Nokia E90 Unboxing

1st August 2007

If you're not interested in lots of pictures of us unboxing the Nokia E90, then perhaps you should skip to part one of our Nokia E90 Review.

This is the Nokia E90 Communicator. Possibly the one Nokia phone that can challenge the Nokia N95 when it comes to squeezing in features.. and the best thing about the E90 is that it's always going to be a pretty exclusive handset as it is primarily aimed at business users.

Our Nokia E90 comes from Vodafone, and arrived in a nice red box:

You'll notice that it says "Vodafone Email Solutions". Of course, the E90 is much more than that!

Now to the back of the box..

My.. what a lot of features!

Let's open it up..

The first thing to notice is that the Nokia E90 looks very.. well, conventional. Without the benefit of something to compare it with, it looks rather like a normal E-series business phone. At least the manual hints that this is something more.

Like a box of chocolates, there's a second layer.

Useful if you ever have to pack one up, I suppose! Vodafone quick start on the top.

Underneath the quick start guide is a WARNING!

The warning says that if you are using an HSDPA (3.5G) connection then people might not be able to call you. That's a problem we didn't know about: When you have a 3G broadband connection [i.e. HSDPA], there may be instances where you cannot make or receive calls. You might use these connections when accessing services such as push email, instant messaging or browsing the internet. Your device has been optimised for combines voice and data use and Vodafone would therefore recommend that this data connection [i.e. HSDPA] remains disabled when using these services.

Just for reference, the guide says that you enable HSDPA (3G broadband)

Select Tools
Select Settings
Select Connection
Select Packet Data
Select High speed packet access
Change the setting to Enabled

When in an HSDPA coverage area, the screen will show a 3.5G icon.

And finally there's a manual..

Included is a Nokia DKE-2 USB cable which is fairly standard and has been around for a few years.

The UK charger is a Nokia AC-4X, which is a standard charger for all recent Nokias with the new "small" connector. If you have an old-style Nokia charger, you can get an adapter model Nokia CA-44 for around £3.50 / €6.00 which is worth having. There's an EnergyStar label on this one.

Take the phone off the top layer, and you can see the large 1500mAh Nokia BP-41 battery and a 512MB microSD card with an SD adapter. There's a CD-ROM on the top too.

Underneath the CD-ROM is a wired stereo headset, a Nokia HS-47.

It's a nice touch to include an adapter with the microSD card, not all phones have this. However, the Nokia 9500 uses thinner MMC cards, so you can't put the microSD in the 9500 if you want to transfer files.

A front-and-back shot of the Nokia E90. You can see the camera, flash and memory card slot on the back. Note that it also has 4 small feet so that it can sit on a table.

You can also see the very conventional arrangement for the front of the phone.

The Nokia E90's party piece is the keyboard.

This is a UK keyboard, of course. One thing to notice is that the E90 only has two buttons to the right of the screen, the 9500 had four.

Open up the Nokia E90.. and you find that it's made in Finland, presumably the Nokia factory in Espoo. Nice to see something not made in China for a change.

The SIM card goes in a slightly unusual place..

Now for the BIG battery. There's a hologram on it to show that it is genuine.

Is the battery charged? Yes! Always a nice touch, that.

The microSD card fits in a hot-swappable slot. Again, this is better than many phones because you don't need to take the battery out. Although on the E90, the slot is a little fiddly to use at first.

Does it power on? Yes it does!

There are some setup screens to go through. One feature of the Nokia E90 is that the external and internal screens are both fully featured, and applications will automatically adjust. In this case, the very first setup screens can work on either the internal or external display. On the 9500, the external display could only be used for the most basic functions.

So.. it works, from here on it you can go on to the main review.