Camera Phones Plaza

The Nokia N91 has been one of the most highly anticipated music phones. It was one of the phones touted to be an iPod killer, as it has a 4GB hard drive similar to the now defunct iPod Mini. After being delayed for some time now, the N91 is finally here, and Mobile Burn managed to get hold of one for a test drive. The Nokia N91 runs on Symbian OS v9.1 and, like the previously reviewed N71, it also features the much improved 3rd edition of the S60 user interface.

Sporting a 2-megapixel camera and WiFi connectivity, the N91 has a lot going for it. The Nokia N91 is a dual mode phone, featuring WCDMA/GSM operation (GSM 900/1800/1900MHz, WCDMA 2100MHz). I do not have access to any 3G SIM cards, so this review will be about the N91's capabilities in GSM mode.

The camera on the N91 does not have an auto focus mechanism, but surprisingly the images taken appeared sharp and in focus. The Nokia N91 can capture images at full 2-megapixel resolution (1600x1200), and in VGA resolution (0.3-megapixel, 640x480). I was quite surprised that the N91 does not make full use of its 2-megapixel sensor by cropping the image when zooming instead of just blowing it up, which rendered the 20x digital zoom fairly worthless.

The menu system in the N91's camera function leaves a lot to be desired. Unlike the intuitive and user-friendly menus found on the N71, accessing any option has to be done by first clicking on the left soft key. The white balance options cover most of the situations that you could expect to encounter - Automatic, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, and Fluorescent. The automatic white balance option worked very well, delivering spot-on color all the time. However, there is no Macro mode in the N91, thus making it impossible to snap close-up pictures.

Overall, the pictures taken with the N91 gave surprising results, as they were pretty sharp for a non-autofocus camera. If you are lucky, some of the pictures might be good enough for print. The Gallery menu in the N91 takes ages to load up any files, though. The weirdest thing was that I could not access any of the pictures or videos I have taken via the Gallery menu. The problem still persisted even after reformatting the hard drive. I am not sure if this is firmware related, but the only way I could access my pictures and videos was via USB data connection.

The N91 records videos in three resolutions - 352x288 pixel resolution in MP4 file format (MPEG-4 video codec), 176x144 pixel resolution stored in .3GP format (H.263 codec), and 128x96 pixel resolution also stored in .3GP format. Users can record in two different lengths - short and maximum. Unfortunately, the maximum length is only an hour's worth of recording. This is such a letdown, as the N91 is equipped with a 4GB hard drive and it would have been possible to record way more than just an hour. I just cannot figure out why Nokia put in such a ridiculous limitation. A mute function allows you to turn off the microphone when recording a clip. Users can also toy with white balance (Automatic, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, and Fluorescent) and color tone (Normal, Sepia, Black and White, and Negative). Click here for a sample of the N91's video capabilities.

Read full review here.