With the Nokia N95 now breaking out in record numbers in High Street shops (see news below), I can hold off no longer on giving a verdict. Is it the perfect ultra-converged device or is it a jack of all trades and master of none? As you'd expect the answer's somewhere in between. Read the concluding part of our review of the Nokia N95, a true 'breakthrough device'.
Read on in the full article.
Hi Steve,
Certainly a well written and detailed review. I infact agree with you on most points but I am probably one of the very few in this world who has owned and parted company with an N95 - why? Well because it is unable to give me push mail via either Blackberry or Mail for Exchange which I simply cannot live without. Sure, there is webmail but it is not the same.
Despite all the many advantages of the N95, I have reluctantly parted with it and gone back to the N93 and a bluetooth GPS etc.... 😞
I hope that Nokia will re think their strategy here or maybe I just wait for the E90 😊
/Dominic.
"Well because it is unable to give me push mail via either Blackberry or Mail for Exchange which I simply cannot live without. Sure, there is webmail but it is not the same."
What about POP3 mail? You can set the app to autocheck your mailbox frequently, which gives you something pretty close to push mail.
Obviously data costs might get in the way if you have a particularly expensive network, but on flat rate it's very convenient.
I doubt cost is the issue here. The auto-retrieval's most frequent interval is "30 mins", which may not be often enough for an email addict 8-)
So these push systems don't work for the N95 then? I wonder why not? Just a case of someone needing to build in support for FP1?
Steve
the one and only advantage of the symbian platform is the opportunity to install 3rd party applications. there are far better email clients out there then the built in one, for example in Profimail you can set the auto update's frequency in minutes...
"I doubt cost is the issue here. The auto-retrieval's most frequent interval is "30 mins", which may not be often enough for an email addict 8-)"
As SHX says, Profimail lets you set the autocheck to just a few minutes, which is easily often enough for most people.
I can't believe Nokia haven't caught up with them... (unless of course they're deliberately trying to make the push email in their expensive models seem more useful than it really is).
I think my N95 is a great phone
On the email front though, why can't we have the plugin for the active display that shows emails etc, like on the E series phones. People with Multimedia devices get messages too...
Two things I wanted to share with you.
First of all, the N95 is not spring loaded in any way. I've talked to a user who was brave enough to take his apart and he didn't find a spring anywhere. There are some strict knocking mechanisms that cause the slide to snap open or closed in what may feel like a spring assisted assembly, but it isn't.
Second is I wanted to talk about album art and why you're having trouble. Using the unformatted microSD I was using in my N73 (with a MiniSD adapter),which contained all of my digital music, album art displayed perfectly fine on my N95. I use a program called MediaMonkey that embeds the album art into the ID3 tag of the MP3 file itself, rather than store an extension path to the folder containing the art like most desktop media players do. When music with album art in this format is transferred to a separate device, the path to the image comes with it in the ID3 tag, but since the folder containing the album art is most likely also not on the phone (much less the exact same path), it does not display. I suspect that's the reason you were unable to get album art to display correctly, as that is also the most recurring reason why album art doesn't display properly on standalone MP3 players.
Songs I downloaded from Symella did not have album art at first, but using the Search application that came on the N95, I was able to download the appropriate covers and apply them to their respectable songs right inside the music player. No PC needed.
Hope that helps a bit and makes the initial production firmware on the N95 a bit more enjoyable for you and your readers. 😊
Interesting, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with my album art files, which are all on my microSD in the usual Media Player 'triplicate' format, all JPG files and all viewable standalone from Y-Browser, for example.
Steve
Actually, if I remember correctly the original Exchange SIS worked on all of the 3rd edition phones but Nokia put a product code checker in the latest version. (I remember some N80 owners bleating about it on eseries.org) Probably some sort of segmentation exercise...
Lark
If you want Push via Exchange mobile Activesync, why not use the program "Roadsync" from www.Dataviz.com? Works on my N80 and E61. There is a free trial
http://www.dataviz.com/downloads/demo/index.html?product=RDS
... and the original Mail for Exchange 1.3.1 worked on N-Series devices as well
... and third possibilty: Use provider which offers IMAP-mailboxes with "imap idle" function. Then new emails show up automatically - but only if the connection stays open. Sadly many providers do not know if they have "IMAP idle", but e.g. cortado (http://www.cortado.com/) offers imap idle mailboxes for free. And most IMAP mailboxes are IMAP idle
thanks for your suggestions regarding mail. Unfortunately, my company does not allow for retrieval of email using POP3 and so a secure certificate based solution is the only way and that is why I have been successfully using Mail for Exchange on a number of Nokia device including: N91; N80; E70; 5500 Sport; N93 and E61. Although the 1.3.1 program installs on the N95 and although you can infact sync your mails, calendar and contacts into the device - you cannot infact open or reply to any of the mails you receive. You can't even write a new message - you just get an error saying not supported. I have seen others mention similar problems on various sites - I was really reluctant to part with it - but eventually saw no alternative.
Otherwise, it is a great phone with huge potential!
justwords is right, any IMAP server with IDLE function can be used for push mail. Simply just don't disconnect from the server. Automatic retrieval is off. Mails pop up immediately.
I am very impressed by the usability of the N95 and all the s/w that is included. It really a small device that packs a punch. The apps are very quick, makes you wonder why the SE P990 is so slow by comparison (okay the battery life of the P990 is probably better). I think we should congratulate Nokia for creating such an innovative device. Really want the E90 now 😊
I am dying to see how AAS is going to cover the upcoming P700 from SE, the although lacking an internal gps, brings 2 times the RAM of the so powerfull n95
@ares
I suggest the N95 and P700 are for different segments - the QuickOffice on the N95 is for read only!. The E90 and P700 are mainly for business people and these 2 devices have similar amounts of RAM. The N95 is quick, very quick - I have all the old UIQ3 devices for comparison 😊 The video recording quality of the N95 is superb but playback (e.g. news video from bbc.co.uk) is probably not as good as the P990/M600. The N95 not only has GPS but a very sensitive GPS and in-built maps.
Jah, sorry, but the p700 will not appeal only to business people, far from that...its not a brick like the e90...it will sell alot has sure multimedia smartphone
@ares
perhaps yuo're right - I thought the Walkman brand was for SE's multimedia devices. But I still do not think the N95 and P700 are aimed at the same people.
To my frustration, it seems that no mobile mediaplayers seem to care about respecting the order of songs you add to playlists.
I had a PDA with Windows Mobile 5.0 that comes with Windows Mobile mediaplayer (or something like that..). Adding songs from my pc (just copy to the desired folder on the PDA and then adding them from within the player-application) resultet in the player sorting the songs - by track title, completely ignoring album and trackorder. And the downside with mobile mediaplayer was, that playlists could only be created/edited on the pc and then sync'ed to the PDA with Windows Mediaplayer from the pc.
The upside in Symbian is, that you can create playlists on the phone itself - hooray, but..
I add again 2 albums with complede id3-information that the phone recognizes. I can see the albums under 'Albums' with the songs listed in correct order there - but from here I can only select to play the songs from one album at a time - I would like to listen to both albums in a row, but still with the songs listed correctly.
So I add each album to a playlist .. but then there's a twitch. Now the songs are sorted by trackname across both albums, completely ignoring album-title and individual tracknumbers. Sigh.
I can edit the playlist to make the tunes appear in correct order, but it's a pain in the a.. (pardon my french) and should be done automatically by the application, or at least by the order the tracks are added to the list (preserving the order from the individual albums).
On my PDA I changed to use TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player) because it allowed me full control of the order of the tunes on the playlist.
I have search high and low for a solution to this, and to my amazement, so far I seem like the only one who sees this as a problem..
Any thoughts?
/ren�