Nokia N95 8GB - reviews

Nokia N95 8GB (review by alkemist on 28/04/2008)

Ease of Use

Style and Design

Battery Life

Camera

Music Player

Mobile Internet

Reliability and Quality

Overall

I hate this phone, I hate it cos it is so close to being brilliant and Nokia just screwed it up in the detail.
Firstly, I am a industrial user, I use my phone all over the world continuously for calls, photographs, notes, email, gps, music, reading pdf's and word docs, blogging, etc etc. My normal phone is a Palm treo 650, old but great. The Nokia was bought as a clever smartphone replacement. Doh Huge mistake.
It's a bit thick, bit of a brick really but who cares if it's great.
It does not have an external memory card slot. What a pain, I have collections of books and music which I keep on memory cards to give me something to do waiting in the airport. The only way to do this on the Nokia is to download them before each trip, a slow and tedious solution. The 8 Gig internal memory is nothing, you can barely put a film on 8 gig let alone all the music I like to carry around.
The battery, oh god the battery, this is the biggest single fault with this phone and makes it unusable for all business applications. After 3 months, the battery lasts for 36 hours before being completely flat. Thats just for calls alone. The moment you try and use it for accessing the internet or bluetooth or playing music then you are lucky to get 5 or 6 hours out of it. Utterly useless.
The keys and menus are a pain, everything is in the wrong place and takes time to find. I might be able to move stuff around and improve things if I played with it for a while but I cant be bothered. It's just not worth the hassle.
I gave up with the gps maps thing, way too fiddly and slow.
It now moulders in the scrap phone drawer along with all the broken nokias and sonyericssons and discarded gadgets.


Sad, they could have really done something special.

If you are looking for a smart phone then stick with the treo range or blackberry's cos they really are good. I have tom tom installed on the palm, brilliant. a professional gps system from people who are experts in the technology. Ok it needs a tiny bluetooth gps gadget but I can use it for hours and still have plenty of charge left.
I can swap 8gig cards in and out without dismantling the phone, hundreds of great applications, and a superb phone. I just went out and bought one from EBAY for 50 quid, I am now back in the land of power users after my sojourn with the N95 8G. so come on nokia, have another go and this time, get it right.