Nokia N95 vs Apple iPhone

iPhone & Nokia N95I’ve had the iPhone for a few days now (and the N95 for over a month), so I thought I’d post a little comparison. There are plenty of other places out there with reviews and comparisons, and the N95 is the obvious phone to compare it to.

The first surprise with the iPhone though is how heavy it is. The N95 feels like a hollow shell by comparison!

Purely from the specs, the N95 has the iPhone beaten. That topic has been beaten to death everywhere, including a series of amusing YouTube videos in the Apple Mac vs PC style.

The UI though leaves the Nokia in the dust (and I’m not even going to talk about Windows Mobile – that should just be purged from the earth). Most of the apps make good use of the UI too, especially the flick scrolling.

Both devices are amazing, but both have their flaws too. The N95 interface is clunky at times, though even the stunning UI on the iPhone has problems – the keyboard is really hard to use. The camera on the iPhone is terrible, though the N95 one has issues at times too (I’ve had days, like today, when the auto-focus just refuses to lock).

The biggest thing that is missing from the iPhone though is simple: no third party applications. It comes with essentially 13 applications on top of the basic mobile phone behaviour. My N95 comes with over 20 applications, and I can add more very easily. I currently have Opera Mini, Google Maps, ScreenShot and, of course, Devicescape.

3 thoughts on “Nokia N95 vs Apple iPhone

  1. Pingback: Nseries WOM World » Blog Archive » More N95 vs iPhone warfare

  2. Instead of making a comparison, here is a list of differences between the iPhone and the N95

    Bluetooth
    iPhone – May work, but is a very limited and closed system with few practical uses.
    Nokia N95 – Has A2DP and AVRCP. This means you can
    Use it as a wireless music storage device in your car to transmit your music in excellent quality to your car stereo to play back the music.
    Control the phone’s playback of your music collection from your car radio.
    Use both cameras of the phone as an excellent wireless webcam for your PC with Mobiola Webcam.
    Use microphone of the phone as a wireless microphone for your PC with Mobiola Microphone Remote.
    Use a wireless keyboard such as space saver Think Outside keyboard or any typical BT wireless keyboard.
    Use high quality wireless headphones (Sony, Bose, Motorola, etc.) that allow control of the music playback on the phone.
    Use your PC wirelessly to move, copy, delete, and edit files directly on the phone.
    Use your PC to wirelessly control all the features of the phone and at the same time display the phones screen on your PC, recording it if your wish, with Mobiola Remote Phone Control.
    Access and utilize external Bluetooth GPS positioning devices.

    Computer access
    iPhone – Very limited closed system with no direct access to the data for repair if it were corrupted.
    Nokia N95 – With cable, WiFi, and Bluetooth you can
    Drag and drop, synchronize, share, and stream files, (music, pictures, video, documents, files, and folders) to or from any PC on your network, to any uPnP device.
    Map network drives on your phone for access from PC’s, access mapped network drives on your PC’s from your phone with SymSMB.
    Access and download all the data on your PC’s and listen to and watch your entire PC media collection of streamable media (music and movies) from anywhere in the world with Orb.

    WIFI
    iPhone – Works
    Nokia N95 – Works and is reported to stream data at a faster rate than the iPhone.

    Bar-code reader
    iPhone – None
    Nokia N95 – Get contact information instantly at trade shows from the other members cards.

    Record sounds and voice
    iPhone – None
    Nokia N95 – Excellent microphone with which you can
    Record anything you want, including calls. No limit in length.
    Remove the required 5-second beep with Ultimate Voice Recorder.

    GPS
    iPhone – Cell tower emulated triangulation. Voice instructions.
    Nokia N95 – Built in real GPS hardware, cell tower emulated triangulation, External Bluetooth hardware capable, Assisted GPS or any combination of all three. You always have some kind of fix. With the GPS you can
    Find your current location in a foreign city at night and find and get direction from where you are to where you want to go.
    Get directions to services of all kinds.
    Use third party add-ons such as Tomtom.
    Use the Nokia Sport Tracker for walking, riding bikes, hiking, etc. This provides several different statistical analyzes of distance, elevation, time and distance, including laps and the actual path taken with the ability to save and compare your results with other results.

    Camera
    iPhone – 2 mega pixel. A common place phone camera that will not produce images that most people would want if they went to a concert or show.
    Nokia N95 – 2 cameras. 5 mega pixel and VGA for video conferencing on EU networks. The 5 meg camera takes stunning pictures day and night. Carl Zeiss optics. Comes with editing software right on the phone. With third party applications your can take pictures of pages and email them or fax them.

    Video capture
    iPhone – None
    Nokia N95 – 640 x 480 @ 30 fps. Stunning quality, even at night, with audio. Includes digital stabilization.

    Activation
    iPhone – 2 year contract that adds up to quite a bit.
    Nokia N95 – Buy it unlocked from Nokia or Dell directly and have a warranty and no contract to take it where ever you want.

    Infrared
    iPhone – None
    Nokia N95 – Works great. With it you can
    Transfer data.
    Control all the Infrared devices in your house and office.
    Connect to your PC and use the phone as a modem.

    Screen
    iPhone – Very nice large touch screen. (finger print prone). Requires 2 hands to operate easily.
    Nokia N95 – Smaller screen than the IPhone. A larger screen would have been nice. Easy one handed operation.

    TV Out
    iPhone – None
    Nokia N95 – Works great with the supplied cable. Use it in a hotel room with a BT keyboard to read email and edit office documents, Use it on your TV to play video games, movies, and share pictures.

    Cable Interface
    iPhone – proprietary iPod type connection.
    Nokia N95 – Mini USB and a standard mini plug that all ear buds use. (same plug for TV Out)

    Speakerphone
    iPhone – ?
    Nokia N95 – People do not even know I am on it.

    Speakers
    iPhone – Mono sound
    Nokia N95 – Probably the best set of stereo speakers every installed in a cell phone.

    Ring tones
    iPhone – Is it even worth mentioning?
    Nokia N95 – Use pretty much anything you want. Any audio track on the phone can be used. Create your own mix right on the phone itself and save it as a new mp3 or ring tone.

    Traveling
    iPhone – You are locked to ATT, period.
    Nokia N95 – Unlocked and support for various networks across the globe. If you are traveler, the iPhone is not even a consideration if you do your research.

    Sexiness (I am putting this here because CNET mentioned this)
    iPhone – Sleek and cool looking, but viewed as a toy in the workplace.
    N95 – Viewed as THE phone of a technologically competent professional.

    Battery
    IPhone – Longer lasting than the N95, but not removable
    Nokia N95 – Replaceable battery. If you find yourself in the EMERGENCY situation where you need to make a call and do not have access to a charger and your battery is dead, you can just replace the battery with a spare. With the iPhone you could be stuck off the side of a cliff in a car with no power and trapped. Unfortunately, Apple seemed to overlook this MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE OF HAVING A CELL PHONE IN THE FIRST PLACE. EMERGENCYS!!! I would actually be willing to get my wife this phone if it were not for this issue.

    Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
    IPhone – None
    Nokia N95 – Excellent on board chip for hardware decoding of video and 3D games. Supports DirectX and OpenGL. Stunning game playback on the phone or your TV that the most hard core XBOX/PS# games are impressed with.

    Additional third party applications
    IPhone – None at this time.
    Nokia N95 – Several different office applications, programming, game emulators such as MAME (allowing playing pf 1000’s of known arcade game classics), Synch applications, Tune musical instruments, Gmaps, Google maps, Phone Guardian, GSM Tracker, ybroswer, FExplorer, SysExplorer, studio nokia, mobile web server, cCam, Carbide ui, SymSMB, Instant Messaging, VoIP,, SSH/Telnet, rar files with Mobilerar, stream with Orb or TVersity, Mobiola Webcam, Mobiola Microphone Remote, Mobiola Remote Phone Control, Tomtom, NavXS and others, Aspicore GSM Tracker, ultimat voice recorder, really nice 3D games by the hundreds, HourPower, Digital Clock, Mobisophy InteractiveVoice Call Master, Webgates Advanced Call Manager, MobieGenie, Divx player, CORE Player, Flash 5 player, PeerBox, TextQuick, Mobile Weather, eBuddy, MSN, Mig33, ScanR, Palringo, Adobe PDF support preinstalled, MS Excel and Word support pre installed, S60 Internet Radio, VCEL, ShoZu, TypePad Mobile, OperaMini, The Kaywa Reader, Jaiku, Nokia Sensor, Nokia Team Suite, Gmail Mobile, Symella, SymTorrent, Python for S60, PuTTy, QReader, ReadM, Chords for S60, S-Tris 2, Nokia – Wellness Diary, Acala 3GP Movies, studio_nokia, MyStrands, OggPlay, JabpLite, Calcium, GCalSync, Autolock, MobileRar, Nokia Local Search, Scenetone, Tasky, Nokia DJ Mixer, Fring, WorldMate, CellTrack, Loc Bluepulse, Spodtronic, Mobixie, Hibaru, DJMixerNSeries, SafeTxt, GamesFlash, Market Simplified for Mobiles, myNumbers, Qibla Compass for Mobiles, Handylearn Counter, Weight and Measures Quick Study Guide, mShell, Virgin Radio & Podcast Player….

    I could add to this list for hours. Many of these applications are free. Most of these programs are well written and feature rich. These are not trivial little tidy bits. If you really want a smart phone, it has to be smart enough to know that it will not do everything out of the box and some things should be left to outside programmers to develop. The iPhone ‘s application list is not even a bad joke compared to the N95. The problem with comparing the two is that it takes months just to get a handle on the capabilities of an N95. Most N95 users do not take the time to respond to such comparisons, as the comparison is not only foolish, but requires quite a bit of time to accurately list the N95’s capabilities.

  3. Hi, just got the N95 8GB from http://www.allukphonedeals.co.uk/ it has gps built in and so I want to use my copy of tomtom on it. Currently it’s on sd card for my XDA exec. Anyone know how to get it installed and working for my N95?

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