Here at Gaming Nexus, we’re all about games, how people play them, and what people play them on. With mobile gaming receiving a big focus at E3 2006, I spent a lot of my time speaking with people in the cellular phone gaming market. One of the companies I met with was Nokia, specifically about the expansion of the N*Gage gaming platform from the the N*Gage and N*Gage QD to all of their S60 smartphones.

During this discussion, one of the representatives showed me a prototype for the Nokia N93, and I was in awe. Nokia decided to sculpt the N Series devices to cater to specific interests, with the various models appealing towards unique uses. The N93 is the video entry into this line. Even with the focus on video, in this one device there was nearly everything one could want in their pocket: a near-DVD quality video camera, a digital camera, MP3 player, web browser, an amazing screen, a mobile video game platform, and of course, a phone. While my interest was primarily in the gaming capabilities, this new direction in phones was something I had to try for myself. It took a few months for Nokia to get them into production, and another couple to get one in my hot little hands, but now I can finally tell you all about what turned out to be quite an amazing product.

Let’s start with the obvious, the video camera. I’ve never owned a camcorder, but after carrying the N93 around for 2 weeks, I don’t know how I ever did without one. From catching highlight moments of the Columbus Blue Jackets in action to getting some footage of my two cats playing for posterity’s sake, the video camera in this unit is simply amazing. Using Carl Zeiss optics, the video camera captures VGA quality (640x480) at 30 frames per second for up to 60 minutes in length. So, while it isn’t quite designed to make major motion pictures with, you can certainly record nearly anything else.

The video quality is very good, with 3x optical/8x digital zoom, so can movie in for the movie star close-up of your cat, or whatever else you like. The default video format is .mp4, so it’s MPEG-4 compliant without conversion, and can also save videos as .3gp for video messaging. Of course, no video camera is complete without audio, and this one is no different. Every video recording comes with 48 KHz audio, which from my experience was distortion free and worked nicely even from a relatively far distance.

Probably the best feature of the video camera is that is very easy to use. When flipping the phone open, simply twist the display portion of the phone so that it is 90 degrees in relation to the keypad. The video camera will activate automatically, and once you take the lens cap off (which I forgot to do on a couple of occasions), you’re all set to start recording. A few buttons and a smallish hat switch are all that are used to operate the camera, with the zoom controlled through a thumb wheel surrounding the record button on the side of the phone so that it faces you while recording. Overall, I took about 3 hours worth of movies and can’t say enough about this feature. For gamers, it’s the perfect way to capture that high score, or the final moments of marathon gaming before reaching that next level in World of Warcraft.

While nearly every phone these days comes with a color screen, few phones come with a screen like the one on the ...