Unlimited long distance $24.99/mo
As noted earlier, the 2.2-inch display is entirely touch screen, so you have to dial numbers and type out text messages via the touch screen interface. You simply tap the main display once, and a number keypad will show up on the screen. Enter in the number, and tap the Call button to make the call. During the call, you also can place the call on hold, transfer the call to your headset, or drop the call entirely, all from the touch screen. There is no handwriting system in the N908, so you're forced to use the virtual QWERTY keyboard. While you can get away with dialing numbers with your finger instead of the stylus, you should use the stylus when typing out text messages simply because the keys are so small. The screen attracts finger smudges, so that's even more incentive to use the stylus instead. Obviously, you can't dial by feel, and texting may take a bit longer than usual.
Features
The NEC N908 has an impressive feature set despite its diminutive size. It comes with a 500-entry address book, and each entry can accommodate up to four numbers, an e-mail address, a company name, a department name, a title, a street address, a birthday, and a memo. Each contact also can be assigned a group and a photo for caller ID. Though you can't assign one of 16 polyphonic ringtones to an individual person, you can assign one to a caller group. You also have the option of sideloading your own MP3 tracks to be used as ringtones. Other basic features include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, e-mail, a wireless Web browser, a voice recorder, a scheduler, an alarm clock, a notepad, a calculator, a dictionary, a currency converter, a world clock, a stopwatch, a countdown clock, and a unit converter. The NEC N908 is a tri-band world phone, and you can tether it to a laptop via Bluetooth or USB to be used as a modem. However, since NEC N908 is only a GPRS phone without support for EDGE or 3G networks, you would get a really slow connection.
The N908 has pretty good multimedia offerings. The 1.3-megapixel camera is fairly good, with camera settings that include six resolutions (64x64, 176x144, 240x320, 320x240, 640x480, and1280x1024), three image quality settings, five brightness settings, up to 6x zoom, five frames, three shutter sounds, a self-timer mode, a single and burst mode, lighting adjustments for daylight and night environments, and three photo effects (Normal, Sepia, and Monochrome). The phone only has about 31MB of memory, but the N908 does come with an included 128MB microSD card for more space. We were disappointed that the N908 did not come with either a flash or a self-portrait mirror. There's also a built-in camcorder feature. The photos we took from the camera looked impressive. They were a bit blurry, but still good when compared with VGA camera phones. Video quality was fairly bad -- grainy and low resolution -- but that's to be expected with a camera phone.
The NEC N908's MP3 and video players are fairly basic. You can load your favorite music and video files from your PC to the microSD card, and it can support MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3GP, and MPEG-4 file formats. The interfaces for both the music player and the video player are very similar, but music features are limited to a repeat setting. The audio quality of the music was fairly good when heard through headphones, and although the stereo speakers sounded a bit tinny, it was pretty decent overall.
Personalization options are good with the NEC N908. You can choose from a variety of wallpapers and ringtones, but you also can load your own images and MP3s via the microSD card. The N908 comes with two Java games, Boxman and Balloon.
Performance
We tested the triband (GSM 900/1800/1900; GPRS) NEC N908 world phone in San Francisco using T-Mobile's service. Call quality was excellent, with callers reporting us coming through loud and clear and vice versa. They could even hear us when we were walking along the busy city sidewalk. There was a slight amount of static but nothing too obnoxious. Reception was fairly even throughout the city, though it faded out a bit when we headed toward the outskirts of town. We paired the phone successfully with the Plantronics Discovery 665 Bluetooth headset Plantronics Discovery 665 Bluetooth headset
The NEC N908 has a rated talk time of three hours and the rated standby time is four days.
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