Michielb.nl

Now that I have the Nokia N95 for a few weeks, it’s time to give you my second opinion. First the things I like.

• To have a phone with built-in wifi is great.
• The camera takes good pictures. Sharp, 5 megapixel, and it even has a useful flash. You can see the pix on my Fotolog.
• It has built-in GPS and decent maps. It’s actually quite convenient to have this. When I was cycling the past weekend, I frequently got the phone out, wait for GPS, and look at the map to see where I had to go. This was very, very useful.
• It has a standard mini-USB connection. This allows you to transfer pictures and movies very quickly. My Mac sees the phone as a standard drive: very convenient.
• Nokia Podcasting works well. I listen to podcasts on the road. I’ve set it up so that it only downloads podcasts over my home wi-fi connection, so it doesn’t cost me bandwidth. Very nice.
• The built-in browser is pretty good. It has a useful scaling feature.
• It has the familiar Nokia user friendly interface.

But I’ve found that there are also a few negative points.

• The battery life is a disaster. If you only use the phone functionality, it probably stays on for a week. But as soon as you run any application, the battery is dead within a day. The first days I had the phone, the battery ran out before I got home from work. Now I bring my charger wherever I go.
• The navigation software is a very poor first-generation piece of work. I could actually write an entire section on the many ways that this software fails. It suggests ridiculous routes, and the maps seem to be riddled with errors. If you use this as your prime navigation tool in your car, you’ll be very entertained by the funny instructions. For instance, I’ve been told to get off and then immediately back on the same highway (A10 west) for no reason at all. And not a trip goes by without these errors. However, it does get you places, and is mostly useful in the ‘last 5 km’ of your trip. Remember to bring your charger though: When you arrive, look for a power socket.
• Getting a GPS position can take a long time, especially if you are moving. This makes navigation even harder: It can take so long to get a position, that by the time it gets a fix, it needs to recalculate the route. Which takes so long that by the time the route is calculated, it needs to recalculate. Et cetera. It once took me 22 minutes of driving before I got a stable route. Luckily I knew the beginning of the route, which is not always the case!
• The camera is quite slow to start up, slow to focus and has a long delay when pressing the shutter button.

Despite the negatives, I personally still like the phone. As long as you take the charger with you, and use the navigation functionality only ‘in case of emergency’, you’ll be fine and have a good phone. I guess it’s a personal thing: If you like Nokia, you will take the quirks as part of its charming character.