I no longer have the N95. No, I didn’t leave it on the plane back from Montreal. I didn’t accidentally drop it on my daily lunchtime outing for bi bim bop and a wonderful venti iced coffee. And no, I didn’t get pushed in a pool while carrying my phone (which actually happens to me in the occasional dream/nightmare… enough to warrant genuine concern while drinking with buddies anywhere near water).
None of those things happened. You see.. the thing is… I didn’t want it.
*Cringes at the booming chorus of gasping readers*
“Is he mad? How could he not want it?”
I have some pretty valid reasons. So while I can’t really give a fair trial review to this device due to the fact that I didn’t even have it for even a week, and didn’t get to fully evaluate everything I wanted to, I can tell you want made me want to bail on it so quickly, abandoning the device that was practically the return of Jesus for gadget lovers.
You can see my initial excitement with my Rhapsody post… there’s no denying this device is damn capable. Even if you don’t care for this device - or Nokia at all - you have to tip your hat to them for pushing convergence to this level. And I certainly love testing the limits of what my gadgets can do.
My initial excitement was curbed by one thing. The build quality of my N95 was unacceptable.
Within days, the N95’s build quality was showing signs rapid wear. The slider was already loosening, and worse than that… it began to rattle. This means that when you attempted to press any of the buttons on the top-half of the slider, the phone would creak and “click” against the back half of the slider, and as you continued to press, then your button would click. So in essence, each button press would make the button seemingly click twice, all while creating a delightful click-crunch-creak for any single button press.
I was not happy.
Further investigation online revealed that I was not alone. There’s small (but significant enough) percentage N95s out there that are suffering from loose sliders - loose enough that carriers like O2 that sell the N95, are replacing units with faulty sliders.
I however, did not have that option. I obviously didn’t purchase it from a carrier, since I live in North America. And because my unit was assembled in Singapore (”Made by Nokia”) and not a European unit (”Made in Finland”), this meant that no North American Nokia repair center would touch it… even though it’s the same phone.
So I had a choice. Tolerate owning a super expensive phone with faulty hardware, which is rapidly getting worse… or offload it. I chose the latter.
Before the price began to plummet, I sold the N95 to a local guy that didn’t seem to mind it having a loose slider. He fully tried out the unit and was pleased. But I… and others around me I had showed the problem to… were not.
There was another big disappointment, though not nearly as significant as faulty hardware. The quality of portrait photos in low-light were just awful. Even worse than in total darkness. It had a heck of a time focusing, and the output from the N73, N93, and N93i all put it to shame. The flash on the N95 was very bright, but it’s interpretation seems to just wreck the image output (see the comical yet telling image at left… this environment isn’t too dark and isn’t a challenge for the N73 even). Zoom in to 100% and see just how disappointing the pics can be. I tried every combination of photo settings - including my own custom settings to try to improve the quality. While I recognize that every camera phone has it’s own “personality” as far as weaknesses and strengths, I’ve never had so many throw-away photos… a bummer for the Montreal. I must add, however, that a good firmware update could (and hopefully will) help out with photo quality in low light conditions. After all, daytime photo quality is great, and the quality of the video at night was the best of any Nokia so far - even the N93 & N93i (I still have some footage to go through, I’ll be sharing it soon).
So there you have it. I never imagined writing this post about the N95… but sadly, we parted ways all too quickly. Had I an ability to purchase it from a carrier or reseller that would give me a warranty, I wouldn’t have been scared away so easily.
Please do not consider this to be a “bad review”, but rather a tale of a “bad experience” with the N95. What’s the difference? My device was faulty. I wish I had one that wasn’t defective, so that I could have enough time to give it a fair shot, and try out all the features fully. There was a lot that was *right* with the phone.
I’d like another chance to try an N95 in the future. I didn’t get to dissect each pro and con of the device like I typically do. Nor is my tale representative of what everyone should expect buying your N95. At least I hope it isn’t.
But given my experience, I have to issue the following warning to those considering this handset: make sure have a full warranty (that you can actually exercise!) if you’re gonna buy the N95.
I don’t want your heart broken like mine.
With a good call center service a large company won’t need to buy cell phones for everyone since answering services allow for many calls to be handled per day; outsourcing answering services can be a good way to save money rather than an in-house telephone answering service center that requires new employees.
So what’s the deal? For the most part, it’s N95 technology in a made-over N73-like housing. From these leaked photos, it’s pretty fashion-conscious (to the N93i-level, anyhow), and doesn’t look entirely unlike I, Robot. Let’s hope it like humans.
