I’ve had the Nokia N95 8Gb for a few weeks now, so can properly assess how well it works, and the answer is very well indeed. Of course it still has the over-hierarchical menu system, but it really works tremendously well.

However it’s worth noting that as it arrived from Vodafone it had their “theme” installed which looked like it had been designed by a bunch of untalented three years olds with blunt crayons. The icons were just awful - bad enough for me to consider returning the phone until I found that the Nokia themes were still there.

So what have I noticed in real use?

- The battery lasts several days, even with quite intense use.

- The new, larger screen is great.

- The build quality seems better - it feels more solid, and I think putting the slider flush with the side contributes a lot to that feeling.

- The new camera software is better, but that’s on the version 20 firmware for the N95 V1.

- It’s slightly faster.

- The Wifi works very reliably.

- Integration with Flickr is much smoother - no secret handshakes, just plain log in and snap, it’s setup via some downloaded configuration file. Very slick. Coupled with Vodafone’s new “unlimited” use package this is a great recipe for uploading pics as you go.

- It comes with the complete Spiderman 3 movie on the device. Yup. On board. And it plays very well, although I must admit to having lost interest before the end of the titles. I’d put that down to boring titles, not the package. I’ve not found out how big the file is or how to remove it yet.

- The GPS still takes forever to get a fix, but the maps application comes with all the bells and whistles for free.

So well done guys, more like this please.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 5:47 pm and is filed under n95, nokia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.