nokia 9500

Nokia 9500 Review

Phone rating:

Released two full years after the previous 9210i Communicator, the 9500 Communicator has been eagerly awaited for a long time. Technology has moved forward a long way since 2002, and the 9500 has plenty of new features to offer.

The list of enhancements is extensive, but top of the list are:

• An enhanced 65k colour display (internal and external)
• 80 Mbytes memory
• Wi-Fi support and Bluetooth™ wireless connectivity
• Integrated VGA camera and video recorder
• Triband operation

The Nokia 9500 Communicator is compatible with most Lotus and Windows programs that support currently available Microsoft Office formats (MS Office 97 onwards).

The new TFT internal display is an excellent screen that is much brighter and easier to use in bright sunlight. Both the internal and external keyboards have also been improved, making typing quicker and more reliable. Internally, there is much more memory available - both user storage and RAM - and the processor is considerably faster. But perhaps the most welcome feature for many will be the Wi-Fi support, enabling mobile users to connect to the internet at broadband speeds, when located in a suitable Wi-Fi "hotspot".

But what about the old bugbear of the Communicator series - its bulk? Well, the 9500 is around 10% lighter than the 9210i and very slightly smaller. Nokia are clearly trying hard, but this is still a bulky machine to carry around.

Features of the Nokia 9500 include:

• Full QWERTY keyboard with 8 shortcut keys
• Five-way scroll key on the cover, nine-way scroll key on the PDA side
• Inner display: Transflective LCD (65,536 colours, 640 x 200 pixels)
• Outer display: Active matrix (65,536 colours, 128 x 128 pixels)
• Symbian 7.0S OS (series 80 platform), Java MIDP 2.0
• Integrated VGA camera and video recorder
• Email: Access your work and private email accounts; supports SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4 protocols
• Multimedia messaging: Combine image, video, text, and voice clip and send as MMS to compatible phone or PC; use MMS to tell your story as a multi-slide presentation
• Built-in applications: Word processor, spreadsheet viewer and editor, presentation viewer and editor (Microsoft compatible), VPN, Calculator, File Manager, Voice Recorder, Music Player
• Advanced contacts database with support for multiple phone and email details per entry, also supports thumbnail pictures and groups
• Opera Internet browser (Support for HTML, XHTML, and JavaScript)
• High-speed data connectivity with EGPRS (EDGE - up to 236.8 kbps)
• Wireless LAN access (WiFi, IEEE 802.11b - up to 11 mbps)
• Bluetooth™, Infrared, USB 2.0, and Pop-Port™ interfaces
• Fax modem
• Integrated handsfree speaker
• Ringtones: use MIDI, WAV, AMR or AAC/MP3 files as ringing tones
• 80 Mbytes built-in memory, support for additional memory with memory card (MMC)
• Tri-band operation
• Size: 148 x 57 x 24 mm
• Weight: 222g
• Talktime: 4 - 6 hours
• Battery standby: up to 12 days