecessor even though there isn't actually that much difference.

One  notable change  is that the front screen is now colour and uses Nokia's Series 40 system giving it a bit more functionality than the old model. The keypad on the front is slick and shiny with good "tactile feedback" but because Nokia seems incapable of putting a normal keypad design on any of their new phones the 9500's feels a bit clumsy. It does, however, offer changeable covers and keypads (odd considering that its supposed to be a business phone) and at the moment there are two options: black and white. Imaginative... One annoying thing about the covers is that it’s very easy for dust to get between the cover and the screen. For some reason, the screens on the front of Nokia phones appear to accentuate any dust or scratches which for someone like me who dotes on their new toy becomes very irritating. Compressed air sprays for camera seem to do a fairly good job of getting rid of it but I’ve resolved not to take the cover off unless absolutely necessary.

Some other reviewers have complained about the absence of T9 on the front keys. I, however, have never had much time for text entered through a numeric keypad, predictive or otherwise, and since there's a proper keyboard inside the phone the lack of T9 doesn't bother me in the slightest. The last change over the 9*** series that Nokia has made to the front of 9500 is one that new Communicator users won't notice: the position of the speaker. Whenever a 9*** series phone appeared in a film, those in the know would have a little chuckle whenever the person on screen using it held it to their ear with the keypad facing inwards. This was because the speaker and microphone were on the back of the phone which meant it had to be flipped round when making a call. With the 9500 they're back in the right place which is fine for new users but a pain for existing users; I've answered several calls and wondered why the sound was so faint... The back of the phone now sports the camera, two rubber grip strips and a panel that covers the battery, SIM card slot and the MMC slot (which unfortunately doesn't support SD). Despite looking tidier than the back of the 9210, the battery cover is a bit of a fiddle to remove when you want to get to the memory card.

Like most phone cameras, the one on the 9500 can only get to VGA resolution and as a result the photos are fine for sending to other phones but not exactly something that you’d want to print off. In bright light, though, the quality isn’t too bad:

Quite frankly, the front interface on the 9500 is only for showing you the numbers you’ve just pressed when entering a number and as a result I won’t spend much time on it. The only other thing of note is that it runs Nokia’s Series 40 interface so should be familiar to anyone who’s used some of Nokia’s non-smart-phones recently. On to the inside – the more interesting bit. Upon opening the 9500, one is greeted by what looks pretty much like a laptop that has been tortured on a rack and stretched a bit.

With a 640x200 screen and full qwerty keyboard the 9500 feels far more like the Psions and HPs of old than the PDAs of today and to a certain extent this reveals the thinking behind the 9500. Whilst a Pocket PC or a Palm is more of an extension of a desktop or laptop, the 9500 can genuinely be used as a standalone machine. I know you can get fold away keyboards for other PDAs but they tend to be the same size as the PDA itself when collapsed and however pain-free setting them up is, it can’t compare to the ease of simply opening the communicator. The keyboard on the 9210 was of the chicklet variety but on the 9500 its become more like the Psion Revo with the keys laid edge to edge but without much travel. Whether you like it really depends on whether your fingers are elfin or shaped like sausages but I find it quite acceptable and have used it to type most of this review. One thing that may put people off the 9500 is the lack of touch screen but it shouldn't since the Symbian OS has been set up very well for keyboard control. The keyboard has a nine way rocker switch as well as four cursor keys. When using the web browser, the pad controls a small on-screen cursor and the four cursor keys act like a mouse scroll wheel which allows a fairly pain free browsing experience. The lack of touch screen has also resulted in a profusion of shortcut keys which can be seen on the top row of the keyboard. These consist of Desk, Telephone, Messaging, Web, Contacts, Documents, Calendar and the user assignable “My Own” key. Finally, there are the four buttons that run up the right hand side of the screen whose functions are indicated by on screen tabs next to them.

Although the design is a definite improvement over the 9210, the 9500 is still slightly clunky. Although not quite as deserving of the “brick” moniker that it’s predecessor had, it is still not quite as svelte as the other devices that offer similar services such as the XDA IIs, the Treo 650 and the P910i. Although I don’t have one handy for comparison in the following photos, the Treo is about the size of the P910i when it’s closed.

The internal screen is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best screen I have seen on a PDA and is much, much better than the screen on it’s closest competitors; the SonyEricsson P910i and the XDA IIs. It’s also a match for, if not better than, the 1920x1200 screen on my laptop...

You can also set whatever picture you like as your background on both the front and inner screens of the phone although there’s no way of skinning either interface.
 

Applications

On the inside the 9500 runs the Symbian OS7 with Nokia’s Series 80 overlay and as you’d expect, it has all the requisite applications already installed. These include the Opera browser, a messaging system that brings SMS, MMS, e-mails and received files in one place, a full suite of office applications, a calendar, contacts etc. The menu system has been simplified considerably over the 9210 and all the various programs and settings can be access through Desk with the four basic shortcuts Personal, Office, Media and Tools all of which are fairly self-explanatory. You can also place your own shortcuts to programs and documents on the desktop. Personal brings together your PIM programs, Office does the same with the “productivity” applications, Media combines audio-visual things like Imaging and MP3 and Tools is mostly for phone settings.

All the applications are fairly straightforward and none of them really suffer from being on a device without a touch screen (except the calculator; learn those keyboard shortcuts!). Messaging, Calendar and Contacts all follow the same basic lay-out with the entries being on the left hand side of the screen and their details on the right:

The only real disappointment for me, at least, is that after coming from the 9210i’s word processor with its spellchecking and superb thesaurus (better then Word XP), the 9500 has neither. Although I’ll survive without them, it does seem strange that they’ve been left out since the 9500 has more than enough memory for them…

Two other applications that deserve a special mention are the MP3 player and Real Player. The former of these is very good and although the 9500 doesn’t have a headphone jack, Nokia supplies headphones that connect to its “Pop-Port” and, surprisingly for such a product, they actually sound pretty good. The only downside is that they’re white and have a little Nokia logo on the ear buds so when walking down the street you might as well carry a sign saying “I’ve got an expensive phone, I have.” Hopefully, with the rise of MP3 playing smart phones, it should only be a matter of time until someone releases a pop-port to 3.5mm adapter. Because the 9500 doesn’t really have enough space for many MP3s, a memory card is pre-requisite if you plan to be doing a lot of listening and a 1GB MMC card now goes for around $100/£60.

As for Real Player, all I can say is that Real Networks have successfully managed to condense all of the user-unfriendliness and idiocy of their desktop version into a nasty little pill for the 9500. The thought of being able to watch, say, BBC News over a wireless LAN is very appealing and Real have obviously realised this and made sure that it’s impossible. Which is a shame since it would have been a very interesting illustration of mobile technology. Oh well… 
 

Connectivity

The communicator’s claim to fame has always been its connectivity and the 9500 doesn’t disappoint. On the cellular side of things it offers HSCDS, GPRS and EGPRS (EDGE) which gives you theoretical top speeds of just over 200kbps. Some may point out the lack of proper 3G data facilities as a rather serious omission but in the UK, at least, 3G services have not yet reached the coverage (and cost) at which I would seriously consider using them. By they time they do, I wouldn’t be surprised if a new communicator model had come out to take advantage of them. The configuration of the data facilities is very simple and the phone takes all the settings from the SIM card and then creates the separate connections for GRPS, WAP and MMS.

On the non-cellular side of things, the 9500 has Bluetooth and WiFi. The Bluetooth can be switched on or off using a keyboard short cut but the default state is controlled through the settings menu. When activated, a little Bluetooth rune appears on the left of the screen. The WiFi can be set to search for wireless networks at regular intervals and although it doesn’t announce it when it finds one, a small “W” appears in the same place as the Bluetooth blob (see pictures above). There’s also an option to automatically deactivate Bluetooth when using the WiFi since both operate on the same frequency and although they can be used simultaneously, it increases the likelihood of problems.

The 9500 comes with Nokia’s PC Suite which allows you to synchronise your phone with Outlook (or Lotus Notes) via either cradle and cable (see first picture of the 9500), infrared or Bluetooth. All three seem to work well although the transfer speed for large files such as MP3 is not exactly rapid and, on my computer, if the Bluetooth card has been deactivated it takes a few minutes for PS Suite to realise that the 9500 is nearby before syncing. The PC Suite also includes a number of other programs such as a SMS sender and contact editor but to be honest, most of these are intended for Nokia’s other phones and are superfluous since almost everything can be either done in Outlook on or the phone itself.

The 9500 uses Opera as its internet browser and the “Fit to page” function coupled with the 640 pixel wide screen make internet browsing about as pain free as is possible on a palmtop (I know that some of the newer PocketPCs have VGA screens but the text on them is microscopic). When you open the web browser you’re greeted with the Nokia logo and a link to the mobile version of Nokia’s website.

When you enter the address of a website, the 9500 then offers you a list of available connections. Since it automatically picks up the settings off the SIM card, O2 Internet is one of the options (for me) but it also shows connections created manually and, if there’s one in range, a wireless network access point. If there’s one of the latter about then is comes under the “EasyWLAN” option which, when selected, allows you to select the nearby network to connect to. If the network is an open one, you can just start surfing but if it’s an encrypted one then you have to enter the network key. Since doing this every time is a pain there’s an option in the settings menu to create a permanent access point for any network that you use regularly.

Once connected, everything is fairly straightforward and when using GPRS the connection feels about as fast as a normal dial-up one but, if your network supports it, the 9500 can take advantage of EDGE and shoot up to 200kbps. The WiFi connections I’ve tried it with (mostly at airports) all seem to work well but there are two slight catches: firstly, the phone only has a 150mhz processor and as a result the WiFi isn’t as fast as it would be on a laptop. Secondly, although the phone is good at detecting networks with weak signals, using them to browse the web can be a bit tiring as the phone takes a bit of time to reacquire the signal when it loses it.

The e-mail accounts in the messaging suite can also be configured to use the available connections and, as with the web browser, usually work smoothly. Having a keyboard that is genuinely usable along with almost every type of mobile connectivity makes the 9500 more of a mobile e-mail device than anything else especially since RIM have announced that they’ll be releasing a piece of software that gives it full Blackberry functions. Since mobile data is very much on the rise (although I wish the price could do the opposite) and European networks now have roaming for data calls in addition to voice, it’s possible to keep in touch almost wherever you are, regardless of country.
 

Conclusion

The 9500 is quite literally the phone that can do everything but, as always seems to be the case, there is a trade-off: the size. Although I’ve never found it to be much of a problem since I usually wear a jacket or overcoat, the 9500 is the antithesis of the Motorola V3 and is not a phone that will slip into a shirt or trouser pocket without leaving a bulge. If is a bit smaller than its predecessor so compared to other phones it’s not so much brick as briquette.

Would I recommend it? If I say that’s a tricky question that doesn’t mean the phone is bad, it’s just that it has been designed to very specific guidelines and as a result may not suit everyone. Personally, I feel that the keyboard sets it apart from most of its other competitors since none of them offer one that compares in usability. If, however, you feel that a camera and wireless networking are not high on your list of “must-haves” Nokia is just about to release the 9300 which has all the features of the 9500 bar those two but at a smaller size. Although I don’t have one to hand, it’s about half-way between the 9500 and the P910i size-wise.

Personally, I’m delighted with it and I wouldn’t part with it. Although it may sound a little silly, you do feel that mobile technology has started to make good on the industries’ promises when you can sit at a restaurant at the top a mountain in the French Alps, take a picture of Mont Blanc against a blue sky and then immediately e-mail it to  your (soon not to be) friends back in the office!

Addendum

Unfortunately, the phone I used for this review is no longer with me. A few weeks ago the microphone had an appointment with the Grim Reaper the company I bought the phone from agreed to a replacement which should be in my hands soon. I haven’t heard anyone else having a similar problem so hopefully it was a one off. One problem that does seem to be common to all examples, though, is that the catch for the screen seems to get progressively weaker after extended use. Although the catch was noticeably looser on mine after I’d been using it for a bit, it hadn’t got to the point where it became a problem. If anything happens with the new one I’ll keep you posted.

 

Price: $799

Pros: 
Display
Keyboard

Cons: 
Bulky