Looking for a phone with a simple and familiar user interface, advanced features such as Bluetooth and GPRS and an attractive exterior? Sindre Lia takes the Nokia 8910 for a spin.
Nokia's 8910 is the heir to the Nokia 8850, and as such is the company's new top luxury model. Our review unit in black titanium came with a BLB-2 Li-Ion 750 mAh battery and a charger, as well as a manual and Nokia's PC Suite/Bluetooth Software Suite on CD-ROM. The 8910 weighs in at 110 gram including the standard battery, measures 103-140.5 x 46 x 20 mm and operates in EGSM 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 900/1800 networks in Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific.
 | The Nokia 8910 in its extracted mode
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What's so special with the Nokia 8910 is that it's equipped with a titanium casing, in addition to its opening mechanism. The exterior of our review unit didn't contribute particularly in terms of attention, but the opening mechanism where the phone slides out of the titanium casing when pressing one button on each side of the phone simultaneously seems to be of more interest.
The phone is rock solid when encased in its titanium casing, and we haven't experienced any problems when extended either. Its chrome keypad is however more pleasing to the eye than to the finger, but with a price tag in the area of 950 EUR the phone isn't primarily targeted at those who want to write SMS messages and play games.
On the positive side of things, the screen of the phone is a joyous experience from the very beginning. With high resolution and a higher number of greyscales than normal coupled with a light blue backlight, it's a delight to watch. And to be quite honest, the embedded Snowboard game is more fun to play than the racing simulator found in the Nokia 3510, much due to the properties of the screen.
It's what's inside that counts
The most important function on the inside of the 8910 is Bluetooth, and it proved to work perfectly - which also goes for using GPRS over a Bluetooth connection. With the built-in GPRS data counter of the phone, cleverly placed in the company of the phone's other activity logs, a user can at any time check on his or hers bandwidth usage. The phone supports the Headset and Handsfree Bluetooth profiles, but due to its lack of support for SyncML cannot be used in conjunction with Apple's iSync.
As is the case with many other recent Nokia phones, the 8910 is fitted with a spacious memory, capable of storing up to 500 contacts with 3 phone numbers and whatever you can fit in a text field. There's also a calendar where 100-250 calendar notes can be stored, as well as a To Do list that can keep up to 30 items. As we've mentioned earlier, the Simplex UI however still has its limitations in terms of memory management and viewing information effectively, but in other areas such at speed it yields maximum performance in this model.
The sound quality of the 8910 is good during phone calls, and voice tags are activated without a hitch. The maximum talk time of 2-4 and standby time of 4-12 days is a bit over the top according to our experiences even at minimal use, so don't expect to see battery life beyond the minimum values listed by Nokia. With the technology of today's small batteries, one should nevertheless not expect them to be able to compete with batteries of the kind that's for instance used in the Nokia 6310.
Conclusion
Nokia's 8910 is as mentioned earlier the new luxury model of Nokia, and with its titanium shell the price is pushed upwards of 950 EUR. The phone's feature set delivers the goods, but we'd only recommend the phone for those who would like a simple and well known user interface in an exclusive package - for those looking for a bit more for their money, we'd recommend considering the Nokia 7650 instead.
- What's positive: Bluetooth, excellent display
- What's negative: Poor keypad, pricey
| Features | 7/10 |
| Exterior | 5/10 |
| Ergonomics | 5/10 |
| Performance | 7/10 |
| Value: | 5/10 |
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iSW Score:
5.8/10 |
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