The Nokia E90 is a powerhouse of a smartphone designed for the serious business user. Loaded with a wealth of applications, it will definitely provide powerhouse performance, if you can stomach the sticker shock.

At the top of the exterior of this phone is an impressive 16 million-color LCD that offers excellent performance, beneath which is a dial pad that is comfortable to use by feel. Though the screen seems a bit small at two inches diagonally, opening up the phone reveals the primary screen measuring an impressive 3-3/5 inches wide. This LCD also supports 16 million colors, but its resolution is a whopping 800x352, making for stellar graphics and picture viewing. As most people using this phone will be either working with documents, messaging, or surfing the Internet, the importance of the size and clarity of the screen is not to be underestimated.

But it's the impressive QWERTY keyboard and its capabilities that will bring a lot of consumers to this device. At first look, the E90 definitely looks clunky. And it is: the weight of the phone is considerable at 7.4 ounces, twice that of sleeker less feature-laden phones. The device itself is exceptionally sturdy and has a solid hinge for flipping the phone open. This construction and size affords the device a lot of versatility, giving it the ability to basically double as a mini laptop. The E90 can be put on a table and you can flip it open and type with two hands. Shortcut keys line the top row, alphanumeric buttons are surprisingly large, and the process of typing is quite pleasing. All in all, this is one of the best keyboards currently on the mobile phone market.

The Nokia E90 uses Symbian OS 9.2 and offers the ability to both view and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. You can also view PDFs and download numerous other applications compatible with the Symbian platform. Because of the QWERTY keyboard, email is obviously a focus, and users will be pleased with the versatility of the E90. The phone supports Microsoft Exchange Server, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 accounts and most important of all, push email, so you can get your messages in real time.

Buttons also line the side of the phone, including one for a voice recorder and another for activating the camera. While it's capable of taking 3.2-megapixel pictures, the camera offers pictures with color resolutions that are a bit drab, unfortunately. A built-in camcorder offers video with adequate quality.

Other applications include a text-to-speech message reader and handy GPS software that gives you maps and verbal turn-by-turn directions to desired locations. The music player that is fairly barebones, but it does allow you to sort tracks by various methods and create playlists on the fly. Because the phone supports stereo Bluetooth, you can use quality headsets to listen to your tunes--but if you want to listen to FM radio, you must use the included wired headset (which is of so-so quality), as the wires act as the antenna for reception. You'd be best, however, to avoid using the speakerphone for music, as the quality of the output is tinny and rather disappointing.

The E90 supports 3G, HSCDS, and WLAN networks, so there are several high-speed options for connecting to the internet with this phone. When a phone is so heavily focused on business application, the feature that often suffers is call quality. Thankfully, this is far from the case here: clarity of incoming and outgoing sound on the E90 is superb. Even when talking in very noisy environments, callers reported that the transmission was almost completely devoid of background noise. Meanwhile, the battery performed exceptionally well too, offering up to 5.8 hours of talk time and almost two weeks of standby.

Other features on the E90 include: a speakerphone, conference calling, voice commands, The phone also supports a telephone book that is limited in size only by the available memory, with contacts that can store numerous fields as well as pairings with distinctive ringers and photo ID.

Pros: Excellent QWERTY keyboard, lots of business applications
Cons: Bulky

Warranty
1 year