My review of the Nokia N95 (pre-shipping model)
I was lucky to haven gotten a Nokia N95 about 10 days ago, through the Nokia VIP / blogger program. Andy (the person managing this program on the PR side) was in town this wekk and I missed him (sorry, next time ?).
Now that I see that Om is publishing his review :), here goes mine (ATTENTION: MY GUESS IS THAT I GOT A PRE-SERIES. PRODUCTION PHONES MAY DIFFER):
What I liked at first sight:
* the phone is lighter than my previous N80 model, which is significant.
* the screen is wider
* the touch keys get a few moments to get accustomed to, but I like them: they have a small bumpy surface that is nice. OF course they glow in the dark. Too bad the "C" button is still up there.
* the navigation keys are easier to use, although not yet optimal.
* better connectivity: mini USB port (and not the old Nokia thing), audio jack (again not the audio adpater from Nokia)
* really tiny memory cards / slot
* rather slick design
* I shouldn't talk about the usual features on Symbian Series 60 v3, as they're all here. I get the impression that the layout / design of the thme is slightly different from other phones, but it's OK.
* Wifi worked great, so does EDGE and UMTS and GPRS. I don't have an HSDPA access to test it out.
* I found my usual apps quickly: mini opera, google earth mobile,
What I don't like:
* the video quality is not yet up to the N93. You can see it in my videos: it introduces a lot of video noise, and I get the impresson that frames are dropped (15 fps ?)
* the flash is better, but the color range is not optimal. In addition, the 5MP don't do justice to this phone: still lots of phone noise, and the speed of the shutter is not optimal: I often get blurry pictures. In some cases the results are good, but most of the time they're not.
* the zoom feature is smooth when filming, but the result is not that smooth
* I still have no clue on how to make the GPS work. There's an app there that gives you GPS Satellite status: sure 4-5 of them show up, but I never got a map reading on the phone, except ONCE by accident, and it was off by several 100 meters...
* battery life is rather short. yuck ! I always carry a charger anywhere I go... not good.
Random thoughts:
* I don't really get the point of the twin slide: it reveals the music buttons. Why not. But until I can listen to the radio of these devices without hooking in the earphones, I'm not using it for music. (I'm not the type to use this phone as an MP3 device)
* I had a hard time making it work with my Mac (iSync), but THIS IS
NORMAL, as it's a pre-series. Finally, reapplying the Novamedia phone
plugins solved it.
* I don't really like the way I need to open the camera: the back flap on the N73 was more of my taste, but it's OK.
* I tried the Podcasting client: not much in there yet, but I'm sure we will be able to upload an OPML file in the feature:
* I coudn't find now where to reconfigure the 2 soft keys :( Indeed I often loose my camera application...
* I wish we could rename the wap browser to just that instead of "services"
* not many apps for this phone yet, but I'm sure they'll come.
* i have not tested the voice quality on this phone, nor the VoIP settings. surely they'll work right.
I'm going to give it a try as my main phone as of this week now that I've sync-ed my address book on it.
