N95 - could be better.

L

Lynley

New member
Like for instance, the positively sensual 6680 ?

I must admit, now I've got the 95, I'm a tad disappointed with the feel of it.

A phone should please the hand - but the design is only adequate at best and it feels a bit plasticky TBPH.

I had high hopes for what appeared to be a good sized D-pad, but it's actually too small - but why ?
There's room to make the entire button assembly 50% bigger - which would make the D-pad more usable.

The keypad also feels a bit on the cheap side.

A $900 phone and still Nokia can't get the handling up to snuff.

As to the rest of it, here's my very preliminary impressions : -

- Overall sound - 9/10, very impressive.

- Screen - 8/10, from initial impressions (haven't played any movie files yet), it's very pleasing to the eye.

- WiFi - 9/10, does exactly what it says on the label - fast and solid, a vast improvement on the N80.

- GPS - ?/10, untested as yet - couldn't get a signal (so 4/10 for the receiver)

- Overall speed - 9/10, very satisfactory.

- Camera - 8/10, very good results from a phone.

- Video - 8/10, better than I expected, quite acceptable (though it does stall a bit - which hopefully, a FW update will address).

- Handling - 6/10, I'm not enamoured of the D-pad, the keypad, the lack of a Samsung-like thumb-bar for the slide, the slide closure (easy to slide into media-play position), the unrounded sides or the choice of materials.

Conclusion :

A good phone that I'll never quite be able to love the way I have more tactile offerings from the past (think 6680).
 
A few more days in and ....

I LOVE the functionality as much as I HATE the crappy little D-pad and creaky plastickiness of the whole thing.

I mean, it does exactly what it's supposed to right out of the box.

And the screen with the Nokia Series-2 theme is quite astounding !

My only other gripe is the tapering of the housing ... away from you.
I don't know if they did it to reduce volume (as the screen's so big) or to improve grip comfort (which I don't think it does).
What it means is that you can't see where the buttons are unless you tilt the phone ... a major pain if you want to up the volume in Music Player which (unlike older Nokias) can't be adjusted from the D-pad (some hotkeys would have been good, a la N80).

As many have commented, the build feels and is cheap - but I guess it's just the Nokia way of keeping everybody looking towards the successor.
After all, if they'd built the N95 to N80 quality (slider notwithstanding), I doubt they'd sell more than a handful of phones over the coming few years.

Opening here for a customising company to (re-)build Nokias with quality bodies/externals - a company that would be to Nokia what AMG is to Mercedes-Benz ?

Hate the outside though my fingers do, I am in deep admiration (I'd draw the line short of 'lust') with the N95.

PS : - Out of curiosity, I took out a UKP 5.44 30-day sub to Navigation and it's pretty funky, if a little less user-friendly than Tomtom - which I think I'll be sticking with.
 
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