The Nokia N95 is supposedly a SmartPhone, the thing is, if your like me you are looking for a phone that is, well, a phone? Yep. I wanted something that functioned like a phone, but had some functionality to it.
I didn't like the other devices on the market at the time, Windows mobile devices were to qwirky and I didn't like the way they operated as a phone. Text messaging for example was more like sending an e-mail and ended up in using more char's and costing more... you know what I mean? Active sync is just as painful....
The Nokia is also one of the first phones that had HSDPA, which is basically 3.5g networking for faster mobile internet access.
Anyway, to get down to what I use the phone for:
A phone? :-)
I sync my e-mail / contacts with outlook and gmail
I listen to music while travelling through it
I take photos in the event I forgot to bring a camera...
Simple? Yep, but not many phones can do all that and with an element of ease of use while still being flexible.
Many people say this phone is like a brick, yeah it may be so, but it fits nicely in my pockets and I've never had an issue on that front. Sure there are slimmer phones but do they have all the functions? Possibly not.
Symbian has been a god send for me, the ability to download and install Gmail on the device has helped me stay in contact on the move. The GPS with recent firmware is great, and couple that with the contact sync with outlook, I'm pretty happy there.
USB connectivity used to be a bit here and there, since I upgraded the device to the latest firmware (which can be done with Nokia PC suite / Nokia Updater) I've had few problems.
I prefer the classic version over the 8GB for one reason, the internal memory is slow over USB while an external card (I have 6GB SDHC) I can easily take it out and update it. The 8GB black version has no user swappable memory.
The screen is bright and clear, and adjusts to suit the conditions but I found it was flimsy in comparison to many business phones I've used. If you didn't take care you could pretty much damage the screen, so I placed a screen protector on there - whcih can be purchased at leading phone outlets.
Video and camera quality is not bad for such a device, and there's always a moment you want to capture when you simply haven't got your digital camera or disposable... so it always comes in handy. I find better pictures are obtained with good lighting conditions.
Music wise the phone is pretty good, I use the shuffle feature along with a pair of Bose IE in-ear headphones and find the SQ better than most other phones. Not quite that of a good MP3 player, and way out of the league of a full HiFi, but for a phone it's pretty good. I think the N96 has been improved as well... from various reviews.
GPS used to be a major problem, but now it locks on to a signal within 20 seconds after the firmware upgrade, which means the device can now do Assisted GPS. I find it a fairly reliable GPS device, but don't forget the in-car charger.
Ringtones and loudspeaker/handsfree are of good quality in comparison with other phones. The ability to select any MP3 as a ringtone is nice.
Surfing the internet can be a bit nifty, but it works, and works pretty well. I would have liked a touch screen better for that though. However it's fast and the pages look okay considering the size of the screen. One thing I did like was the ability to plug the phone into a USB port and use the Internet on the computer as well, with the phone acting as a modem.
Text messaging and phone functions are as you'd expect from a Nokia phone, nice and easy. They work.... simple as. The fact it was like a normal phone make it easy.
The phone has much more flexibility, you can change the themes, sounds, settings in almost any department - so you are fully covered and theres a whole bunch of free and commercial Symbian software out there to extend the functionality.
Okay down to the issues I had...
My first firmware, well it was slow, froze, not much worked properly without requiring reboots. Remember I did have the device when it first came out, seems they resolved a lot of the issues with the latest firmware. I'm happy now.
Battery life is well, non-existent... it lasts a day during normal use. Light use 2 days. If you use all the functions on the phone, expect half a day from the device if your listening to music, surfing, calling, texting all the time....
However, for a small amount of money Nokia have a USB charger for the device which is great! Plug it into any USB port and charge your phone! Couldn't do without it.
Other than that I like the phone a lot, I would say it's on par with a lot of smart phones out there... and suits those wanting a simple phone with added functionality. The keypad is also very easy to use. The addition of WLAN is also quite nice.
As a side note, if you want push email theres a program called emoze which allows the phone to act like a blackberry, and works with gmail, etc.
This review is pretty much the same for the N96 but I understand they fixed a few things and listened to customer feedback.. so there's hope it can compete with the iPhone and like... personally, now if I was looking for another phone I'd see what the google android platform had to offer... but I really do like Symbian. A flexible, easy to use, reliable (fairly) and very extendable supported OS.
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