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After testing Nokia's smallish 9300 Communicator (see Preview: Nokia 9300 - The Smallest Communicator Yet)—a boxy but good brick of a smartphone for the business user—we were curious what else its sister unit, the larger 9500, would have to offer.

While the 9300 was a solid performer with a decent set of features, it never ventured into "wow" territory: the smartphone is a good choice for business users who prefer the Symbian operating system (0S), but it was hard to imagine anyone else gravitating toward it. (Recent rumors state the 9300 will finally ship in the U.S. from operator Cingular Wireless.)

So it's a pleasant surprise to see that the 9500 has much more to offer, retaining all that's good about the 9300—like 80 MB of storage—and adding a digital camera and Wi-Fi. It's heavier and costs more, but unless you specifically need a phone without a camera for work, we think it's a better buy.

Design
Looks matter.

Although the 9500 is practically the 9300's twin, it's the better looking of the two. The designers have given the 9500 a silver and black two-color design, with the black center of the phone outlined in a gentle swoop.

It's an attractive change from the all-silver blocky-ness of the 9300. Perhaps the design is meant to provide a bit of camouflage: place the phone on a silver surface and you'll only see the black part, which is roughly the size of a normal phone.



Front/Back

The 9500 measures 5.8 x 2.2 x 0.9 inches and weighs 7.8 ounces, which makes it slightly bigger and heavier than the 9300. You won't conceal this one in a shirt pocket.

Both are clamshell handsets that open sideways to reveal a keyboard with Chiclets-sized keys and a 65k 640 x 200 pixel resolution color screen. And each unit has a 128 x 128 pixel screen on the front for time, data, caller ID and other basic information.

Sound & Vision
The 9500 has a 640 x 480 pixel camera on the backside, which can only be used when the phone is closed. That's a small resolution for a smartphone like this, but it turns out surprisingly good photos.



Camera Close-up

We like how easy it is to change shooting modes, such as turning on the night setting for low-light conditions. There's also a video mode, so that you can capture action as it happens.

There's no headphone jack on the 9500, just a multi-purpose adapter on the bottom that works with the included earbud headset and also plugs into the wing-shaped charging stand.

Plugs, Input, No Vibrations
It's a pain that the 9500 implements a proprietary plug/connector, which is unfortunately too common today. While there may be a legitimate reason for going the proprietary way, it comes off looking like just another way to sell accessories.

Imagine what a drag it would be if every home computer, instead of having USB and FireWire ports, used the parent company's own proprietary port.

Proprietary Connector

Headset Attached

Both the front and the inside of the 9500 feature a directional pad for selecting things, which his important because the unit’s display is not a touch screen. The directional pad is awkward to use, however.

So it's easy to accidentally click the pad in one of the four directions when you only mean to click it down. Needless to day, we often found ourselves selecting something we didn't intend.

The keyboard is fine for thumb typing, although we find the more compact Palm, Inc. Treo 650 keyboard easier to use. As with the 9300, the keyboard is jumbled a bit to make room.

So the comma and period are on the left-hand side. Four buttons to the right of the screen contain contextual commands for different areas.

The 9500 offers SMS support, of course, but has taken the most criticism for lacking T9 predictive text input. As a result, if you're a heavy SMS user, tapping out your messages will take a few seconds longer.

The phone also lacks a vibration mode, a curious omission in a product as complete as this one. If you're in a quiet meeting but you still want to know when you get a call, your only option is to set the ringer volume as low as possible.

Additional Specs
The 9500 runs off the Symbian 7.0 OS (Series 80 platform) and a 150 MHz processor. If the aforementioned 80 MB of storage isn't enough, there's a Multimedia Card (MMC) slot on the back— beneath the battery cover, which isn't the most convenient place.

Our review unit was a tri-mode GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz phone with EGPRS (EDGE)high-speed network support. We always got good reception in our testing.

The lithium-ion battery can last for six hours of talk time or up to 12 days of standby. There's a charge/sync cradle.



Cradle

With both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (for personal area networking, e.g. hooking up to headphones and desktop syncing), the phone satisfies our need to stay connected. The Wi-Fi settings are especially easy, since you choose from available networks when you try to go online to surf or check e-mail—so you don't need to go to a separate preference panes—as with other smartphones and handhelds.

(When SmartPhoneToday met with Nokia at CTIA in New Orleans last spring, the executives told us that we’d have to wait for the next generation Communicators for dual-mode (Wi-Fi/cellular) support. So with the 9500, you most likely won't get automatic switching between Wi-Fi and cellular networking—depending on which is cheaper or more convenient at a given moment—even if your carrier starts offering that long sort after service.)

The 9500's extra wide screen can display nearly the entire width of a Web page, but usually not quite.

Software
The 9500 is targeted toward business users, as the software assortment shows. The desktop has folders on it marked Personal, Office, Media, and Tools. Personal is where you'll find the Contacts, Messaging, and Calendar tools.

Since Messaging, which supports SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4, is likely to be the most used app, it's a shame the phone doesn't let you view more messages at a time. Office has simple office apps, including Documents (for word processing), Sheet (a spreadsheet tool), and Presentations (for creating presentations).



Open

We'd love to see someone create a workable presentation with this tool, which is so basic and slow that doing anything with it is a chore. For all its business apps, the phone isn't well suited for longer tasks.

For that, we'd take the Treo 650 any day. Using the 9500's directional pad as a pointer tool is so cumbersome, that it's no match for a stylus.

The 9500's office tools are compatible with Microsoft Office documents, and the 9500 can connect to your PC with the included software.

The Media folder includes the Opera Web browser and a voice recorder, as well as an image browsing tool, a music player (capable of playing AMR, WAV, MIDI, AAC, MP3 and AWB files), and a mini version of the Real Player. With the Real app we could not stream live content, as it only works with local files, unfortunately.

Conclusion
The 9500 is a fine tool for power business users who prefer the Symbian OS; although we fancy some of the better Palm and Windows Mobile offerings out there more. Nonetheless, the 9500 has some important features that little brother 9300 lacks and is sure to satisfy many demanding professionals.

As with the 9300, the 9500 is already available in some European and Asian markets. It is slated to ship in the U.S. from an as-of-yet unnamed carrier sometime after the 9300 enters the North American market, which should be soon. A SIM card free version sells for about $800.