While still at work back in the day, my IT group was asked to evaluate this particular piece of equipment, the Nokia E90 communicator, for the Front Office staff that we represent. If you work in the IT industry, you know this type of group. The "We want the absolute latest thing because its the best and we need the best" type of group. With that said, a number of these devices were purchased and we had to embark on a two month period of testing before it would be decided if a bigger purchase for all members of the front office would take place. So how did this Nokia E90 test out? Let's read on and find out!
To be honest with you, it tested out much better than I really thought it was going to. When the equipment first arrived, I took a look at this and instantly thought the beef with it was going to be the size. Having worked with these folks that were use to their blackberries with their smaller size. This device as you can see in the picture above is kind of a brick looking thing, and is definitely bigger than most of your PDA's you see out these days. The testing though, continued on.
The most important test came 3 weeks in, when members of my staff, who accompany the big honchos to these conferences as technical support, took the E90 to a big conference over in Japan. Three devices went: two with my staff, and one with the head of the front office staff. One of the biggest problems that we have encountered with the Blackberry devices in the past were going to places like this, and folks loosing signal, or not getting signal at all. Many front office folks have yelled at us for being down the whole trip without being able to view their mail.
As usual, the same thing occurred with the Blackberries yet again. The big wigs got off the plane, got into their hotels and gone. To our astonishment though, the E90 communicator worked like a charm. The big general was able to do all the things he had to do, along with my staffers, and we were able to actually use the other two we had brought along to help accommodate the other front office folks. I attribute this largely to the quad-band GSM international roaming that the Nokia possesses. When I read this in the specs for the device I thought it was just tech speak and would not actually worked as advertised, but gleefully, I was completely wrong. Chalk up one for Nokia!
The next very nice advantage we found hidden in this gem was the amount of customization options you had with this device. One thing is for sure. All of these various folks in the front office have their own way of doing things and want there own individualized setup. Well with the E90 this was more than possible. All a member had to do was go to the profiles section in setup and go to it. They were able to change the ringer setting to whatever they wanted, be it a quick buzz, or a loud bell if they were at a loud restaurant, which might be hard to hear in. Gone are the days when you have your volume on the wrong setting and have to manual click to bring the noise level down while everyone stares at you. You can control that in the profiles area.
Email also worked very easily on this device as well. I had read some other reviews before we started testing this device, especially about the email setup, and some of the reviews made it seem like this was not the device for email readers, as it only synced up every 1/2 hour. Now a smart IT guy will not believe everything he reads, and will investigate further. Indeed after investigating and calling NOKIA, we determined that the sync time could be worked down to around 5 minutes (sometimes a bit longer, depending on locale), which was more than acceptable to our clients.
The size of the E90 was another thing that had our clients raving due to the keyboard and setup of the device. The front office staff loved the fact that they had a full traditional keyboard at their disposal, and that they were able to work on their documents and attachments right there on the device. They also liked the different ways that they could setup the device for use. Some staffers enjoyed being able to lay it down flat and use it in that fashion. Still others like the fact that you could adjust the screen upward, while laying the keyboard flat, to be able to see things much easier when there would be glare in the conference room they were in.
Battery life was also remarkably better than what we had come to expect out if the Blackberry devices we had been using. I estimated that the battery life during our testing phase seemed to provide at least an additional few hours than that we were use to with other devices.
There we also a few other things that made our clients very happy. The calendar function was excellent, and was capable of transferring their old appts over, which was very helpful to IT staff. They enjoyed the solid build of the device as well. Twice on the trip a device got dropped from at least a few feet up, but there was no affect whatsoever on the casing or on performance. Also, after a little bit of testing and fiddling with the device, we were able to get the Voice over IP ability to work as well.
So in the end my friends, we ended up recommending the purchase of these devices for our front office staff. What I once thought was an oversized brick, became a best friend of my staff and mine. They are a bit pricey, but if you have the means, and need the abilities described in my review, it would well be worth your time.
