Thursday 19 April 2007

Nokia N95 critics review

Well - who have not awaited the Nokia N95 with impatience?

I did -and bought it the first place I saw it. Nice phone - runs Nokia Series 60 V3 - (a Nokia Symbian version).

Among the features much talked about was 5 mpix camera, built in GPS, and VoIP via Wireless 802.11x networks. (Wi-Fi) and yes the phone does have a 5 mpix camera - but what does that help when the images that it captures are only 200-400 KB? and looks like crap? It does have autofocus and Carl Zeiss lens, but I think Mr. Zeiss would turn in his grave if he saw the quality of this camera. I'd rather have a 3 mpix great quality camera - than a 5 mpix bad... NOKIA!!

And built in GPS - great stuff - apart from GPS fix to satellites takes forever (I have never tried less than 5 minutes) - and the maps here are like 5 years old... (Dubai, UAE) and to use Navigation you have to pay an obscene amount of money for it.. Damn Nokia - this is stupid...

And voice over IP (VOIP) - then N95 excels in not disclosing all possible settings in the edit menu. You have to write custom software to edit things like the Stun server etc. So in short it only works with the "partner" of Nokia - VOIP Service - Gizmo Project. That is all right - but... then you should not label it as an VOIP phone - but as a "tether" VoIP client with limited ability..

Which brings me to the Wireless Performance... Again here - someone wanted to save dollars... The wireless Wi-Fi interface almost needs line of sight to work. Even my worst other phones with Wi-Fi have never had a problem - but the N95 surely is a bad performer.

And then the barcode scanning - used with the camera?? I have tried to scan multiple barcodes - and all with the same result... no recognized barcode (so far)

And last but not least - the importing of own certificates does not work on my N95... Which means my Exchange RoadSync software asks for every connection... “Are you sure?” “Are you sure?”... but my exchange certificate - the phone won't accept..

Damn - bit of small grapes .. Lets hope future firmware updates will erase the problems... :-)

have a nice one! :-)

Damn

4 comments:

Robert Wisbey said...

Actually, most modern SIP clients auto-discover the STUN server and so the STUN server does not need to be configured with all SIP Clients.

The N95 auto-discovers a SIP Provider's STUN Server (if they use one). So this is why you cannot find how to configure the STUN server.

I have my N95 working perfectly and simultaneously with the following two OpenSIP based VoIP providers:

http://www.sipgate.co.uk

http://www.voiptalk.org

Kaz said...

Your are right insofar - but only about 50% of SIP providers have autostun. But anyway - I think Nokia should make every feature editable - and not close out a feature you can edit on all VOIP phones.

Anonymous said...

The bar code reader can read 2D bar codes named QR codes, such as the one produces by : http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

I agree the icon can lead to a miss-understanding, but trying to read QR codes, the application is efficient.

Kaz said...

okay - so as long a the phone can read ONE type of bar codes not used anywhere - its a barcode reader?

.. well .. what can you use that for? Not so much in the real world? So why is it there?