The N93's 3.2 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera can take VGA quality video at 30 frames per second. Nokia markets the smartphone as being capable of taking DVD-quality video. And the company partnered with actor and director Gary Oldman, who shot a short film with the device, to show off and promote this capability.

In a short documentary video (see here) about the making of the music video director Mike Hodgkinson explained how he leveraged the N93. Because he used the cell phone they could go from place to place very easily. What he did was hold the camera phone securely in place in a mini tripod with a couple of clamps he got at a hardware store.

Perhaps the most ingenious use of the N93 happend at scene centered around a swimming pool. They went to the local florist and bought a bunch of helium balloons, attaching the 6.35-ounce smartphone to them to get what Hodgkinson called in the documentary, "a really cheap brilliant aerial shot."

"The N93 is so light and the quality so good that it opens up a world of creative possibilities. And that's how we did this instead of a really expensive crane shot," he added.

Hodgkinson even took the N93 into the pool: first above water and then, through a homemade underwater housing camera unit that cost $15 to put together, underwater.

In th end, according to the director, the great thing about the N93 was how it allowed them to easily make a film gorilla style. "You can just get out there and use free locations. Of course, the sunlight is free."

Here's the end product:

More Movie Making
While Hodgkinson's creative use of the smartphone to create a music video is impressive, a pair of Italian filmmakers actually filmed a 93-minute movie using the predecessor to the N93, the N90, last year.

Directors Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi said the smartphone came in handy because it was light, not invasive, easy to use and - best of all - cheap. This allowed them to shoot a movie without having to follow rules of a traditional production.

Mencarini and Seghezzi filmed " Nuovi Comizi D'Amore" (New Love Meetings) for a few thousand dollars. It is homage to a 1965 documentary that interviewed people about their love lives. The film features the directors talking to people to find out how attitudes have changed in the intervening forty years.

"The phone was always in our pockets, easy to use and sufficiently performed not to require a troupe, a director of photography nor professional lighting," according to the filmmakers. "We always used the internal microphone of the camera phone, the natural light and only in very rare occasions we used a pocket flashlight made in China cost a couple of euros."

N93
The N93 runs on the latest Symbian 9.1 and S60 3rd edition platforms, and it has the same twist and shoot form factor as the N90. The 4.65 x 2.19 x 1.11 inch, tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (900/1800/1900 MHz) smartphone's camera, in addition to the features mentioned above, offers a 3x zoom, stereo audio recording and digital stabilization.

It also has flash and an active camera toolbar to display all available capture features, from exposure value to color tones and white balance. There are dedicated keys for shutter, zoom and flash and also a camera mode key that enables you to switch quickly between image and video capture.

While the N93 integrates 50 MB of memory, its miniSD card slot enables users to add up to 2 GB more storage for up to - Nokia asserts - 90 minutes of DVD-quality video or close to 2500 high-quality photos.

Additional specifications include a 2.4-inch QVGA display that supports up to 262,144 colors and a wide 160 degree viewing angle. There's also 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, a digital music player, FM radio with visual radio, Universal Plug and Play, and TV-out.

The 1100 mAh lithium ion i-Ion battery is supposed to get 5.1 hours talk and 10 days standby time on a single charge.

Nokia has created a Web site called the Nokia Nseries Studio to promote mobile movie making. In addition to Oldman's movie, entitled 'Donut,' the site features the work of number of other directors. And, in addition to serving as a reservoir for the works of professionals, Nokia Nseries Studio's main purpose is to give everyday folk the chance to login and share their own clips; either from a PC or a mobile device ... preferably one from Nokia, of course.