Using the N95 as a phone, with occasional use of the camera or mp3 player and other features doesn’t rapidly drain the battery to zero, and indeed, the N95 can last for many hours some time with light use.

The N95 isn’t perfect – it could be a bit faster, although the version 11 firmware markedly sped up the N95 over the initial version 10 firmware, so there’s hope the N95 can be made even faster. Some of the buttons on the front of the N95 can be easy to press by accident, meaning you’re in the middle of one function, to suddenly find yourself in Nokia’s smooth and Vista like ‘circular menu’, or are back to the main standby screen.

But thankfully, all is not lost, just press the ‘menu’ key and quickly navigate back to the function you were using, and you’re back to where you were. A few weeks of constant use of the phone has made my fingers much more aware of where the buttons are, although occasional keypresses still see me sometimes popping into an unintended function.

Before we conclude, it's worth briefly mention the Nokia PC Suite. Years ago, this software was a bit flaky, but plenty of sync programs for mobile phones were the same back in the day. Fast forward to today, and the Nokia PC Suite software that connects your N95 (or other Nokia phone) is rock solid.

Once connected, whether by USB cable, infrared or Bluetooth, you can fully back up your phone, composes and send SMS messages on your computer, see your phone's SMS and other message inboxes on your computer screen, edit, add and delete phone contacts, transfer photos, transfer video clips, connect to the Internet through your phone (using it as a wireless broadband modem), transfer music and even update the firmware over the Internet, without needing to take your phone into a service centre first - although don't forget to back up your phone first, as you are strongly reminded, or you will lose your data. Nokia's PC Suite is sync software that works very well.

So... although the iPhone looms as a spectacularly amazing smartphone in its own right, and is a phone I and many others have coveted even more than the N95, the reality is that the iPhone won’t land on Australian or European shores until sometime in 2008, making it a non-starter for many until it is actually available.

In many respects the N95 does everything the iPhone does, except with a smaller memory capacity and no touch screen component. While US citizens might be able to get an iPhone in late June, I’ve got an N95 now, and am happily making much use of its many and varied functions and features, at 3G and 3.5G speeds far faster than the iPhone’s EDGE is capable of delivering.

There’s no doubt the iPhone will be a force to be reckoned with, but Nokia certainly have not been asleep at the wheel. The N95 is Nokia’s finest phone ever, and is but the latest version in the ever evolving N-Series line of ‘multimedia computers’.

We can but only expect that the N95’s successor in a year’s time will be even slimmer, take even higher quality photos and videos, further refine the interface and controls, lock onto GPS satellites faster, offer a bigger screen, more inbuilt memory and plenty of other features.

But all of that is in the future. For now, Nokia’s N95 is Nokia’s true communications and computing device of the early 21st century, with even better still yet to come. The iPhone will get an avalanche of press following its launch in a few weeks time, but with the N95, Nokia has a phone that is quite possibly the iPhone’s best, and so far only, real competitor.
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