[mercury_element]

ok, I know its not the newest phones of all, but I want to buy it. Any reviews to share? Pros and cons of this phone. Shall I go for it or shall I wait for the next model.
Did a lot of research (especially about reviews), and found two things that are bothering me:
1) Battery runs away quickly.
2) slides are loose.

Am I missing something that I should have noticed?

Any comments are welcome. Thanks

[jaykay]

My additions to above:

3) Turns itself off for no good reason
4) Locks every other day, sometimes not allowing you to turn off and having to remove battery
5) Symbian is dog slow on this phone
6) Why put on a 5mp camera and no decent flash?
7) Bit of a bulky beast, quite heavy
8) Way overpriced for functionality

I'm sure I'll remember a few others when I'm more awake!

[mercury_element]

Originally Posted by jaykay

My additions to above:

3) Turns itself off for no good reason
4) Locks every other day, sometimes not allowing you to turn off and having to remove battery
5) Symbian is dog slow on this phone
6) Why put on a 5mp camera and no decent flash?
7) Bit of a bulky beast, quite heavy
8) Way overpriced for functionality

I'm sure I'll remember a few others when I'm more awake!

oops!! looks like i will have to think again.

A question......sorry for being ignorant...but is LED flash not good?

For price and bulky , i also noticed it, but then I am ready to compromise on that points.

More comments plz...

[ICEBreaker]

Xenon Flash is a must for night time photography. However, I personally do not like the use of flash so it does not bother me.

My experience is more positive. I have not had issues relating to the phone turning itself off. It does hang every now and then , but on a weekly basis only. I agree however that the S60 is too slow (more on that later).

[5MP Camera]
The quality of camera-phones has yet to reach camera quality. Even 3MP cameras will perform better, since the aperture and focal length is much larger. Having said that, the N95 is the best mass market camera phone and vastly outperforms the likes of Sony 3MP phones. It does, however, lack xenon flash, which is a problem for those who take lots of photos in dark environment. As for the "DVD quality video", again the quality is much better than other camera-phones but is not DVD quality.

[HSDPA]
There are not many phones on the market with HSDPA. The 3.5G technology promises fast data transfer making web browsing a breeze. However, the N95 only has 64MB of internal RAM, as well as a slow processor. This makes it load pages slowly. This is not to say that it is slower than other phones, but the promises of HSDPA speeds was a major disappointment.

[GPS]
When getting the N95, check that its firmware is the latest. You need to consult the Nokia website to find out which is the latest firmware and how to check the firmware version on the phone itself. The reason is because the first models had a problem with the GPS, which took an inordinately long time for location acquisition despite full satellite signal reception. This has been fixed. Once the location has been acquired, however, the satellite tracking is good.

[Gallery and Music]
For those used to Sony's way of viewing photos and music under a file directory structure, the N95 (and other Nokia's?) can be frustrating. N95 treats all files, even those in a directory structure, as a flat file; it does not respect file hierarchy. This means that the N95 cannot simply "play all files inside this directory". One has to create an album and then associate the photos / songs to the album. Perhaps this is a common issue with other Nokia phones.

[Screen]
Although the screen is larger than other mobile phones at 2.4", it is still smaller than PDA sizes. This makes it difficult to read web pages. Furthermore, the lack of a touch screen is perplexing, and ruins the interface experience.

[Battery]
Be prepared to have an extra charger at the office or have an extra battery. The battery life is short, however, it does improve after one month. This is not just due to lower usage after the initial honey-moon period, but the battery does seem to hold a greater capacity after a series of charge. However, I have no evidence to back up this claim. It is merely my own personal experience.

[RAM]
With only 64MB onboard internal RAM, the N95 is not capable of multi-tasking. Opening more than two application will usually force one of them to exit suddenly without warning.

[Quality Issues]
* One of the buttons on my N95 didn't work.
* One of the camera buttons doesn't light up.
* For music playback on my bluetooth headset, I get stuttering.

[Conclusion]
I would recommend the N95 if photo quality is the biggest issue. Otherwise, consider the Sony P1, the latest O2, or wait for the coming Samsung F700. I bought the N95 on the first day for $7,000. While it may not be worth that much, at the current price of $5,500, I think the new N95s are definitely something to consider. Despite all the above problems, it is still the best phone on the market.

[mercury_element]

OK, now I am confused of whether I should go for it or not. Any other good suggestions regarding which phone to buy. I would prefer something in Nokia.

[ICEBreaker]

If you prefer Nokia, there's no other challenger to the N95. What do you use the phone for? What is your main concern? If you use it as a PDA, consider the E series instead. If you just want something that looks good, the N76 is a good bet. For camera phones, nothing beats the N95. I think the same goes for music playback.

[ICEBreaker]

By the way, one of the reasons why the price of the N95 is dropping so much is because a better version called the N95 8GB edition will be out in a few months.

It is black, has 8GB internal memory as opposed to 160MB, and perhaps most importantly, it has a 2.8 inch screen rather than 2.6 inch screen. The battery will also have about 30% more capacity.

It would presumably have fixed the majority of problems faced by current consumers of the N95. No doubt it will cost $7,000 upon launch.

[mercury_element]

Originally Posted by ICEBreaker

By the way, one of the reasons why the price of the N95 is dropping so much is because a better version called the N95 8GB edition will be out in a few months.

It is black, has 8GB internal memory as opposed to 160MB, and perhaps most importantly, it has a 2.8 inch screen rather than 2.6 inch screen. The battery will also have about 30% more capacity.

It would presumably have fixed the majority of problems faced by current consumers of the N95. No doubt it will cost $7,000 upon launch.

oh cool!! then, i think waiting for few months wont do any harm.

[kkchoi28]

Agree, I think waiting a few month is a good choice

[hk.com]

*#0000# will display the firmware version your phone has. Search on the Net for what the latest version is and find out if you can get an upgrade. Whilst the phone is under warranty you can go to the service center and get free upgrades.

It is not S60 that is slow, it is all the extra animition and crap that bloats the phone. I am still on and a 6600 and I still dont see a rock solid 3rd generation S60 Nokia to upgrade to. I normally have about 6 applications running. The only time I have issues with RAM is when I've been runniing Opera for a few a day or so it may shut down (opera only) because it caches everything in ram, I wish it cached to the flash card.

As the gui is minimal the amount of ram used is low, so I find that I can run more apps than phones with a lot more ram. Another thing is that I can run just about every other application out there, whilst many of the new phones can't. I have a new task manager that compresses ram, a 360 degree panoramic photo taking program, a dictaphone so you can record memos or use in meetings. For me the only one that looks better is the 6630 which has double the amount of cpu and Edge.

I've still not seen any Nokia that does PPP compression using the GPRS or Edge and give you x 4 speed like a Treo can. Nokia's can do compression when using a 9.6K dial up GSM/CSD.

At least with this model I find that if you change from the default theme it slows down the phone a lot, so keep the default and maybe change the desktop picture. Some themes you download are very badly optimized as the graphics are very big or the colour depth is far higher than what the phone display can handle.

Another thing to watch out for is for the message indexes for SMS/email getting corrupted. It can kill the phone performance.

N95 sounds like a dog. Thanks for the review.

You can find all the Nokia phone specs at this URL: http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/matrix_all_1.html