Nokia N95, My thoughts!

Howdy guys and gals!

So I've been playing with my new N95 for a week or so now and I figured I'd write a little something about it.

When I first received this marvel of technology I was in awe of the size, its not much bigger and feels slightly lighter than the K800i. It was boxed better than the old Ipods used to be with everything in hard plastic shells and presented pretty well with a thorough manual and a decent CD with some useful software on it as well as a provided TV-Out cable, in line remote for headphones and I got some free JBL "On tour" travel speakers which actually don't sound bad at all

I unpacked my new baby and found it comes with a screen protector! upon trying to apply this fiddly device I dropped it so I got covered in dust on the sticky side! never mind I thought, I'll buy a new one, still haven't got around to it and I really think I need to as it doesn't have that Anti-scratch glass the SE models do.

The memory card came next, The SD micro doesn't slip in as easily or as smoothly as the SE M2's do and it feels a bit rocky getting it out but it works fine.

After that I dropped in the (U)Sim and battery and booted her up. THIS PHONE IS FAST!

There was no waiting for contacts or software to load up, it was just there! My K800i used to take a good 2-3 minutes before you could even use it. The screen quality took me aback too! its bright, huge and crisp. It has a light sensor above it so it can control the brightness and the key lights saving on battery too.

Phone calls are crisp, the voice recognition for dialling works great most of the time with no need to train it and if you put the option on to tell you who's calling, that Stephen Hawking like voice saying someones name phonetically is quite a giggle, as is the txt to speech function (who didn't make their Amiga say rude words right).

The music player is AWESOME! the quality puts the Ipod Video to shame, I thought I just had dodgy headphones but using them on the N95 the Bass difference was immense, the great thing is it takes 3.5mm standard phones, I think a 4gb card may be in order and the Ipod can stay hooked to the stereo.

The camera! what can I say! QUALITY by far the sharpest camera I have used so far, I compared it at 3mp to a Fuji finepix F450 and an Ixus 5mp version and its better than both with a little tweaking of the settings, my only gripe is the LED flash and that there is no option to silence the camera sound.

The ringtones and sound are LOUD and playing with the 3d settings is fun for a while. the GPS is good but not great, I found the route planner useful though a few times. on Wi-Fi and 3g its fast and responsive MSN works perfectly but I'd get the opera browser, it is better than the nokia one. The addition of skype and the possibility to use the phone as a Wi-Fi VOIP phone is a great extra, the quality is good but you gotta stay in a full signal Wi-Fi spot.

Now the bad points! The build quality isn't as good or solid as the K800i, or any SE phone since the T610 to be honest, the buttons are slightly tacky and I find my fat thumbs close the SMS screen accidentally sometimes and the slider has a slight rock to it although that is apparently fixable easily. The battery life is dismal. I think it couldn't be helped that I was installing lots of things on it as well as using the GPS and wi-fi all the time, I just never got a full day out of it until the last couple of days (maybe the battery is conditioned or I'm not using it as much.

Overall though this phone grows on you! I just cannot put it down. I've been browsing symbian sites and putting allsorts of apps on it to test out.

I give it a 7/10, 2 points off for battery and the other for the slider wobble.

I'll post a Flickr show when I get around to taking some pictures other than from my balcony :)

Lee