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 devices anyone will be able to own this Christmas.
Let's put them head to head and try to be totally objective:
Form factor
Glass-topped tablet, 3.5" touchscreen, reasonable outdoor contrast, four physical buttons/switches
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
Form factor
Fairly robust slider phone, 2.8" screen, reasonable outdoor contrast, 25 buttons, including traditional phone keypad
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.
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.
i have to agree with that, as a proud owner of an N95 original, nonetheless, pretty much the same as the 8GB ver. its only downfall is the fact that, it is very slow some of the time, although this probably is not a problem for the upgraded RAM in the 8GB ver. that aside, best phone i have ever owned.
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