[IxDA Discuss] Nokia N95 now available...

[Jim Drew]

On Jun 30, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Niklas Wolkert wrote:

> The Nokia N95 has:
>
> A hardware design that isn't near the sleakness of the iPhone but
> still pretty nice... and it's smaller(99x53x21mm).

Is that actually a plus?  Seems to me that the larger screen is a  
selling point on the iPhone.   You start to have something where  
viewing photos, watching video, or surfing the web isn't a painful  
experience with a larger screen.


> stereo speakers,

Are they any good, at that size?


> DRM free media player supporting most important formats,

Is that a plus or a minus?  *All* music players (or 99.99% or them)  
play DRM-free music.  This one happenbs to play *only* DRM-free music.


> I read and edit office attachments from mails and read PDF files on  
> it.

I've yet to really conceive of a need/desire to edit a Word doc or an  
Excel spreadsheet on something with a 2" screen (or 3.5" for the  
iPhone).  I imagine it can't be either comfortable or fully  
featured.  I suppose if it's the only mechanism you have for editing,  
it would be better than nothing, but there are things for which a  
laptop is really a better solution.


> And to be honest, i bought an extra battery because it has to recharge
> at least twice a day but hey still it is exchangeable :-P

Yow.  Sounds like skipping 3G at this point may not have been a bad  
idea for Apple.  (They were damned if they do, damned if they don't:  
if they had included it, they would have been plastered for lousy  
battery life.)


> Finally I'd like to point out another aspect that has been crucial in
> my choice of phone: It can be fully operated using only one hand AND
> it does not have a touch screen. If a phone has a touch screen
> designers in my experience has a tendency to take the easy way out and
> build functionality based on people holding the device with one hand
> and pointing with the other. This (is my guess) also goes for the
> iPhone. How do you then operate it when driving a car or walking down
> the street holding something in you other hand?

I think I've seen two car-mounting systems for the iPhone already, so  
(reasonably) safely operating it in the car should be doable.

I can't operate my Samsung very well one-handed for anything other  
than checking remote messages (let's see, *4 to delete, hope I got  
the keys right!), so I don't see that much of an issue.  People who  
are able to handle their existing phone one-handed will probably  
learn what to do on the iPhone the same way.  Not as easy to orient  
your fingers without setting off the wrong keys without a button, but  
it's definitely doable.  (I'll bet there are tiny rubber nubs which  
could be affixed to the extreme outer edge of the screen, which would  
give the user the tactile feedback needed to set up a grid and hit  
the screen in the right place.)

-- Jim