It’s about damn time. Playful 80s-esque electronic production… a la Timbaland. Right in tune with his work on Nelly Furtado’s great new album. Can’t wait to see this video when it drops next week… the boy can move.

What makes me excited?  Getting a new toy to play with.  A shiny one.  Even if it’s for just a few weeks.

A Nokia-sponsored program recently sent me a Nokia N91 to use for a few weeks.  I’ve put it though it’s paces, and definitely had some opinions to share, good and bad.

The music player truly rocks.  Let’s you enjoyably utilize all 4GB of music lovin’ this phone can provide.  With all the "mp3 phones" out there, most fail as a truly usable device because they 1) don’t have enough storage and 2) don’t have a good player user interface and 3) are too difficult to sync with your tunes on a regular basis.  If you’re gonna compete with an iPod, you gotta at least approach what’s made them so successful.  That being said, using the N91 as a music player was a total pleasure.  Easy, fast, and lots of syncing options… from USB, to windows media, even iTunes if you don’t mind using a trick or two.

Love me a phone with built-in WiFi.  I hate paying for data… and here in Canada, there isn’t an affordable all-you-can-eat data plan like I had back in the states.  But when I opened the great web browser for the first time, I found 11 WiFi networks available to use for Internet connectivity.  Gotta love that.  How nice would this be while out at coffee or waiting at an airport.

Since this rather hefty phone was delayed way beyond when it was intended to hit the market, it’s noticeably dated.  The screen isn’t high res like most current N Series phones, and by most high-end mobile standards, it’s below average.

The button arrangement on this handset is just poor.  The menu key is on the right side of the phone at the top (why?), and the buttons are hidden by a slider with has music controls.  These music controls could have existed next to the standard buttons and made the phone much more usable.  They sacrificed this to make the look of the phone more iPod-ish I’m sure.  But in the end, the button arrangement made texting a chore, and the flimsiness of the slider mechanism brought down the build-quality of what would have been a very solid-feeling phone.

The camera technology is already dated.  A 2 megapixel camera phone with no focusing capabilities just doesn’t impress like it would have a year ago.  Keep in mind that in this arena, I’m super-critical… a phone is more a camera to me, than it is a phone anymore.

Speaking of which… how much longer must I wait for my Nokia N93?