Nokia N95 - The Verdict

[slitchfield]

With the Nokia N95 now breaking out in record numbers in High Street shops (see news below), I can hold off no longer on giving a verdict. Is it the perfect ultra-converged device or is it a jack of all trades and master of none? As you'd expect the answer's somewhere in between. Read the concluding part of our review of the Nokia N95, a true 'breakthrough device'.

Read on in the full article.

Hi Steve,

Certainly a well written and detailed review. I infact agree with you on most points but I am probably one of the very few in this world who has owned and parted company with an N95 - why? Well because it is unable to give me push mail via either Blackberry or Mail for Exchange which I simply cannot live without. Sure, there is webmail but it is not the same.

Despite all the many advantages of the N95, I have reluctantly parted with it and gone back to the N93 and a bluetooth GPS etc.... :(

I hope that Nokia will re think their strategy here or maybe I just wait for the E90

/Dominic.

[krisse]

"Well because it is unable to give me push mail via either Blackberry or Mail for Exchange which I simply cannot live without. Sure, there is webmail but it is not the same."

What about POP3 mail? You can set the app to autocheck your mailbox frequently, which gives you something pretty close to push mail.

Obviously data costs might get in the way if you have a particularly expensive network, but on flat rate it's very convenient.

[slitchfield]

I doubt cost is the issue here. The auto-retrieval's most frequent interval is "30 mins", which may not be often enough for an email addict 8-)

So these push systems don't work for the N95 then? I wonder why not? Just a case of someone needing to build in support for FP1?

Steve

the one and only advantage of the symbian platform is the opportunity to install 3rd party applications. there are far better email clients out there then the built in one, for example in Profimail you can set the auto update's frequency in minutes...

[krisse]

"I doubt cost is the issue here. The auto-retrieval's most frequent interval is "30 mins", which may not be often enough for an email addict 8-)"

As SHX says, Profimail lets you set the autocheck to just a few minutes, which is easily often enough for most people.

I can't believe Nokia haven't caught up with them... (unless of course they're deliberately trying to make the push email in their expensive models seem more useful than it really is).

[Ratkat]

I think my N95 is a great phone

On the email front though, why can't we have the plugin for the active display that shows emails etc, like on the E series phones. People with Multimedia devices get messages too...

[jonnybruha]

Two things I wanted to share with you.

First of all, the N95 is not spring loaded in any way. I've talked to a user who was brave enough to take his apart and he didn't find a spring anywhere. There are some strict knocking mechanisms that cause the slide to snap open or closed in what may feel like a spring assisted assembly, but it isn't.

Second is I wanted to talk about album art and why you're having trouble. Using the unformatted microSD I was using in my N73 (with a MiniSD adapter),which contained all of my digital music, album art displayed perfectly fine on my N95. I use a program called MediaMonkey that embeds the album art into the ID3 tag of the MP3 file itself, rather than store an extension path to the folder containing the art like most desktop media players do. When music with album art in this format is transferred to a separate device, the path to the image comes with it in the ID3 tag, but since the folder containing the album art is most likely also not on the phone (much less the exact same path), it does not display. I suspect that's the reason you were unable to get album art to display correctly, as that is also the most recurring reason why album art doesn't display properly on standalone MP3 players.

Songs I downloaded from Symella did not have album art at first, but using the Search application that came on the N95, I was able to download the appropriate covers and apply them to their respectable songs right inside the music player. No PC needed.

Hope that helps a bit and makes the initial production firmware on the N95 a bit more enjoyable for you and your readers.

[slitchfield]

Interesting, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with my album art files, which are all on my microSD in the usual Media Player 'triplicate' format, all JPG files and all viewable standalone from Y-Browser, for example.

Steve

Actually, if I remember correctly the original Exchange SIS worked on all of the 3rd edition phones but Nokia put a product code checker in the latest version. (I remember some N80 owners bleating about it on eseries.org) Probably some sort of segmentation exercise...
Lark

[justwords]

If you want Push via Exchange mobile Activesync, why not use the program "Roadsync" from www.Dataviz.com? Works on my N80 and E61. There is a free trial

http://www.dataviz.com/downloads/dem...ml?product=RDS

[justwords]

... and the original Mail for Exchange 1.3.1 worked on N-Series devices as well

[justwords]

... and third possibilty: Use provider which offers IMAP-mailboxes with "imap idle" function. Then new emails show up automatically - but only if the connection stays open. Sadly many providers do not know if they have "IMAP idle", but e.g. cortado (http://www.cortado.com/) offers imap idle mailboxes for free. And most IMAP mailboxes are IMAP idle

thanks for your suggestions regarding mail. Unfortunately, my company does not allow for retrieval of email using POP3 and so a secure certificate based solution is the only way and that is why I have been successfully using Mail for Exchange on a number of Nokia device including: N91; N80; E70; 5500 Sport; N93 and E61. Although the 1.3.1 program installs on the N95 and although you can infact sync your mails, calendar and contacts into the device - you cannot infact open or reply to any of the mails you receive. You can't even write a new message - you just get an error saying not supported. I have seen others mention similar problems on various sites - I was really reluctant to part with it - but eventually saw no alternative.
Otherwise, it is a great phone with huge potential!

[Sebhelyesfarku]

justwords is right, any IMAP server with IDLE function can be used for push mail. Simply just don't disconnect from the server. Automatic retrieval is off. Mails pop up immediately.