The brick strikes back: Jørgen Sundgot reviews Nokia's 9500 Communicator, finding a feature-rich and promising device hampered by software issues.
Review summary of the Nokia 9500 Communicator:
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 As is evident from our pictures, the business-oriented Nokia 9500 is every bit as much of a brick as its predecessor - but utilizes its space far better. Unfortunately, poor synchronization and mediocre performance hinder the full exploitation of the other benefits of this business phone, which among other features incorporates an outstanding thumbboard and similarly impressive widescreen display. Combined with decent software, these factors make for comfortable document management and first-rate data entry, which excels at connectivity except for its unfortunate lack of 3G and EDGE.
Pros: Astonishing internal display; clever thumbboard solutions; impeccable connectivity
Cons: Looks and feels like a brick; sluggish interaction; numerous minor faults; no vibrating alert
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Full review of the Nokia 9500 Communicator:
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Three years after the introduction of its last Communicator, the 9210, Nokia has finally brought forward a replacement in the shape of the 9500. Opting to include more features rather than shave size and weight off the device, the 9500 is virtually identical to the 9210 with regards to its appearances (visual styling withstanding) - and so, the question becomes whether this brick of the device can hold its own in a market that's become awfully crowded.
What's that, a portable mini-fridge?
Dispensing with the jokes right away, we'll just go on record and say that the 9500 is an unwieldy and unattractive lump of a device: at 148 x 57 x 24 mm and 230 g, it's just too large and won't fit most jacket pockets comfortably. Kicking off on the outside, we find a large and comfortable numeric keypad right beneath an itsy bitsy display running the Series 40 operating system at 128 x 128 pixels and 65K colours. Tactile feedback is excellent, but alas audible feedback is so loud that discretely tapping out messages in meetings isn't an option.
A quick peek at the back reveals the integrated 0.3 Megapixel camera which isn't much to brag about in terms of resolution, yet offers more than adequate image quality. A dedicated speakerphone loudspeaker lurks atop the device, and potential buyers will also be happy to learn the 9500 now is held face inward when talking, as opposed to its predecessors. Finally, the bottom conceals Nokia's proprietary Pop-port connector and a charging jack.
Popping the hood
Much like a pinãta, the 9500 should require a blindfold - and there's goodies to be had once it's cracked open. First off, we find a 640 x 200 pixel transflective display with 65K colours and adjustable brightness which is outright astonishing. Indoor performance is impressive, but we've never seen anything look this good outdoors - oh, if only it was touch sensitive. Lest we forget, there's also four soft buttons to its right which all applications tie into.
Moving on to the thumbboard, there's both good and bad news. On the upside, keys are large, offer good tactile feedback and are easily navigated, with Nokia offering several localized layouts and a dedicated numerical row. Also dedicated are eight buttons atop, which, unlike the 9200 series, do not take users to sub-areas of the Desk but rather directly to applications; a massive improvement. There's even a 'My own' key to the far right which users can set to any application they'd like - our only wish is there were more of these.
The amount of functionality available through dedicated keys and shortcut combinations is very extensive, and the 9500 beats the pants off any other device in this regard. There's more praise to be had, however, as the thumbboard sneakily incorporates both an excellent nine-way navigational pad and four separate directional keys. At first glance, these perform the exact same functions, but in the web browser the navigational pad controls a mouse cursor while the directional keys tend to scrolling: fiendishly clever and very well implemented.
One major drawback hinders what's otherwise an excellent implementation of a thumbboard, however - and it's an unsuspected one: size - or width, to be exact. An average pair of hands will strain to reach the middle row of keys, which is a solid showstopper for lengthy thumbboarding. There's even a bit of irony to be had, as the 9300, the 9500's little brother, has virtually the same thumbboard - narrower by the exact width of a column of keys on the 9500.
Maximus connectivus
Barring 3G, the 9500 has every connectivity option under the sun. Offering tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz for WAN purposes, we also find HSCSD and Fax support, along with GPRS, EDGE, Infrared, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 802.11b. Compared with the 9200 Communicator series, the 9500 shines in every respect, and delivers the goods in all departments in terms of reception, reliability and speed.
An adequate set of Bluetooth profiles is included, and Wi-Fi security is comprehensive with WEP, WPA and LEAP on the slate. Disappointingly, however, setting up an access point manually is impossible; it must be within range, and cannot have a hidden SSID. On the wired side of things, the 9500 is equipped with a Pop-port which offers compatibility with a range of Nokia accessories, as well as USB 2.0 connectivity for fast file transfer courtesy of the bundled cable.
Files can be transferred directly to the 80 MB of non-volatile memory of the 9500, which is a welcome improvement over previous models that allows more applications to run simultaneously, or to an MMC card. Incomprehensibly, the memory card expansion slot remains under the battery cover - yet is at least no longer placed under the battery itself.
Despite its barrage of connectivity options, the Nokia 9500 offers comparably good battery life, easily lasting a full two days of extensive use - a better performance than the recently reviewed Nokia 7710. Also, audio quality proved above-par throughout testing, with the speakerphone delivering improved clarity over previous models.
Someone hasn't been paying attention in class
At first glance, the Series 80 based Nokia 9500 doesn't appear to have changed much from the 9200 Communicator series - but looks, as we all know, can be deceiving. Now utilizing Symbian OS 7.0 rather than 6.0, there are a number of technological improvements under the hood, but what users will notice is Nokia's decision to implement an underpowered processor for the 9500, resulting in overall performance being sluggish and applications taking as long as two seconds to open in some cases.
Fortunately, the user interface remains simple and intuitive, and switching between applications is now far from as aggravating as with past models thanks to the introduction of dedicated application keys. Screen estate is shockingly poorly utilized in comparison with the Series 90 powered Nokia 7710, however, which fares better in the vast majority of situations.
Take the Messaging application, for instance, which offers up a unified approach to SMS, MMS, Fax and e-mail: three messages with sender, subject, date and size is all that will show up in initial views - and users cannot even view the full contents of the subject field should it be too long for the view in use. There's more wrong with it, however, as support for over-the-air synchronization of e-mail with groupware software is still restricted to moth-eaten, bandwidth-intensive protocols such as POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP - unforgiveable for a modern enterprise device.
Mitigating this somewhat, Nokia has made special adaptations to allow for users to subscribe to e-mail subfolders through IMAP gateways for Microsoft Exchange servers, but this is hardly enough. What's worse, however, is that unlike for SMS and MMS, there is no way to configure neither visual nor audible alerts for new e-mail - for which users must either remain connected to an IMAP server at all times or check manually as there is no scheduling functionality.
Moreover, instead of tieing into the 9500's connectivity setup, which allows users to set up and prioritize network connections from its control panel, the e-mail client utilizes a self-contained redundant system that entirely circumvents this. One word: moronic. Topping off a reeking impression, the 9500 omits a vibrating alert, which is most noticeable in conjuction with the messaging client - and beyond comprehension.
There are upsides to the software suite of the 9500, however, such as the Opera web browser which has been repackaged in a Nokia user interface. It might well be the most fully featured browser in a mobile device, and the combination of a virtual mouse, multiple windows and technology which adapts full-size web pages to the 640 pixels of the 9500 is a lovely concept. As such, it's even more of a shame that the processor is just too slow to support loading full web pages, be it over EDGE or Wi-Fi.
It, too, has its drawbacks, however, such as the inability to use the Tab key for link jumping when browsing WAP sites - a shortcoming shared with HTML based e-mails which draw upon the browser for displaying. Incidentally, it is also impossible to block the downloading of images in HTML e-mails; fortunately, once downloaded, images are cached. The office suite makes a more positive impression, however, and not only views but also edits files in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint with relative aplomb. We cannot help wonder why the thesaurus and spell checker found in the Documents application found on the 9210i were removed, however.
Worst of all, perhaps, is Nokia's continued refusal to address the issue of poor localized synchronization, which remains an agonizingly slow procedure with lacking support for categories, be it for calendar or contacts items; tasks remain unsupported. Finally, the Series 40 interface also offers up a couple of quirks: it does not provide any means of Bluetooth control, nor does it support predictive text input - which for many negates one-handed text input.
Availability
The Nokia 9500 Communicator is at the time of press shipping in Europe and Asia, selling in the 600 EUR range. A version will also be available for the North American market, offering GSM 850/1800/1900 MHz connectivity.
Price and availability
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