Well, this is a long pending review of the Nokia N95, which I bought during Diwali. Things happened, I got busy with work, there was a MAJOR firmware upgrade and stuff. Now that the dust has settled down, I think its high time I devote some time and pen down MY review, for the benefit of Supremus and perhaps, others too.

Firstly, the question people asked me was, why on earth did I upgrade? The N80 was doing more than well for me. Well, I remember blogging about digital convergence somewhere, and the N95 is simply put, the closest you can get to it today. I for one, believe partly, when Nokia says ‘Its what computers have become’. Coming back to the point, The N80 did almost everything that the N95 does, but there is a stark difference in speed and hardware, which compelled me to upgrade. I can now essentially safely carry only one device, and expect it to take care of everything for me.

  • I really do not have to explain how heavy or light the phone is, and how snugly it fits into your pocket and blah, since by now everyone has seen and held an N95. Getting to the point, the camera quality is terrific (5MP, Carl Zeiss with autofocus), as opposed to the 3.2MP, non-autofocus camera on the N80. I would have considered the Sony Ericsson K850, but I really was looking much beyond a digital camera replacement, which is what the K850 essentially is.
  • Directly hooking up the phone to the line in socket of my car music system was another thing I was looking at, and I’ve managed to do that, with good results. (I can use the microphone and hear the person’s voice on the car speakers).
  • The GPS feature is another plus point. (I know my way around Mumbai quite well, but I’ll come to why exactly it rocks later).
  • Voice conversations on Google Talk, using Fring on Wi-fi was another boon, tried and tested on the N80.
  • Home Networking over Wi-fi is another plus, though I’m still figuring out how to control and copy tracks off Windows Media player using the Home Networking feature, again available on the N80. Controlling over WMP tracks over wi-fi is something that was possible quite long ago.
  • Syncing my Gmail account on IMAP, automatically everyday at specified intervals of time was another thing I got around to achieving, again, which can be done on the N80.
  • RSS feeds using the integrated feed reader, was another brilliant feature, which I doubt was there in the built-in N80 browser.
  • Besides that, the little nitty-gritties that come with any smartphone, that have been bumped up. eg. You can now set Multiple alarms by default.

Other than that, the overall speed and responsiveness of the device is smoother and faster than the N80.

So many features sounded too good to be true, and in a way it was. I knew BEFORE I bought the phone that the version of firmware the phone (V12) shipped with was buggy. The camera took a long while to open and click, also, with stereo widening enabled on the music player, the phone randomly used to restart. Additionally, the Gmail inbox kept disappearing from active standby menu. The battery life was pathetic, to say the least, and I found myself charging the phone twice everyday (partly due to the fact that I fiddled around with the phone so much everyday). Applications used to crash, much like the N80, when more than 3 programs were running. It almost felt like I was becoming one of those Nokia bashers running crappy, operator branded firmware, and then blaming Nokia for it.

Enter firmware V20. All the points above, erased, at one go, and this is where Nokia, IMO, have scored a winner. This is where the actual review will begin, although in parts, since there are way too many features on the phone to describe in one post. I’ll end this intro abruptly, with a screenshot from the phone, with all applications running, on a monster of a firmware called V20.
I think it makes sense to concentrate on one or two features at a time, and it also gives me more stuff to post about, since I was simply running out of ideas. Next time, I’ll touch the GPS feature, and why exactly I find it useful.

Related to this, I wrote on