Nokia N95 - the good and the bad so far

I have had the N95 just over a week now and it’s definitely fast becoming my favorite gadget of all time. It really pushes the boundaries of what you can do with a phone – it’s pretty much got my wish list of features.

The good (most of the following are all in-built)

• Fantastic quality camera – takes great quality pics in pretty much all conditions
• Equally fantastic video camera
• Wireless and 3G web browsing (unlimited if on t-mobile)
• Catchup on RSS feeds, check your mail anytime any place
• Stream media where ever you are – bbc news, podcasts etc
• Post directly to Flickr and Twitter
• Make and receive VOIP calls – Skype on the move (with Fring)
• Apparently I can also blog directly from the phone but I’ve yet to try that
• Use can use your standard walkman headphones
• Phone is compact yet still usable and not a bulky PDA
• Extremely user friendly – lots of neat touches and intuitive shortcuts

The bad

• Battery life – 1.day at most if you are lucky
• Prone to occasional crashes
• Memory/storage – Soon runs out after a few tunes, pics and vids are taken.
• GPS / Navigation software – this should be in the list of good points but it’s been a real pain to try and setup. You can’t just download the maps directly and from what I have read the GPS can be flakey at times. I’ve yet to get this installed.
• Lack of support for Mac – bundled sync software / utils are all PC based

What next?

I’m heading to RailsConf next week and hoping that Duty free might be able to help me out with the following:

• A 4GB micro SD (if it’s out yet)
• A spare charger – either USB or battery

I may even try and do some blogging from the conference next week – no promises though!