I got the chance to play with the Nokia N91 aka the Music One for a few weeks and I said I'd get back to you all with my impressions. I am happy to say that 4GB on a phone is quite a useful bit of hard disk space but that with the added bulk and complexity comes a grave price.

I always reboot my phones pretty regularly. I install something stupid and it kills the OS and I chalk it up to my own ignorance. Unfortunately, the N91 has rebooted a few too many times for comfort. Granted, this is a pre-release unit, and I'm sure Nokia will debug this thing to a fault when it really hits the open market, but it's an interesting thing to know that our phones are now smarter, and BSOD more, than a Windows Me machine infected with porn spyware.

Again, I can't judge this phone too harshly. It does everything right: physical keypad lock switch, lots of disk space, and excellent sound quality. The reception has been good thus far, although the microphone is apparently a little muffled, causing people to call me to ask if I'm in a tunnel. Another annoyance, to be sure, but not a dealbreaker.

Here's the best part: this thing is a real MP3 player. Sure, it doesn't support much DRM, but DRM can sit and spin anyway. As we all know from Jurassic Park, life finds a way, and if I really want to listen to something on the N91, I'll figure out how to get it on there. The dedicated music keys are excellent and intuitive and the music stops and starts when a call comes in.

The N91 shows up as a USB drive in OS X and includes a Windows-based media desktop system. It works well with iSync and has thus far been quite a valued companion on the train.

Overall, I'm giving this pre-release model a 7 out of 10 and would recommend it to anyone looking for a smartphone/MP3 player combo that doesn't dumb things down.

Thus far we've gotten the Nokia PC Suite to work on our XP machine and we're able to browse the drive as an external disk in OSX. The iSync profile we tried isn't working quite well, but that's for another day, I suppose. If anyone has gotten it to work, drop me a line at johnb at giz. I'm sure it's just a matter of editing the plist, which I did to no avail.

As we can see, the keypad is tiny. The UI is very slick, though and there's a dedicated Symbian menu key on the side is an excellent touch. It's about as big as a standard 4G iPod and comes with a stand, charger, software, and audio out cable for hooking up to your stereo.

The audio is very good when docked. It's "listenable," which was more than I was expecting. I've had some minor issues with reception and sound quality mid-call, but nothing that didn't clear up immediately. I believe the camera on this model is slightly improved because some of the pictures I took were actually better than the N90.

There's also mention that the bundled Symtella peer-to-peer file sharing software might not be included after all. The Gnutella-based P2P software would have allowed Nokia N91 owners to share files via the phone's built-in Wi-Fi, but now Nokia's spokesperson is said to be "talking guardedly about sharing N91 playlists by Bluetooth or MMS."

Almost a year late and short features. Not good for a phone announced in April of '05.

DRM Delayed Nokia s iPod Phone [MocoNews]

Related: Live from Amsterdam: Nokia N91 First Pictures
N91 Passes Drop and Tumble, For Real

Update: Nokia tells us that while no individual country dates have been announced, the Q1 worldwide launch is still their last official target.

One lucky guy got to test out his Nokia N91 for real when he bumped into a mechanical test engineer who actually worked on the phone. Right there and then, the guy did the drop and tumble test (which encompasses dropping the phone 300 times without it breaking) and it passes! He also makes sure to acknowledge the fact that the iPod mini could only survive 12 drops before it bit the dust.

N91 [Life in Helsinki]

''The process of integrating Windows digital rights management solution into the phone happened faster than expected,'' the spokesman said. ''We have therefore decided to delay the launch so that we can provide a better service.''

Lemme get that straight, integration happened faster so Nokia decided to launch later. What's wrong with this picture? As Carlo Longino pointed out in yesterday's Airtime column there is very little incentive for handset makers to include any kind of truly useful music service in these devices.

Nokia Delays Launch
Of First Music Phone [DowJones]

"There is no commercial agreement between Nokia and Apple to integrate iTunes into the N-series devices," said Kari Tuutti, spokesman for Nokia's multimedia division.

Nokia Says No Deal with Apple on New Music Phone [Reuters]

I'm going to go out on a limb on this one and say this is more of Nokia's branded "Soon, my pet, soon" marketing. The little Nokia 770 was supposed to do your laundry and it still hasn't even dropped over here. More info as we get it.

Nokia N91 to use iTunes, report [MobileTracker]
Applen iTunes tulossa Nokian uuteen musiikkipuhelimeen [Talloussanomat - Finnish is really the language of love]
Nokia's Music Phone To Use iTunes? [Billboard]