You spend £80-£200 every month and they still want £150...ergh!
Well after being told yesterday that O2 Online wouldn't have the phone in stock until July (!) they said I could upgrade in store, so sure enough I went to O2 in Exeter and they had an N91, they put it back and I went to collect the phone there and then!
So I hurried home, got upstairs and took the box out of the bag....
Before I even took the phone out of the box I saw advert for Live 8 on it...the phone has 75 minutes of pre-installed Live 8 video footage from some of the bands that played. Nice.
I opened the box and the phone was staing me right in the face, nice and shiny! I picked it up and took it out of the plastic bag, feels very well built and hard wearing. I have a feeling this won't be breaking anytime soon. It's not as heavy as everyone seems to make out; yes it is heavier than your average but acceptable I think considering the features. I do think it's a very good looking phone, it's better in the flesh than pictures definately.
The rest of the box is well laid out and comes with all the usual gubbins you'd expect; manual, charger (new style), USB data cable, headset + in line music adapter thingy etc. Also comes with a old style to new style charger adapter which is nice if you have an old style charger.
I gave it a charge in the flashy desk stand and turned it on. The screen is pretty nice and vibrant, although nowhere as nice as the N80 (seen it 1st hand) but that's a different league of display. The fonts are nice, very rounded and look good on the screen. Considering it's still 176x208 (or something) the same as my old 3230 it's quite impressive, mostly down to the S60 v3 methinks.
The UI seems pretty quick & responsive, moving between menus is a pleasure. The only noticeable slowdown is when first opening the gallery and subsequent sub-folders, but if you organise your files into folders then the process is sped up, well worth it and makes browsing files much easier. When accessing files there is a slight delay too as the HDD is being accessed, but it's not something l'll lose sleep over.
The media playing is very good; like previous Symbian phones you can watch vids full screen, which is cool. The volume controls on the left hand side of the phone control the volume, and i've got to say it's LOUD. Also very clear as well, very crisp with lots of clarity, obviously depending on the recording though. Watching vids is great, very smooth and no jerkiness about it at all.
The music application (access by pressing the oval shaped button on the bottom controls) is excellent. The app is there pretty much instantly when you press the button and you are presented with the last song you listened to. By pressing Options you can go straight to the main music menu and you are presented with iPod style options - Artists, Songs, Albums etc. The app recognises all the tags in the music file and automatically sorts it by that. You also have an equaliser, shuffle/repeat and playlist settings to your disposal. If you have album art attached to the file it also displays that, which is a nice touch.
As i've said before the audio playback is stunning; very clear, tons of clarity, next to no distortion most of the time (depending on how loud it is & the type of equaliser you have set) and on max volume is very very loud! When skipping songs there is a little delay but nothing too major. I've only put one song on there at the moment but i'll be putting more on tonight. I haven't really had an in depth play with all the other music functions like playlists etc but will do soon.
The camera is pretty good (2Mpix, same or slightly better than N70), takes some decent shots and 20x digi zoom is pretty useful, only gripe is that there's no flash module. Video taking is nice too, it's quick, no lag, captures audio pretty well and has a pretty high res at max quality (352x288).
As said in the N80 thread WiFi is very well implemented and the new S60 v3 browser is very good indeed. Renders full web pages very nicely. I put all the settings in for my wireless router, connected straight away no trouble and it's very quick browsing pages. Runs out of memory every so often though, remember to clear the cache frequently.
If there's anything you would like to know about the phone, ask me, i'll have a play and see if I can answer your question!
I'm sorry for the long and boring read! Anyway before all the TTIWWP comments here are a few pics I took today...enjoy!
t3h
I nearly had a heart attack! I said to him that i'd been offered the phone free and was having none of it! He said that depending on what tariff people choose the cost of the phone would differ, anything from £350+. He told me that offering me the phone for £150 was a 'significant discount'. I said i'd think about it ring later.
