Will the Nokia N95 be the ‘it’ phone for everyone?

The Nokia N95 will have many many many features…. ranging from GPS to WiFI. Will this phone dominate the market next year when it comes out in early Q1 2007?

To begin, let’s list all the specifications that this phone will have (or at least the ones I find cool):

* Integrated GPS functionality
* Two way slider (one way = numeric keypad, other way = media player keypad)
* A 5 Megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss Lens)
* A HSDPA (read: supa’ fast) network connection
* Capable of rendering 3D graphics
* A large 2.6″ QVGA 16 million color display
* Built in Stereo Speakers
* Quadband + 2100mhz (I love phones that don’t discriminate)
* Series 60 version 3.1 OS
* Integrated wireless LAN (802.11 b/g) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)
* Integrated Bluetooth wireless technology v.2.0 EDR
* USB 2.0 via Mini USB interface and mass storage class support
* 3.5 mm stereo headphone plug and TV out support (PAL/NTSC)
* Video resolutions: up to VGA (640×480) at 30 fps
* Digital video stabilization
* Video clip length: limited by available memory
* Video file format .mp4 (default), .3gp (for MMS)
* Supported video formats : MPEG-4 , H.264/AVC , H.263/3GPP, RealVideo 8/9/10
* Digital music player supports MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA/M4A with playlists & EQ

As you can see.. this thing is loaded with EVERYTHING…. EVERYTHING!

I mean, when the N80 was going to come out I thought it had everything.. but this is ridiculous! This has everything you could want! The video rate should make for smooth movies, the GPS will help me not get lost, the camera should pretty much be able to replace my portable camera, the WiFi + HSDPA links should allow me to use the N95 as a media and email terminal independent of my laptop, and the bluetooth 2.0 will help me get files off quickly while still holding a call on my headset.
So what could kill the N95?
Here a few things that I won’t buy an N95 until I’m certain are worked out:
1) Battery Life:
The stated battery life is a Talk time of up to 160min (WCDMA) / 240 min (GSM), and a Stand-by time up to 215 hours (WCDMA) / 215h (GSM)*
However, we all know that Nokia as of late has been inflating their real figures quite a bit, and that a talk time of 2 hours is more like it. Look at the N80 which basically requires that it be charged every night, and sometimes more!
Some of you may say.. well I don’t speak 2-3 hours a day.. yes, but with a phone that has so much, you will be using it to play music, take pictures, navigate (GPS) and download emails. WiFi chips don’t sip juice, they CHUG juice, and well GPS chips vary on how much they amplify the signal (jury is still out on this one). This means that while you were playing with all the other features of your phone, you effectively reduced your talk time to maybe an hour, hour and a half tops. This of course becomes really difficult for anyone that is using this phone for business, where some calls can last longer than that.
2) Construction:
The Nokia N80 is one of Nokias few slider phones, and It wasn’t until recently (relatively) that Nokia started making decent flip phones. Because of this, I feel that Nokia hasn’t quite mastered the art of making durable hinges and sliding mechanisms. Whereas companies like Samsung have the concept down, and make phones that are pretty sturdy, the Nokia N80s that I’ve played with that have received good usage are so loose that it’s hard to keep closed. The Nokia N95 will have twice as much risk of falling apart because of the dual-slider action. The last thing I’d want is to have the weight of the screen automatically activate the media player once the slider becomes loosened with age. Let’s just hope they can tighten up specs on the sliding mechanism.
3) Operating System Bugs:
Part of the reason why I migrated away from Nokia recently is because their phones have become too buggy and sluggish. I moved away from windows into the mac world to reduce my bug issues, and thus I am reluctant to move back to the Nokia world until they reduce the amount of hangups, slowdowns, and system halts.
So as you can see, I am not going to jump on this phone first thing… I will wait and see what the battery life will be, what the construction will be like, and how the OS is responding. Hopefully Nokia will get it right on the first try.

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