Reviewing the Nokia N95
I recently received into my possession a Nokia N95, one of the top phones from the Nokia line. I was intending to buy this phone, but apparently Nokia had provided Charlene with one for analysis. I’ll be reviewing the phone, it’s features, and web capabilities over the coming weeks.
Initial Attractions: Large screen and 5 megapixel camera. The last time I ran into phones of this quality, I was in Japan (live video streaming via cell phones were already available). I take a lot of pictures (over 20,000 in flickr) so this will help me reduce gear –gotta love convergence.
Setup: I went to AT&T, the only service provider (I asked my twitter network for help, responses came in fast) and signed up for a low voice plan and unlimited data plan ($20) and $5 worth of monthly text messaging (for Twitter). Picked up a jawbone headset, will test this too.
Expectations:
1) I hope to be able to fully manage my blog comments, approving comments, and alerts easily.
2) Access websites like Techmeme and my feedreader with ease, and the rest of the world wide web.
3) Use this as my ongoing camera and video capture going forward. (see this flickr pool of N95 photos)
What’s better, the iPhone or the Nokia N95? Robert says the iPhone is better, but the N95’s camera saves it.
One of Nokia’s top bloggers and social media strategist is, Karl Long who I run into quite frequently, if this topic is of interest to you, I recommend you read his blog, or connect with him.
13 Comments so far
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You should test Jaiku and it’s LBS out.
I have a killer navigation system in my car, I’m not going to test out the navigation system –yet.
Jaiki, good idea.
When you use it for video, be aware the the microphone is on the side where the USB port is.
You can also test out the timeline based video editor on board. Lot of people don’t know that’s there.
One of the coolest features is the embedded application that uploads directly to flickr. The iPhone does not have that and reduces the photo resolution when uploading to flickr.
The N95 also has direct upload to VOX for videos. I’ve used it for testing, but i prefer to load my mp4 movies into iMovie and edit them on the Mac and then upload to blip.tv and other sites.
Enjoy.
Funny .. was gonna leave a comment that said “ask steve garfield” and look who commented above ..
Jeremiah, IPhone rocks for me. Had some initial problems after jailbreak but after getting past that I never looked back. I have been reading feeds with it only a daily basis.
Robert’s right iPhone cam ain’t that great….but the pure user experience makes u forgive Jobs for it. If u like gps, there is an native apps from Navizon. There is also an app to upload pics to flickr.
The great thing about it is it is supported by a very enthused community of iPhone developers even before the sdk is out.
Hi Jeremiah! I have had a Nokia N95 since about April, and have found it reliable the whole time, including while traveling around Europe. The camera is excellent - I use that frequently. Browsing the web works well. The GPS is quick and works well with Google Maps. And then I love all of the S60 apps you can get, so that whatever you want to do, you can find an app for it. It helps me stay in touch with the internet world. And, it runs on 3G, sometimes up to 3.5G. Although it doesn’t have the cool factor of the iPhone, it works really well and has more functionality. I guess you can see that I really like it!
Congrats on your new toy! Gotta love Twitter! It was a quick way to sell the iPhone I won. I’ll blog about it. I’m going to try an iTouch so not abandoning Apple totally. No camera though…
My cell phone has video that I may try out with Utterz. Did you see that Sim from Utterz is going to be at the FB conf? It’s less than 2 weeks away & a sell out too! Looking forward to it!
With all those photos maybe you’d like to analyze ACDSee Pro 2’s functionality & how it helps make marginal photos usable? as well as speed for processing photos to get them online quickly.
The N95 was great until the iPhone came along. Not only is the iPhone slimmer, it has more features, more easily reached and the operating system is far quicker than the N95.
For fat fingered people like me the keys on N95 are too close together and I always end up pressing the cancel button accidentally whilst texting. I then have to take four steps to get back to what I was texting and start over.
Hey Jeremiah, thanks for the shout out and thanks for trying out the N95. You’re dead right that the camera really helps it stand out, especially the video. The killer app for me is http://shozu.com which helps you automatically upload all your media to various social media sites.
@steve garfield: I wish they had the same inline editor for audio, I would really dig having a mobile podcast studio on my N95
did you get the N95-3 (USA N95) or the EU one? Fastest way to check is to look at the back of the device, does your lens have a protective cover or not?
Stefan
It has a cover for the lens.
[…] phones, for example, a blackberry user wouldn’t be caught with an iPhone. Jeremiah suspects the Nokia could lighten his equipment load because of it’s 5 megapixel camera. It’s often a matter of individual needs and […]
I’m downloading shozu and yahoo mail apps.