N93i - Phone or video camera?

The N93i isn’t just a phone - it’s a phone with Wi-Fi capabilities, 3D graphics acceleration and, most importantly, a DVD-quality video camera featuring stereo sound. Admittedly, the N93i, an upgrade of the earlier and chunkier N93, is a large, nay, massive mobile phone but is it worth lugging around on a day-to-day basis because of its wealth of functions?

That really depends on who you are and what you use your mobile phone for: if you’re a budding film-maker/journalistic/perv then yes, an extremely mobile video camera is going to appeal. However, this bulky device isn’t going to appeal to the vast majority of mobile users who are constantly demanding smaller, slimmer and more stylish handsets.

To be fair, the N93i is pretty stylish, it has a mirrored frontage with a uber-cool 128x36 pixel external screen meaning that any messages, the time or the application you are currently using is displayed on the front of this flip phone making your phone’s functions highly visible at all times. Unfortunately, as with all mirrored phones, it attracts smudges and, more than likely, scratches like bees to honey. Open up the phone and its large 240x320 pixels OLED screen is clear and extremely bright, featuring a Series 60 interface that Nokia N-series users have come to know and love.

Applications such as a radio, music player, top-notch games, RealMedia and Flash players, an animated movie maker and bags of office applications all make the N93i a phone worth having, but the real magic happens when the highly movable screen is twisted 90 degrees to create a landscaped view finder.

On twisting the screen, the video camera mode automatically kicks in and with the touch of a large record/zoom button situated on the right hand side of the handset you can start recording videos with your Carl Zeiss lens. The only thing to watch out for is the position of your finger – there’s a natural tendency to grip the body of the phone, covering up the lens and the light meter in the process.

What’s really great about the N93i is the 3x optical zoom which lets you zoom in on a subject without losing any quality. There’s also an 8x digital zoom in video mode which naturally sacrifices a little quality, but by and large, this camera captures cracking video.

The 3x optical zoom can also be called upon in still mode, along with a huge 20x digital zoom.

A bundled TV output cable means that you can watch videos on the big screen just by connecting your N93i to the big screen. All that’s left is to find a pocket big enough to house the damn thing.

The N93i is available now for around £430 SIM-free.