In this article, I compare the Nokia N91 with Apples iPod, and demonstrate why patience is an excellent virtue to have when shopping for technology.
Let’s face it; iPod has shipped over 60 million units, making the iPod the most sought after toy since the VCR.
What makes the iPod so great, or what makes most mp3 players worth buying, is the ability to travel, exercise, or work while listening to your favorite music. The iPod was successful because of its size and Apples unique marketing tactics. The iPod isn’t the “end all, be all” of portable technology, and after reading this article you won’t be in such a hurry to go out and buy an iPod, because the Nokia N91 is an iPod killer.
The iPod is like the classic Walkman on steroids, only the iPod costs more and it’s a tad bit fragile. The iPod offers ranging hard drive capacity, ranging from 1-60 gigs. One function that the iPod lacks is an FM modulator, allowing iPod users the ability to listen to radio. Sirius satellite radio made a serious attempt at getting Apple to bundle the two technologies together, but Sirius had no success. This would have been a great feature to offer iPod fanatics, and showing Apples stand on technology. But for whatever reason, Apple declined to partner with Sirius. Bad move, these two companies are ideal for each other. 
Rumors have swarmed around the net about an Apple iPhone, Mac freaks have been churning this subject for months, mean while Apple claims to have no interest in the subject. My guess would be that Apple has ties with telecoms or cell phone companies and Apple doesn’t want to step on any toes.
So what could be better then an iPod? The answer is simple, the Nokia N91.
The Nokia N91 is Nokia’s new secret weapon, a two mega pixel (1600 x 1200), slider style camera phone including a 4 gigabyte hard drive to store and play music files. A true iPod killer!
The Nokia N91 is part of Nokia’s new multi media focused N series which includes some exciting new technology.
- Bluetooth
- WiFi 802.11b/g
- FM radio
- 3G (WCDMA)
- Records video in MPEG4 & RealVideo 8
- Can stream video in MPEG4 & RealVideo 8
- Industry standard 3.5mm headphone jack
- Support for playback of MP3, M4A, AAC, and WMA audio files
- Share music playlists via Bluetooth
- USB 2.0 so you can drag and drop your music files from your PC to your Nokia N91.
- 176 x 208 pixel display
- Opera web browser
Rumors have it the N91 will have 12.5 hours for music playback, 7 day standby time and under 10 hours talk time.
A feature of the Nokia N91 is the possibility to share your playlists with friends by multimedia message, email or Bluetooth.
Here is the official press release by Nokia http://press.nokia.com/PR/200504/991481_5.html
The Nokia N91 is expected to become commercially available worldwide by the end of 2005.
