Nokia 9210 Communicator

The 9210 is the latest in Nokia's Communicator range, which arrived in 1996 with a hefty four-figure price tag. The original 9000 introduced mobile owners to the joys of email and web browsing on the move.

The 9110 streamlined the hardware and cut the price drastically. Now the 9210 continues in the family tradition by offering full internet access from almost anywhere via the built-in mobile, plus comprehensive PDA features.

Its price may not be low, but you do get a realistic laptop replacement for light-duty work. The built-in office tools include fax and SMS, a Microsoft- and Lotus-compatible word processor, a contact and calendar manager, a spreadsheet and a presentation developer. There's also support for POP3, SMTP and IMAP4, and the browser includes Java and Wap.

The keyboard is good enough for serious work, and the colour TFT display is stunning, staying crisp and legible in anything short of direct sunlight.

PC connectivity is a huge improvement on the 9110's clunky facilities, with automatic contact and calendar synchronisation via the supplied serial cable or infra-red. It was slightly unreliable in our tests, owever.

For file transfers the 9210's innards appear in Windows Explorer, although it doesn't get its own drive letter. This can cause problems when using other PC applications, which can't see the Nokia in the same way.

Inside the case, the hardware has been updated to an ARM9 RISC chip. There's 4Mb of user memory built in, and the supplied MMC memory card holds 16Mb.

The operating system has changed to Symbian's Epoc, adding a new desktop, better memory management, and even task switching, so you can leave more than one application running at once. Speed is good, although some of the apps take a little while to start up - but not to an extent that's seriously objectionable.

For the ambitious, Nokia can supply a free SDK for coding custom applications. System administrators may need this because the Telnet feature built in to older models appears to have gone AWOL. Also missing is a ring tone composer, although you can import wavs and use those instead. To make up for the losses, a CD full of new applications has arrived.

You can remove, or reinstall virtually all of the software that comes pre-loaded. New arrivals include some impressive games, and an imaging application that works with the supplied separate digital camera. The latter is so cheap it borders on the nasty, with a fixed resolution of 640 x 480, and painfully obvious CCD and jpeg compression artefacts. Not even the 9210's built-in infra-red camera link makes up for the surprising and uncharacteristic naffness of this part of the package.

Other software includes a useful File Manager clone, a video player that uses Nokia's own proprietary video format, and even a version of RealPlayer, but it's debatable how much use the latter two are over a 9.6Kbps connection.

Indeed, connection speed is this phone's Achilles heel. There's no GPRS, and no upgrade option. Orange has HSCSD, which the phone supports and which offers speeds up to 28.8Kbps. The handset will be available from Orange in the third quarter of this year.

Email is certainly very usable, but surfing the web in colour at 9.6Kbps is painful. Given the capabilities of the software, it's also something of a waste. Other niggly details include a fiddly cursor key combo, and occasional worrying crashes, especially within Word. A bug fix soon would be appreciated.

But even with the shortcomings, this is a classic product. This entire review was fact-checked online, and typed and emailed from a quiet West Country pub garden; there aren't many other phone/PDA combos that come close to giving you the same kind of freedom, or flexibility.

CONTACT: Nokia
08700 555 777
www.nokia.co.uk

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