Nokia N92

I've been wanting to write about this phone for a while now, but what with all the furore over CNET and all the exciting new phones, I haven't really had a chance to scope it out.

The first thing that you notice is the dual-hinge form factor, reminiscent of the Motorola MPX although in actuality it is ever so slightly different in design. The next most striking thing in my mind, is that you half expect it to have a QWERTY keyboard - After the recent deluge of communicators, I'm almost glad it doesn't.

Like the HTC Trilogy It's designed to stream TV shows over the air. Nokia have decided to go with the DVB-H format, which is more efficient than the UMTS streaming we have now, and sends packet transmissions in short hi-speed bursts. And on the Nokia N92 you've even got the ability to record up to 30 minutes of the TV you watch onto the phone memory, and a 30 second replay feature. Woohoo!

The screen has obviously been included with a mind to high quality video, with a 2.8" 16 million colour screen, with a fairly standard 320 x 240 display. Admittedly, I'm surprised they didn't include a higher resolution screen. They were probably thinking that it would impact the quality of the streaming video, and I know that the network providers will prefer you to stream, but the N92 supports Mini SD up to 2Gb! A better screen would have pushed this a lot further in my opinion.

The internal memory is 40Mb which is ok for a device like this, but to use the device to it's full potential, you'll need a MiniSD card for things like music and movies. The phone does however come with an FM radio, which I think is great. I used that feature a lot on my Ngage, and I know a lot of people who listen to radio on their phones. It's a lovely extra, and surely can't cost much? I love that feeling that as long as you have your phone, you can never be bored…

Here's a list of the file formats the Nokia N92 supports:

Music: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, Real Audio, WAV, Nokia Ring Tones, AMR, AMR-WB, AMR-NB, AU, MIDI

Video: H.263, MPEG-4, H.264 AVC, Real Video

Images: JPEG, JPEG2000, EXIF 2.2, GIF 87/89, PNG, BMP (W-BMP), MBM

The camera is 2 Megapixel and has a flash as well which I think is probably just about perfect for this kind of device, and the battery… Ah the battery. This is where I start to worry. It's possible that if they use the same BL-5C batteries that other Nokias use, a spare would be easy to pick up. But while the phone has an estimated GSM talk time of 4 hours, and a standby time of 14 days, the watch time is 4 hours. With talking watching and standby, is this going to be enough? Maybe. I hope so at least.

Update
It doesn't have the old kind of batteries :(

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