60 things

[Blue Champion is a well-known sports blogger who blogs about his favourite football club, Chelsea, at bluechampions. He recently switched from a *cough* Razr *cough* to Nokia N95 8GB. This is his first S60 v3 phone. Here’s his take on the phone. - Kay]

Okay, here is another thumbs up review for Nokia N95 8GB, but I don’t normally do mobile phone reviews. It neither pays me nor is my passion. I’ve spent my hard earned 28k on this. So, I’m just another customer of Nokia N95 8GB.

I bought this phone a couple of weeks back which is enough time to review if you know the kind of stress we put on gadgets in the first few days.

When I was looking for a new phone I had to conclude on what I wanted. Was it style or power or music or internet or camera, etc. Then I realised that even if I were particular about all these, I could get all this into one phone.

When I was doing my research and analysis, it didn’t take too much time to realise that I had Nokia N95 8GB on one side and the ‘other phones’ on the other side. Then I was asking myself what stops me from buying N95 8GB. Firstly, I did not want a bulky looking heavy phone. Secondly, how good looking would be a black phone which has a width of three-fourth an inch? Thirdly, it has a million features but do I need them at all?

I went to a mobile store with few other phones in mind but I wanted to check N95 8GB before I saw anything else. The phone looked so heavy until the store guy placed it on my palm. Believe me, it is not at all heavy for a mobile. And if you really need those features packed into that phone, it in fact can feel a lot lighter. And you know what, it was stylish, it looked real good. It felt like a brand new gun with it’s color, finish and the mass.

Whatever inhibitions I still had about the phone were blown over by the size of the screen. Then the money and the mobile exchanged hands. I was just hoping that I made the right choice. That was not the most expensive tech stuff I’ve ever bought, but in terms of cost per cubic centimetre, it is right on top.

Let me do it like a pro now. I’ll try to catch up on the major features that I understand and use. I’ll split the rest of the review into (i) phone calls (ii) music (iv) videos (iv) camera (v) internet (vi) gps (vii) battery (viii) etc.

Structure:

Slide phones are fun, but the slid up screen being so thin when compared to the rest of the body is a bit worrying. You gotta handle it with care. Not the kind of phone you can spare with your little folks.

The screen size is the USP of the phone. It is bigger than the biggest, at least until iPhone hits India. The display is such a delight that you’d even keep your boss’ photo for wallpaper.

The keypad looks so small but smartly they have concaved the keys so that it is easy to punch them. In fact, my messaging speed has increased with this phone. The short cut keys under the screen are also quite convenient. You’ll be reminded of the phone’s size when thumb has to travel all of two inches to unlock the phone.

It has a two way slider - the upper slide for opening the keypad and working in portrait mode and the lower slide for landscape viewing and media keys. It does not auto-rotate like iPhone. I don’t mind sliding the phone to rotate it. The best features of the phone are best experienced in the landscape view of the phone.

Phone Calls:

The very cliched ‘that’s why they made this instrument’. It’s important to state this because there are phones with fantastic ancillary features that fail in simple but core things. Voice quality and signal strength are no different from another Nokia phone. Also, it is not as inconvenient as I originally thought to hold phone for making calls.

There is this smart little feature which quickly prepares a ’sorry, i’ll call you
later’ message to the caller, whenever you silence the incoming call. You can also modify the default text to ’stop bugging me, you bastards’. The phonebook is a very exhaustive one. But no new features here, but just vastly enhanced in space.

Music:

I don’t play music on my phone that often. I don’t have to. The music output quality is top class; I don’t know whether the walkman phones will produce better sound quality. The music player is pretty quick and sleek. I would have liked custom subfolders in there apart from the regular music file classifications.

It comes with Visual Radio. I hate it when phones don’t play FM on speakers and instead expect us plug in the wire. Anyway, as I said it’s not that often I have play music on phone.

Video:

N95 8GB beats other phones hands down when it comes to videos. The video quality is awesome. The videos play seamlessly, especially if you’ve taken care of the resolution size.

I had trouble finding out the exact file format that Real Player would play. After some useless half a GB transfers, I realised that I need to have Core Player and Divx Player to avoid disappointments. Basically, the default Real Player sucks. Watching movies in this phone, with a headphone connected, is great pleasure.

Camera:

What do I do with my Nikon digicam? A 5.1 megapixel camera in a mobile phone is outright exploitation of technology. This 5.1 megapixel camera complements nicely with the big sized screen and top quality display. The camera has almost all features that you’d have in a normal camera, the one with which you cannot make calls.

The downer here has to be the gallery and its arrangement. This is where it gets a little slow. There is a clear 3 second gap from the click until the gallery opens up. By default, all clicked images sit in the gallery which is a big basket of all media files in no order or chronological based on created date which is seldom helpful. I know I can create albums and view them separately. It would be great if I’m able to put it in one of the albums as soon as I finish clicking the picture, instead of spending few more clicks to put them into the right album.

The gallery has nice casual scrolling but it is not as smooth as it should be. And yes, the camera has no protective lid or something. For all of its 5.1 miegapixels, it’s all left open.

Internet:

This is what I mostly use my phone for. The size of the screen and also the landscape view make internet browsing on this mobile incredible fun. You need to see it to believe it. The screen can hold quite a lot text and images that the BBC website can be seen in three scrolls. Also, even the most heavy and demanding websites are opened in quick time.

WiFi in the phone means that I can connect to the Internet in my mobile using my wireless modem too. I had some difficulties in certain sites but on the whole, it opens any website with ease and shows them as you’d see on a desktop or laptop. If you’re a heavy Internet user on a mobile, you should look no further than Nokia N95 8GB.

GPS:

This is the first time I use GPS on a mobile. GPS connections are expensive, but the phone comes with a 3-month pre-paid connection. I think I would never have to use the GPS seriously or I should say I won’t unless I’m stranded in a completely unknown place from where I cannot call anyone but can use GPS, which is never. But you can’t deny the fact that it’s so fashionable and fun.

I spent some time on locating my home and office (of course I knew where they were) and finding out the nearest cinemas, petrol stations etc., just for fun. All said, I should learn to use it because, heck I have it!

Battery:

For someone who always has Opera Mini open on the mobile and even use it for blogging, I needed a good battery life. This phone can work fine for two days after a full charge. That’s a big relief for me as I had a Motorola Razr that needed too much oxygen than is available in the atmosphere.

What eats up your battery charge is some serious usage like watching a full length 2 hour movie or something. Of course you shouldn’t be surprised that it brings down a considerbale amount of your charge after these things. If you use the phone really gently, that is, for making calls etc., I think a full charge should go on for many days.

Etc.: The phone comes with a TV outlet which lets you see your photos and videos on the TV. You also get a couple of DVDs - one for the Nokia softwares and other for the freebie media files.

Nokia has released firmware for this phone which makes it meaner if not leaner. With the firmware update, you can even play YouTube videos, I heard. But I had problems with running the Nokia software updater to update the firmware. I thought I screwed it up in installation and re-installed it but it never worked for me.

I learnt on the Internet that there were many people with similar problems (may be my Vista Business!) and Nokia doesn’t care a rat’s ass to help you out.

Anyway, even without the firmware, the phone is just great. I’ll enjoy using this phone for few more weeks before I embark on another journey to update the firmware.

Pros:

• Big plasma screen display
• Almost omnipotent
• Great for Internet browsing
• 5.1 megapixel camera that simply rocks.

Cons:

• Could have been thinner
• Occasionally slow
• Shaky ‘c’mon-i-got-you hold-my-hands’ slider.

Forget all these pros and cons. If you’re ready to spend the bucks, do it on this phone. As you see the pros are really macro things while the cons are micro to trivial. Nokia N95 8GB does more than what you expect of it. There is virtually no decent competition for this phone that can match in every feature. The competition can only come from Nokia, I guess. On a scale of 10, I’d give it a very deserving 9/10.