Steve Litchfield explores the Nokia N95's continuing legacy in something of a tribute to the original dual-sliding smartphone... In terms of features, build quality and longevity, how do its successors stand up? And is there an 'ultimate' N95? Find out here.
Read on in the full article.
oh my god this feticist articles from Steve are soo boring..
who cares about the N95?
i know u need some more hits for your advertisement but come one!!
hello nokia.... wake up because u cant keep selling us the old soup again and again...!!
thanks god we got a new player like apple who woke up a bit everything...
Just down to marketing people dictating launch times rather than engineers
And the current N97 issues follow the pattern exactly, somewhat depressingly
If it had launched on a date that the engineers wanted, people would not even want to look at this device. Nokia is slowing moving towards making the same kinds of innovation that Motorola did - atleast as far as some category of phones are concerned.
Unregistered wrote:oh my god this feticist articles from Steve are soo boring..
who cares about the N95?
Speak for yourself. I don't believe that AAS is here just to please you alone. Such a selfish comment
Unregistered wrote:
i know u need some more hits for your advertisement but come one!!
hello nokia.... wake up because u cant keep selling us the old soup again and again...!!
thanks god we got a new player like apple who woke up a bit everything...
When Apple make a decent phone of a reasonable size and without control-freak restrictions and offer a choice of networks with reasonably priced tariffs then I might agree. Until they do I am not interested, let the suckers and the mugs be ripped off by apple.
Like Nokia is ripping suckers (big way) with the n97?
It depends how you define "ripped off". If you choose to buy an N97 or an iPhone, it's up to you to a. read reviews on the internet, b. work out what the cost of ownership is and/or c. decide if you are happy with the particular phone operator supplying the phone. If you don't do this, then yes, you are a sucker, but you have only been suckered by yourself. The last time I looked, people were free to NOT buy a particular phone if they didn't want to...
[Steve gets tired, oh so tired, of 'unregistered' commenters]
I like the idea of anonymity when online but you have to expect your opinions to be not well regarded if you do not wish to register.
There is certainly a difference between a pseudonym and being an anonymous coward spouting bile.
Unregistered wrote:hello nokia.... wake up because u cant keep selling us the old soup again and again...!!
thanks god we got a new player like apple who woke up a bit everything...
Now while I agree on the great interface and everything, let me bring a few things to your notice:
The 1st apply phone didnt even have 3G while a lot of the other manufacturers had added this much earlier
The 2nd had a tinny 2MP camera, but no video recording. All of the other high end phone had moved to 3.2 and 5 MP cameras with VGA video (atleast at 15fps)
The 3rd one... Well, this is to also those ppl complaining abt xenon, the phone does not even have a single LED, let apart the current phones with Dual LED (some claiming nextGen LEDs)
In answer to the troll's jibe about 'fetishist' (note that I've bothered to spell the word right), the whole POINT of this article is to focus on classic smartphones/designs from a year or two that STILL do the business today. And, by demonstrating that you don't have to have the very latest devices in order to be productive and stay entertained, hopefully save people a load of money as well.
For example, the N96, highlighted above, can be won, as-new, on eBay in the UK for around �150, SIM-free. That's just staggering, compared to the SIM-free cost of the N97, for example.
OK, here i am, the guy who launch the provocation
Sorry for putting a bit too much salt in the soup but it was for the everybody's taste and not to loose respect.
I am an old time Nokia buyer and nobody can deny that Nokia marketing has been to follow the same path for years and years and give always a little bit but not too much so that they could keep their sells high.
Now Apple came in to the picture and made their high-end line of phones OBSOLETE in 1 day. They tried pathetically with the N97, but it will end up soon like N96 at 199 euro. Try to surf the web in the Nokias and try in the Apple. Finally Apple moved houman kind from using gadget-phones to mini-computer...
Nokia (and WM) is finally loosing day by day its share market of smartphones and believe me I am not a big fan of the Apple, but come on... one thing they did it right alreadyy as they opened our eyes of the big rip off of nokia in the last 5 years with smarphones!!! They stop innovating after the N95 and they kept re-heating the same soup..
comments should stay anonymous!
if there are no bad words, why should be censored?
this is the power of internet, the feedback.
That post sure contained a lot of "soup"...
Good work Steve. I still have my N95 and am loathe to sell it after upgrading but It's still a great device that was SO innovative that many other manufacturers included the same features on their devices.
The unregistered poster certainly doesn't make a convincing argument. My N86 doesn't seem OBSOLETE.
The real shame is that the N97 in no way seems as futureproof as the N95 did three years ago. I can't believe that in 2012 I'll still carry it around and could wholeheartily say that it is still state of the art...
I do agree on the lack of Innovation at Nokia and their now steady trend of launching buggy phones and then fixing the ones that seem to catch on.
But what I find weird is that Nokia is the one that receives all the bashing. The iphone (the 3rd generation model) is still at a 3 MP camera, but Nokia is the one that is bashed for not putting a 8 MP (or beyond camera). The iphone camera still does not have any kind of flash, the Omnia has a single LED, but Nokia is the one that receives the bashing for no Xenon, even though they have atleast moved to a dual LED that seem to be pretty bright. At launch, even the Omnia had buggy, but again, its Nokia thats blamed for buggy-at-launch phones (although in this particular case, Nokia's frequency is pretty high).
Lets not get bashy just because its Nokia. None of the other phones are bug free or great at features.
Your N86 is not OBSOLETE in HW but in SW and in the GUI.
Sure, how can u expect a nice UI experience from a Finnish company?.. 😉))
usability, ease of use.....not mbits, mpixels, megatricks....
Check how was difficult to install an application with ridicolous PC-Suite compared to Itunes now.
How many years did Nokia had to create something like the Apple Store? They still have provlems with OVI....
Last cherry on the pie:
http://gizmodo.com/5349161/find-my-iphone-leads-cops-to-robbery-suspects
The point is we can reduce significantly the snidey, offensive posts by making registration compulsory. It's so pointless to read a post from an idiot who makes a cheap shot under the cloak of anonymity. Yes, people can register and then be offensive but it's less likely. Come on Rafe, it's time to act.
Good article Steve. I'm still happy with my N95 8Gb and don't see the need to change yet. N900 looks nice.
It is even more depressing if this is the reason. Assuming this is true, the marketing ppl pushed ahead the launch of the device from the date the engineers had thought of. Even if you consider the date on which IT DID launch (after the push from the marketing guys), people all over are still complaining how there are already phones out there that are more advanced than the n97.
For me, the best would be Nokia N82 - graphics hardware acceleration, microSD card slot and Xenon flash! And oh, did I say it's not even a dual slider?
It surprises me, that Orange sales guy actually dares to critising Nokia for software instability.
Orange themselve, has been known to mess with firmware, through massive rebranding; for e.g. removing features, putting that useless home screen on every S60 phone since 6680, etc.
He just can't blame nokia for producing slow, and buggy phone, when they are partly the cause.
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the article.
In keeping with what's been suggested earlier, my vote's with making registration to comment compulsory!
It's not exactly a hassle, it's democratic and if you've got something to say then surely you'd be prepared to be accountable for it? Even it was only under your online pseudonym...
It's the All About Symbian Forum , not Techno-Trolls Anonymous!
What say Steve?
What is this rubbish about being registered? How is using a registration or name any less anonymous than using an name? I could call myself anything, I could register as anything and make any comment just as well as I do under registered.
It's totally baseless sniping about unregistered posters.
The real reason people don't register is not to be anonymous, but there are already 10 billion user names and passwords to remember for the average internet user, without adding every single forum here and there that you might want to comment on. Attacking the anonymous/unregistered status of a forum poster (usually something done by people who have lost an argument) is totally without foundation and weak.
As my user name proves.
Your post doesn't really prove anything.
If someone bothers to register, then they have some sort of interest in the website or its content. If AAS continues to allow unregistered posters, any d*ckhead looking for an argument can post something stupid/offensive/pointless without there being any comebacks. While I appreciate the fact that you can post as unregistered (as I have done on occasion when away from my home computer), I would willingly sacrifice this flexibility if it reduced the incidence of stupid drivel from those who have nothing to lose and everything to gain from their anonymity....
And I would hardly consider the following post
oh my god this feticist articles from Steve are soo boring..
who cares about the N95?
i know u need some more hits for your advertisement but come one!!
hello nokia.... wake up because u cant keep selling us the old soup again and again...!!
thanks god we got a new player like apple who woke up a bit everything...
buster wrote:Your post doesn't really prove anything.If someone bothers to register, then they have some sort of interest in the website or its content. If AAS continues to allow unregistered posters, any d*ckhead looking for an argument can post something stupid/offensive/pointless without there being any comebacks. While I appreciate the fact that you can post as unregistered (as I have done on occasion when away from my home computer), I would willingly sacrifice this flexibility if it reduced the incidence of stupid drivel from those who have nothing to lose and everything to gain from their anonymity....
And your real name is "buster" right?
any d*ckhead looking for an argument can register as buster and post something stupid/offensive/pointless without there being any comebacks....
What comebacks are there for me if I register as "buster2" and post something stupid/offensive/pointless? I am still anonymous, just as everyone posting here is anonymous, registered or not.
The biggest load of waffle on the internet is this anonymous thing. Everybody is anonymous.
Thanks Steve for the honest review on the N95. I know that this phone is not the pinnacle of Nokia's success as a flagship device, but IT is definitely the turning point of how phones should be equiped w/ features like those of GPS, WI-FI etc... Some people are just too foolish to acknowledge that. Remember, all things must start from somewhere, and not all are perfect. Take the iPhone 3Gs' lack of video calling feature (and they call it 3g?), not to mention it's dependency to itunes. I've nothing against Apple, in fact I too own one. But it simply irritates me when people will not look into older phones' attempt to bring joy to consumers, not to mention usability. So Steve, Vive in N95!
I still remember when N95 TV commercials hit the screen, I was like a little boy standing near the box of candies but couldn't have it because of pennies.
So I had to let go of it because of hefty pricing. I passed that phase then after a year, I bought N82. I kept it with me for more than a year and in that one year, N82 lured me away from the fascination towards entire "N95 clan" and now when I am looking at buying a new phone, I really want to have a qwerty and having a hard look at Nokia whether I want to go ahead with another nokia (read e72) or not because of the entire ecosystem support. looking at BB curve 8900 rather fondly so it's a toss up between e72 and 8900 for me now.
Coming back to the topic, I think, whosoever bought N82 at that time would have skipped the entire assembly line of N95, N95 8gb, N85, N96 and as far as my guess goes, would have come back to it only through N86...
OK, no-one said that you would have to register using your "real" name (and let's face it, there are plenty of John Smiths out there), simply that you would have to register. Essentially, if you analyse the number of d*ckhead remarks made, they are generally made anonymously, because the people who can be bothered to register are actually interested in the subject being discussed rather than simply scoring points off each other or coming across as a d*ckhead. And before you ask, I am buster (not my real name, which is Ian if it makes you happy) and I am writing anonymously because I am at work and can't find my login details...
Unregistered wrote:OK, no-one said that you would have to register using your "real" name (and let's face it, there are plenty of John Smiths out there), simply that you would have to register. Essentially, if you analyse the number of d*ckhead remarks made, they are generally made anonymously, because the people who can be bothered to register are actually interested in the subject being discussed rather than simply scoring points off each other or coming across as a d*ckhead. And before you ask, I am buster (not my real name, which is Ian if it makes you happy) and I am writing anonymously because I am at work and can't find my login details...
Interesting how you prove the point that was offered earlier about internet users having a silly number of user names and passwords to remember and are unwilling to gain yet another for the sake of a comment about phones.
The remark at the beginning that sparked all this off was from an unregistered poster, and the follow up that immediately rebuked it was also unregistered.
In the end it's just another web forum on a fairly unimportant subject so the whole discussion seems a bit silly to me. The unregistered people do offer an opportunity for the supercilious and sanctimonious to get on their high horse about something, and there is no shortage of web folk ready to do that.
Life goes on, I'm sure most of us have real matters to deal with.