Allaboutsymbian.com: Nokia N95 8GB versus the Apple iPhone

Dec 27, 2007

Allaboutsymbian.com: Nokia N95 8GB versus the Apple iPhone

With the Nokia N95 8GB now here and tried and tested, Steve Litchfield looks ahead to Christmas 2007 and the showdown between the two hottest smartphones in the world.

The original N95/iPhone battle may have moved onto new stomping grounds, but it’s still a battle royal. Between strength and subtlety, between functions and form, between features and ease of use. Both devices are either aimed at totally different markets or aimed at the same market, depending on who you talk to. But the fact remains that the Nokia N95 8GB and Apple iPhone are the two most desirable smart device.

	Apple iPhone

Form factor	Glass-topped tablet, 3.5" touchscreen, reasonable outdoor contrast, four physical buttons/switches
Typical price on a £35 a month contract with 'unlimited' data	£270 (minimum contract with O2 = 18 months, total cost of ownership over period is £900)
Runs	Version of Apple's desktop OS X
Battery life	Good, but integral, non-removable battery, 1230mAh.
Connectivity	EDGE, if available, otherwise GPRS. Plus Wi-Fi, also where available.
Performance and RAM	Full multitasking, but hidden from user, with all applications selected from home screen. Pretty quick. Exact RAM details unknown.
Built-in Applications	A restricted application set, but graphical and hyper-intuitive.
Web browsing	A good touch-driven experience (rather limited by EDGE bandwidth though) using Safari. No Flash or Java support at all though.
Text entry	Text entry via fingers using an on-screen keyboard. Word prediction software helps to enlarge screen touch-sensitive hotspots for likely followup letters, improving typing accuracy a lot. No option for Bluetooth keyboard, at present, sadly.
Imaging/Video	Acceptable (for casual snaps) 2MP camera, fixed focus, no flash, no video recording.
Music and expansion	Very slick, as you'd expect, and with browsable cover art, MP3 and AAC formats supported. 8GB flash memory capacity, non-expandable.

Durability	Pouched/cased by necessity, to protect the touch-screen from damage.
Real world experience	In use, requires two hands to use most of the time.
Office work	Word/Excel/PDF viewers built into the email client. No editing options, although workarounds using Ajax applications on web sites are possible.
Navigation	Native version of Google Maps, but no GPS support.
Extra applications	Officially extensible using Widgets and Web applications in the Safari web browser - there's an active unlocking and hacking community, but Apple keeps raising the bar and locking third party native applications out.
Extra connectivity	Recessed 3.5mm headphone socket (only works with Apple headset and TV out accessory)
Desktop integration	Seamless integration with iTunes on Mac or Windows desktops

	Nokia N95 8GB

Form factor	Fairly robust slider phone, 2.8" screen, reasonable outdoor contrast, 25 buttons, including traditional phone keypad
Typical price on a £35 a month contract with 'unlimited' data	£38 (on an 18 month contract with Vodafone, total cost of ownership is £668)
Runs	S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1, on Symbian OS.
Battery life	Good-ish, BL-6F battery can be removed and replaced quickly, 1200mAh.
Connectivity	GPRS, EDGE, plus high speed 3G, and ultra-high speed HSDPA, plus Wi-Fi where available.
Performance and RAM	Pretty quick, and around 90MB of free RAM after booting, thanks to a demand paged version of Symbian OS, with full multitasking.
Built-in Applications	The usual S60 glut of apps and mini-apps, with something of a media/online bent.
Web browsing	A similarly good experience, this time limited by screen real estate and not bandwidth, with very similar browser code (both based on the same open source Web modules). Flash and Java support, though not yet working with Flash video.
Text entry	With no touchscreen or keyboard, text entry is relatively inconvenient, using predictive text on the keypad, and mostly impossible when the N95 8GB is in 'landscape' mode (although a separate Bluetooth keyboard gets round this fairly easily)
Imaging/Video	Awesome 5MP camera with professional lens, auto-focus, multiple scene modes and settings, bright flash, VGA video recording at up to 30 fps.
Music and expansion	Very slick, with dedicated hardware controls, although cover art is often hit and miss, depending on your music source. MP3, AAC and WMA formats supported. 8GB flash memory capacity, non-expandable. A2DP also supported, for wireless listening.

Durability	Pretty durable, with a hard plastic covering over the screen. The camera is not mechanically protected (as on the original N95) but it's recessed and not too vulnerable.
Real world experience	Almost all operations are easy to accomplish one-handed.
Office work	Quickoffice 3.8 viewers (upgradable to v4.5 round-trip-perfect editing), plus Adobe Reader LE 1.5.
Navigation	Built in GPS (assisted via data connection), native Nokia Maps with ad-hoc upgrades for voice guided navigation. Google Maps is free and a native GPS-aware S60 application, as an alternative.
Extra applications	Around 800 native S60 applications and games, plus thousands more Java apps/games and Widgets. Python, Ruby and Flash Lite applications are also supported.
Extra connectivity	Standard 3.5mm headphone socket, also with integrated TV-out facility (sending screen feed or full res photos or videos to any TV or video equipment).
Desktop integration	Full functioned but messy integration with PC Suite and other tools on PC, Nokia Multimedia Transfer, iCal/iSync on Mac, etc.
	Nokia N95 8GB

Looking at the table above, it’s clear that the iPhone is rather seriously outgunned by the N95 8GB, but there are wins for the high profile device from Apple. It’s cleaner, more elegant, has a larger screen, great text input method and more foolproof desktop connectivity. And that shortlist of wins is probably enough for a lot of purchasers, especially those with lesser ambitions and sufficiently deep pockets.

But the Nokia N95 8GB is simply awesome as a piece of technology, winning by a landslide on data connectivity, camera, video camera, GPS and application openness. Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, the N95 8GB can, for short periods, replace phone, camera, camcorder, music player, navigation device, laptop, games console and Blackberry, among others. And, unlike the original N95, it can do all this without worrying too much about battery life or at all about running out of RAM.

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