Nokia’s N95: the real iPhone killer? - Update

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Tuesday, 29 May 2007

Page 1 of 3 ! The Nokia N95 ‘multimedia computer’ – don’t call it a phone, say Nokia – has been creating waves ever since it was previewed to the world mid last year. Now it has arrived, and after a month of use, how has it held up to the hype – and how will it hold up to the iPhone? The N95 has finally been available to buy over the past few weeks, and soon to be much more widely available, has seen months of hype and high anticipation, justified by the strong feature set that sets the N95 apart from a mere cell phone and transforms it into a true multitasking, handheld, Internet connected multimedia computer that does a lot of things and does them all well. Combining many different features into one usable device and ensuring that each has enough quality to actually keep the user happy, or even impress the user, has long been the goal of convergence. For years, converged devices were jacks of all trades, and masters of none, or barely one main function. Yet after the advances we’ve seen during the last 20 years, and especially those we’ve seen in the last five years, it’s high time that converged devices actually started offering decent quality in all areas, truly letting you use “one device” for a wide variety of functions that would otherwise necessitate the carrying of several devices to get the job done. Given the N95 is capable of so much, if you want to use many of its powerful features in a single day, or you want to make heavy use of a few advanced features at the same time for an extended period of time, you might want to carry an extra battery and an extra 2GB Micro SD memory card, so you always have spare power or extra storage space should you need it. That’s because today’s devices are smaller than ever, offer more power hungry features at better quality than ever yet are lumbered with batteries that don’t follow Moore’s Law quite like microprocessors do. Were that the case, batteries would last for a month! It’s been said that if Moore’s Law doubles the performance of computing every 18 months, battery power is doubled every 18 years. Even Apple’s iPhone is rumored to be having (or having had) problems with battery life, although until they actually ship, no-one but Steve Jobs, his inner circle, the manufacturers, a select few at AT&T and elsewhere truly know what the real battery life is, although we’ll all know once it launches in the US only within the expected next two-to-three week timeframe. But at least with the N95 you have the ability to easily plug in a fully charged battery or pop in a blank Micro SD memory card so that you can keep on working, talking, recording audio or video, surfing the web, listening to music, taking photos, watching YouTube videos and more. It’s something the iPhone won’t be able to do once the battery is flat and the memory is full, no matter how superlative the interface turns out to be, although you’ll likely be able to carry around an external battery and the charger if needed as you can with iPods today, it's hardly as convenient as a slim battery in your pocket. But enough of the as yet unavailable and largely untested iPhone – the Nokia N95 is on sale now, and packs in a vast array of features that even outdoes in a number of ways what the mighty iPhone is set to offer upon its release. The N95 truly is versatile. It’s a voice, video and VoIP phone, a 5 megapixel digital camera with 20x digital zoom and a Carl Zeiss autofocusing lens with really bright flash, a 640x480 DVD-like 30fps digital video camera, a 3G and 3.5G wireless broadband modem, an mp3 and video player that sound pretty amazing on the inbuilt stereo speakers, a GPS navigation unit, an FM radio, a fully-equipped web browser, an email device, a streaming Internet radio, an alarm clock, a 2D square barcode reader, and an audio and video podcast downloader and player. But that’s not all - the N95 has plenty more inside - please read onto page 2! << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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