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Product: Nokia n93
Price: $699.99 (nokia.com)
Rating: 7.3
Pros: DVD like quality video camera, 3.2 mega pixel camera, optic zoom, adobe premier editing software, direct TV connection, Internet ready, radio play, great battery life, multimedia messaging.
Service: T-mobile, Cingular
Cons: Rather bulky, heavy, and changes images at slow pace.

Features - 8.0 - This phone is insane, fully loaded, and in my opinion has more elements then you will ever need in a phone. This phone can easily take the place of your mp3 player video camera and digital camera. Clearly my favorite feature was the video camera mode and I gotta tell you, I really was impressed. The picture was extremely clear, the sound was phenomenal and it felt great to hold an actual video camera that was smaller then any on the market. The optical zoom provided me with a great opportunity to get up close and personal regardless of how far I was. Recently I went to opening night at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks game. Sitting up in the club suites way above the court lent itself to a spectacular chance to test out the camera.

Performance - 8.0 - At first I was overwhelmed with the amount of functions on this phone, but after about ten minutes of testing the features and making phone calls, text messages, and multimedia messages, I gotta say I was hooked. My phone calls were crisp, sending a text message was simple and the buttons were thick enough that I could actually feel their smooth texture. I didn’t run into any dropped calls. The only issue that I noticed, and I alluded this to in the cons section above, was whenever adjusting the phone’s angles from video mode to TV mode and back to the standard flip view, the screen took a little longer to adjust then I would have liked. Not only did it lag when changing angles, but when typing a text message and switching the phone’s angle, I would leave my ‘text mode’ and automatically find myself switched into camera or video mode. However, my friends, do not get discouraged. Considering the average person would have no reason to switch from the standard flip view into the video view while sending a text message, this particular drawback should not affect the average user.

Design - 6.0 - What can you say about a phone that has everything, except it has to fit EVERYTHING. It may take one more generation of this phone to make it RAZR thin, but then again, there’s something to be said for taking video and feeling like you’re holding a camera. It looked great on the Nokia website and I was still impressed when I received it. As I stated earlier, it is a little bulky and wouldn’t be caught parading down the fashion runway; but who needs a fancy dress when you’re the one wearing the muscle?

Overall - A great phone; not meant for the average user - but certainly would not displease the average user. It packs a punch so if you’re not one to care about features, then this is not for you. The price may seem extreme, but if you were to take an iPod video roughly priced at $250.00, and 3.0 megapixel camera roughly priced at $200.00, and a Sony Handy-cam roughly priced at $500.00, this phone is actually a bargain.  If this phone was a celebrity, it would be a mix between Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t have the looks, but it certainly packs the brains as well as the creative muscle with the introduction of the DVD style video, a high intensity 3.2 mega pixel camera, and even an option to listen to radio. With all of its features and an extensive imagination, there is nothing this phone cannot do for you.

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