After years of using Nokia's superb Communicators I trusted them to take care of their professional clients. Reading the reviews of the E-90 it seems that they changed the staff of their design and development concerning the E-90 for slightly mindless geniuses. Ofcourse it is nice that the machine has fantastic hardware, and yes the 9500 was slow and lacked a few things, but the E-90 seems to be another fancy street phone with the looks of a Communicator. Rude? Well, the communicators used to be able to communicate by phone, mail, sms, and fax. Always like that. The E-90 misses the fax. A hardware matter, not easy to solve, whereas the mindless geniuses on D&D seem to miss the fact that the professional user still needs the fax quite often. The fax will get extinct eventually, that is possible, but not yet. Navigation and radio are brilliant gadgets, but not if one has to trade in core-applications for the hard-core Communicator-users, ofcourse. Then the prima vista comparison between 60 and 80: seems not bad for multimedia, but is it well adapted - an improvement - compared with the 80 - for the Communicator? According to the reviews this is to be doubted. I looked forward to a replacement for my worn 9500, and I am really diosappointed that the E-90 seems to be a Communicator only in looks and name. So I hope the geniuses will do something to set this straight again, at least seeing to it that a fax version will be produced. I hope my 9500 endures until then. Or until another player jumps in this niche.
February 2009
I have to apologize. I recently decided to buy a E90 and I am impressed. It does lack the fax, but as many posters haven mentioned: networks will no longer support that. And yes, it is to bad that the S80 software has been dropped.
But the advantages are huge and overwhelming. S60 software is available in a wide variety - and it is necessary to buy to make it as good as communicators have to be: Handy Calendar, makes it as good as - better - then the 80 versions; SMS-timer enables you to schedule sending SMS - like the 9500 did. Xelnex lite, enabels you to instantly record as long as you want - which may be long thanks to the 2Gb or 4Gb cards (or bigger?), Advanced Call Manager is as brilliant as ever, because you have a secretary in your pocket, ans an answering machine with the brilliant advantage that you can hear real time who is leaving a message, Advanced Device Lock enabels you to delete files remotely when you lose your phone, and for fun it is nice that you can download a free DIVX player for your S60 3rd generation device.
But what makes it so overwhelming is that this communicator is very fast compared with the 9500 and the 9300i. Of course it is a pity that you no longer can search on all details. but to be honest I did not miss it once during the last 4 weeks.
So I have to apologize - this communicator is an unbelievable product of Nokia. I have the improved version, Navy Black, no problem whatsoever with sound, keyboard and it gives me a very solid quality impression.
The geniuses are geniuses after all - sorry guys, for jumping to a conclusion without proper investigation...