Nokia E90 Communicator Blog

Yesterday I found a pretty interesting press release on the Internet. The press release states that Consolidated Gulf Co. (CGC), the biggest retailer of mobile phones as well as the largest Telecom and IT solution provider in Qatar, has unveiled an upgraded Nokia E90 Communicator with 2GB memory.

I'm not really sure if this version is officially released by Nokia or is a custom upgrade made by CGC. Anyway, it's really interesting to see the Nokia E90 Communicator with 2GB of internal memory.

You can view the full press release here: http://www.arabianbusiness.com/press_releases/detail/19771

At last, Nokia has released a much-awaited firmware update for its Nokia E90 Communicator. The latest firmware is v210.34.75 and offers a number of very interesting and useful fixes and features.

Probably the most important update is addition of Flash Lite 3 with Flash video support. This means watching YouTube videos directly. So far, so cool.

New 'Set up Internet telephony' shortcut on standby screen.

Quickoffice now comes version 4.1.27.5. There are a number of useful improvements and fixes.

It seems that an overall device speed and stability has been improved as well. At least this is noticeable.

These are what AAS reports so far. I am at the moment downloading the recent version of the software updater, which unfortunately does not support Vista.

I will be backing up my device tomorrow and installing the new firmware.

Unfortunately, some people especially with AZERTY keyboards say that they had problems. Mine is a version with AZERTY keyboard as well.

A stereo bluetooth headset BT3030 from Jabra has been around for a while. It appeared around my place a while ago and I liked it immediately.

As you can see from the picture, the headset features a dog-tag design. Regarding the design, many reviews on the Internet say that "You're either going to love it or hate it, there's really no middle ground on this one.". Personally I loved it. I like everything that is not standard, boring and this headset is one of such things.

The BT3030 comes with a metal chain lanyard to wear the device around your neck and to me this is the way to wear the device. Alternatively, you can use the clothes clip, which is found in the box.

The headset is covered with metal and looks really cool. According to the manufacturer, the device is not fully waterproof but can easily survive a rain for example or a splash of water. Indeed, the headset looks really cool.

The front side features a number of buttons to control the playback, volume. A button to answer and reject phone calls is present as well.

I must say that the designers of this device have given a good thought to usability. The buttons are backlit with strong blue color, so it's really easy to use the device in a complete darkness.

Also, the headset gives different signals with lights. For example, the light changes according to the battery level. So you know when it's time to charge the headset. You can charge the headset either with the adaptor that comes in the box or with your PC. Yes, I love when a device has a support for charging via PC. As you may have guessed, the device has a mini USB port.

Unfortunately, I was not able to control the Nokia E90 Communicator's music player with this headset. I tried using LCG Jukebox and CorePlayer but still no success. As far as I know, Nokia E90 Communicator does support AVRCP - a Bluetooth profile that allows controlling of media device.

Receiving and rejecting calls worked just as advertised. As soon as the phone rang, the music stopped. Just a couple of seconds after you finish the conversation and the music resumes.

Another good thing about this headset is that you can use standard 3.5mm headphones with it. The one that comes in the box is really good.

The overall sound quality is very good, above average I would say. The bottom line is that this is a really cool tiny gadget and I wish I could solve this problem with controlling the music.

Recently Skype has released a beta version of an official Skype client for Java phones. The application is available for different mobile phones from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung. By the way, Nick has already written about using Skype on Sony Ericsson in his SE Blog. So if you happen to be a Sony Ericsson user, make sure to check out his post.

When you go to the download section, you won't see Nokia E90 listed there. However, let's not forget that any application that can run on say Nokia N95, can be used on E90 Communicator as well. So, I gave it a try and it worked fine.

There is one caveat though and it is associated with using the internal QWERTY keyboard. In the chatting window you cannot directly type text with the internal QWERTY keyboard. Rather, it opens in a new Java windows. This is a bit frustrating but in all other aspects the software works fine.

I have tried all applications for using with Skype. I had purchased IM For Skype from Shapeservices and have been using it for a couple of months and I must say the application works fine. Also, the application from Shapeservices is a native Symbian application, which is a big plus. However, having an application from Skype is a totally different thing. So, I highly recommend to download the N95 version and use it on your E90 Communicator.

I will be making some screen-shots on my E90 and will do a follow-up post shortly.

Please follow this link to download the application: http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/mobile/