Fascinating Look Back at the Nokia N93 Smartphone from 2006 with a Swivel Display and Camcorder Form Factor

The Nokia N93 came out on April 25, 2006, and you could buy it starting in July that year for around $480 ($760 in 2025). It was a fancy Symbian smartphone that used Symbian OS v9.1 with an S60 3rd Edition setup. What made it special was its camcorder-like look, with a 2.4-inch screen (240 x 320 pixels) that could twist around, and a big focus on multimedia—especially its camera. It had a 3.2-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lenses, a 3x optical zoom (new for Nokia), and could record VGA video at 30 frames per second in MPEG-4, which they called “DVD-like” back then.

That’s not all, it also included a smaller CIF camera for video calls, 50 MB of storage (you could add more with a miniSD card), 64 MB of memory, a 332 MHz Dual ARM 11 processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, a 3D graphics chip that supported OpenGL ES 1.1, and a 1100 mAh battery that lasted about 6.5 days on standby. It was a thick flip phone with a swivel part, weighing 180 grams and measuring 118 x 55.5 x 28.2 mm. You could get it in pearl black or silver, plus special versions like the Nokia N93 Golf Edition and one tied to Mission: Impossible III.

People had a lot to say about the N93 because it took phone cameras and videos to a new level. Reviewers loved the camera, especially the zoom and video quality, which were amazing for a phone back then. The twisty design was a favorite for tech fans who liked its camcorder feel, and the 3D graphics chip was a smart addition for the future. But it wasn’t perfect. Lots of people complained it was too big—180 grams and almost 3 cm thick didn’t fit easily in your pocket—and the system could feel slow even with a good processor.

When it came to what it could do, the N93 really shone with multimedia. Its camera and video were better than most other phones, like the Sony Ericsson K800, especially with zoom and recording, though it wasn’t as good as a real camcorder or camera. The Symbian system let it do smartphone stuff like email, web surfing, and extra apps, but the slow controls and tiny 50 MB storage (which filled up fast with videos) were downsides. It sold okay to people who love new gadgets and even showed up in movies like The Bourne Ultimatum and the game Tony Hawk’s Project 8. Still, it was too special to take over the market. Nokia made a slimmer N93i in 2007, but the swivel idea didn’t last long after that.