After about ony week with my new Nokia N95 here are some of my experiences:
Connectivity
GSM/UMTS signal strength is very good - significantly better than with my previous phones.
Maps / GPS Navigation
Map quality is good and up-to-date. Preinstalled were maps from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and some border areas.
The map software is able to calulate routes and has a mode to follow the route. Navigation with speech, recalculation of routes, 3D mode and map orientation in drive direction must be purchased online as upgrade (e.g. 99 EUR for 3 years in area Western Europe). Maps can be preinstalled with a maploader or downloaded at the moment when it's needed.
The smart2go software is doing it's job fairly well. But the quality of the calulated routes could be better (it prefers motorways and expressways a bit too much). A route can have only start and endpoint but no intermediate stations.
The GPS sensivity is ok but not as good as with current SIRF III chips. Sometimes it takes quite long (1-2 minutes) until a good signal is determined.
After some days something was strange with the list of last used destinations. Every time when I wanted to select a location from that list, the phone rebooted. This problem could only be solved by hard resetting the phone (which requires to set up all settings again manually...).
Camera
Image quality (5 MPixel) is very good for a mobile phone. It makes a separate digital camera redundant in many situations. The LED flash is quite strong but not really comparable with a real flashlight.
The autofokus is doing well and guarantees sharp photos in nearly all situations. If the camera would have an optical zoom, it would make a digicam even more redundant. But with 5 MP you have enough reserves to clip out the area you want to see.
Below in the posts you find some example pictures taken with that camera.
Video quality (640x480) is very good as well but also here you will miss an optical zoom a little bit.
PIM
Calender, contacts etc. works as expected. Outlook integration is not as seamless as with Pocket Outlook on Windows Mobile phones but at the moment I do not see a lack of functionality. In the beginning there was a problem that after one successful synchronisation every further synchs terminated with a message on the PC saying that the offline folder could not be configured (or so). Only after rebooting the PC another synch was possible but again only one. I reported that problem to Nokia and a solution came quite quickly (a synch file created by PC Suite had to be deleted manually). But in some situations the problem still persists (I am analyzing details at the moment).
SIP Phone (VoIP)
The N95 is not only a mobile phone.but also a SIP phone. In a download folder you find a "Gizmo VoIP". This will not download a VoIP software but settings to configure the phone to use Gizmo VoIP. This worked very well with an UMTS connection and after purchasing a call out credit at Gizmo I could make calls to landline phones without problems (for 2 US cents per minute). If you have an UMTS flatrate, this is an interesting option. Now I understand why some providers deliver that phone crippled without the SIP functionality...
Battery life
Many posts report the short battery life of the 950mAh battery. This is true in the beginning when you play around with that phone all the time...
If you use it mainly as a mobile phone and set it to GSM only (deactivating the dual mode for UMTS and HSDPA), disable the bluetooth and WLan search mode, you should reach a standby time of perhaps 6 days or so. Battery "eaters" are UMTS, WLan, Bluetooth and GPS. In my case I put the Bluetooth as option on one of the keys of the standby screen to be selected directly and enable/disable it quickly with only 2 key presses.
Display
The display is excellent (240x320 pixel, true color).
Manufacture Quality
The manufacture quality is fairly good but the first production run seems to have a slider that is a bit unsteady. Later production runs have a more stable attached slider. Nokia service centers meanwhile get repair sets that allow to fix wiggly sliders.
The keypad lock should not unlock already when the sliders is moved only a little bit because that might happen already in the pocket.
Software
My phone was deliverd with software V 11.0.026. It was quite stable already but sometimes the phone rebooted amidst usage
The functionality is very rich, beside PIM, camera / video and messaging software, the phone has predefined accounts for Flickr and VOX e.g. to post to a blog directly. The web browser is doing a good job as well.
Currently the only addons I loaded is Nokia's Sports Tracker and Google Maps.
Conclusion
For a device of that size and weight it is amazing how much functionality Nokia put inside. Connectivity and camera is very good, GPS is fairly well. PIM / Windows / Outlook integration is good. For people that love multimedia computers that still can be used as a mobile phone, it is the perfect toy. I recommend to purchase the battery charger leads for cars (DC-4) and USB (CA-100). It is annoying that the USB data cable provided with that phone does not already charge the battery like with some other phones. As I was used to Windows mobile phones before I was a bit doubtful switching to a phone with Symbian OS and without a touch screen. But now after one week I am used to it as well and it's ok.
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