The N95

Nokia is selling annually more than 400 million cellphones. This is 40+ percent of a worldwide annual 'consumption' of almost a billion units. That's the magic number of which His Jobness wants 1 percent market share, translating into his much wanted target of 10 million units in 18 months. I am mentioning all these stats to put a few things in perspective.

It's been a long time I bought me a descent phone... I used to buy those intelligent PDAs running on Mobile Windows from Compaq and HP, then smart phones from Qtek and Motorola and various other models. Each and every time I was pis*d by the lack of proper UI (too much bad influence from MSFT) and the fact that when you wanted to test their real tough goodies like wifi, email and web and especially the cellphone operator datacomms standards (you name them), you found you needed a PhD in Astrophysics to be able to do the job.

This is the stuff that the iPhone gets fixed with a user friendly "fasten your seatbelts, lay back and relax, and enjoy your flight' Apple style sort of thing.

That's all fine but the iPhone is far and away from us Europeans, certainly more even so if you are talking about its first major revision and enhancement (remember, never buy version 1.0 of anything, as we learned from Microsoft).

So, I took the courageous step and went to buy me the N95, which is actually more expensive than the iPhone as it stands today. This is not my first Nokia ever... actually I own a 6230i for day to day usage as we speak. I have to tell you, when I started using the 6230i I was impressed by the fact that I was able to get it connected to a PC relatively easy... I was thinking, for the first time it seems to work according to specs... Wunderbar! Also sending MMSs and doing some elementary web searches it worked just fine.

How about the N95 then? Well, it's not an iPhone for sure... but it's a great phone! I am not even sure I need to call this a phone... it's a Swiss knife of modern comms. I now realize why Nokia wanted to call it a computer in its ads. Although the interface is not as smooth as an iPhone's (the latter having all these fancy 'surface'-like touch screen functions) nevertheless what seems amazing is that everything seems to work relatively easy. I didn't read one single line from the manual other than to find the 'on' switch and I believe I have used almost all its functions.

Battery charging was the quickest I ever experienced and the GPS, following their latest firmware revision 12.0.013 added Assisted GPS that makes it work indoors too. How they do that is a 'mystery', but it works.

You can download news clips from various on line services like Reuters and YouTube either thru Wifi or via Operators' Internet connections. BTW, here's a good one. From my past experience I was always confused how to configure the cellphone for data connectivity, like Mail, Wap, MMS and Internet. Eventually I was always able to find my way thru Internet posts of others like me but with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. My first experience with the N95 though was fantastic regarding data connectivity, regardles whether that was simply Bluetooth, Wifi on my local WLANs or Operator based standards (3G, UMTS, etc). IT WAS DONE BEFORE I KNEW IT. Amazing!

In other words, the phone is kinda made for our grandmothers and aunts. It offers downloaded TV pleasure, live video 3G comms, VoiP comms in the vicinity of a WLAN, it captures acceptable quality video clips and just right 4x6-print-made-for shots, it talks to PCs, Macs, etc, it's even a FM Radio but above all it is a wonderful GPS, ideal if you are doing city tourism and you are about to get lost.

If you ask me we'll see the following in the future. Apple is the UI leader but it's got to add lots more functions to get close to the N95; on the other hand, Nokia being great in the Comms stuff, we'll see them copying some of the goodies that make the iPhone so great.

One thing I don't get though. Selling 400M phones annually is a wonderful platform to create something for your users like Apple's iTunes. I believe the iTunes is the main differentiator in all these. Nokia did something they call the "Nokia PC Suite" that does a few things but, compared to iTunes, Nokia's PC Suite is just pathetic. With their market dominance, how come they don't go find some more creative developers, beats me...

Conclusion: I guess I'm going to find some good use in this phone, even as a replacement to a laptop during trips, especially with current security checks that make you miss a flight if you carry too many electronics with you, and in a couple of years, God willing, I am probably going to enjoy an improved version 2 of the iPhone. I actually applied same strategy with the Apple TV, which was the first Apple product ever that I didn't go out to buy immediately (I actually preordered it and then, when I found out about its real specs I cancelled the order).

I hope I am right....