Nokia N91

Ah, convergence. Throw enough technology at any one device, and it'll end up replacing a few others.

Nokia’s high-end phones have always shared a style lineage. Generally sliding, silver phones which are destined for the pages of coffee table books about industrial design are the orders of the day. In keeping with tradition, the N91 has all these aesthetic qualities and every extra feature that they could fit in the case.

The N91’s trump card is the 4GB of internal memory, which from a storage perspective can sideline an iPod Nano. Layered on top of this is Symbian OS, a 2 megapixel camera, video and audio playback functions, Bluetooth, Wireless LAN and all the usual refinements.

All the proprietary connectors that used to tie you into Nokia accessories are gone, thankfully. Nokia has ditched the multi-pin connector of old and turned to a Mini-USB socket and Bluetooth to transfer contact details, calendar information, and of course, media to and from the phone. Audio flows into anything with a 3.5mm jack. There is a small connector that can control music playback like a wired Discman remote, but you can still use the controls on the front of the slider if you want to.

In another Discman inspired feature, there’s a hold switch at the top of the unit. The menu button is on the side of the phone, which itself is surprisingly chunky, and weighs more than we were expecting.

It’s very stylish, and signals the way that the rest of the phone product line will be heading in the near future. We’ve also seen a model from Sony Ericsson with 4GB of storage space, indicating that the phone companies are indirectly waging war on MP3 makers.