This review was never finished, but has been published here for completeness.

As you may (or may not) know, I have recently purchased myself a Nokia 9210. If this last comment caused a sharp intake of air, may I remind you of the current situation with Psion and their withdrawal from the PDA market, and suggest that with the market as it is, the Nokia 9210 is one of the only machines around which runs ER6, or the Symbian OS, as Symbian themselves seem to like it called!

Anyhow, following the huge taxing strain that was my A-Levels, I have escaped from Britain, spending time in the wonderful countries of Denmark, Sweden and France. Whilst I haven’t been able to keep up to date with the technology world quite as much as I would have liked, it has given me a superb chance to put my new 9210 through its paces, and so… here is, what I hope to be, the most comprehensive and deep review of Nokia’s new machine. The idea is to give you a totally honest view of the 9210 and what I think to be its failings and redeeming features;

To be completely honest with you, and to try to give you a true representation of my feelings on the 9210, I feel I should explain that I initially disliked the machine strongly, and even after buying it I was still not convinced that I had made the correct decision – all I knew was that it was the only machine on the market which sported a keyboard and that I was also unwilling to depart from the basic workings of EPOC, an operating system, the logic I have felt at home with ever since my Psion Series 3.

In an attempt to make this essay as readable as possible, I have split it up into a number of different sections, covering, what I feel are the most important aspects to consider when wondering about buying such a machine.

The Physical

The Phone OK, so you probably didn’t start reading this article because you wanted a detailed review of Nokia’s phone OS, but its a crucial element of the machine, considering that in many fields it is referred to, not as a PDA as you might expect, but a Smartphone. That said, the phone side of the 9210 is far from smart. Nokia has made a number of glaring omissions from the phone OS which make it feel old and clunky.

The PDA

I know it sounds cheesy, cheap, or whatever word you would attach to the situation, but the first thing I noticed about the PDA side of this machine was the omission of the snowboarding game, Virtually Board, which Nokia have been using as a selling point of the machine.

Whilst I have been in France, I have received an email mentioning a firmware upgrade for the 9210. I can only at the moment speculate if this refers to an upgrade to the ER6 OS or Nokia’s own phone OS. All I can say is that an upgrade to either would not go amiss, and that I look forward to trying it out. I hope to keep you updated with a further report when I myself have gotten round to giving this upgrade a go.

inertia