Those who know me, will know I’m glued to my phone, my Nokia N95 which I’ve owned for a year now. With good reason too. Take now for example, my train is leaving Liverpool Street, I’m sat with my stereo A2DP bluetooth headset, listening to music wirelessly, I’m blogging on here, having my email pushed to me. All with one device! I could take a photo if I wanted, or look up where I an on Google Maps too. Oh and as I write I’ve got a text, a quick application switch lets me read it.
You get my point – that is pretty impressive for a device that is smaller than cigarette box! It has change the way I work, and play totally. I have no need for my iPod now. I use iTunes Agent to sync with iTunes. I use the fantastic 5 MP camera to take photographs. My trusty old Kodak C340 has hardly been out with me the past year simply because the Nokia gives better results. I used to run TomTom on my old Nokia N70 which was okay, but I needed an external bluetooth GPS and to be honest the bluetooth on the N70 was SHOCKING. That has obviously been superseded by the brilliant Nokia Maps and the built in GPS. Nokia Maps and the built in GPS came under a lot of fire when the N95 was first released. It wasn’t great to be honest – but the advent of firmware upgrades and also the lovely Nokia Maps 2 really has given me a perfect all in one solution.
Last night for example, I arrived at Liverpool Street Tube Station to find they had shut it – not sure why. I knew that Bank was a short walking distance, so I went outside, fired up Nokia Maps, found Bank Tube Station and it led me right up to it. No fuss or drama, and I continued my journey.
I guess the only real stumbling block of the phone, in my opinion is the Web Browser, don’t get me wrong, it is GOOD. But when using something like Opera Mini – I find the experience better, it feels more like a true web ‘experience’ rather than a trimmed down ‘mobile web’ one. Opera Mini isn’t perfect, but I feel it is just a little bit more ‘swish’ than the default S60 effort.
Oh and from a more technical point of view it does need just a leetle bit more RAM – I’ve found if I’ve got a lot running, and say, the phone rings, sometimes everything will just close down. Which is a little bit annoying! The battery life is moaned about a lot, but I never find it an issue, I charge it at night – and will top it up sometimes in the office. On the whole I’ve never run out of charge, and considering I use a lot of 3G (Push Email is on all the time, plus I do a LOT of browsing!) and have my Bluetooth on for a few hours each day, it seems fine.
The sad thing is that I don’t think Nokia are evolving the N Series as quickly as they should – the new Nokia N96 looks great, but isn’t technically much different to the N95. Samsung, who are relative new comers to the Symbian OS have just announced the INNOV8 (i8510) which looks like the phone the N96 should have been, better camera both in terms of mega pixels and facilities, more RAM, bigger battery, and it looks very sexy! I hope the N Series does evolve soon, my upgrade is in 6 months time and I would love another Nokia – just not sure if the N96 will cut it for me.
