Nokia N95 8GB Vs Pentium PC

The Nokia N95 "It's what computers have become"

Last week before my trip to Myanmar I upgraded from my Nokia N70 (it was starting to have a few problems) to a new Nokia N95 8GB. I spent 9 hours online reading the manuals, and technology forums, transferring all my old files and setting the Nokia N95 8GB up to exactly how I wanted it.

To give a brief review would be to say that the Nokia N95 advertising  slogan is 100% correct, this item is not a phone, though it does that too, it is better than a complete Pentium 2 PC in your pocket....

I am serious in this. The Nokia N95 8GB has an updated 300Mhz processor, about standard for a Pentium2 era computer but look on and I will go into details after the technical specs.

To give a comparison the Nokia N95 8GB (also known as the N95-2) with a Pentium 2 computer I have drawn up the following comparision table:

Nokia N95 8Gb Vs. Pentium 2 Computer 

To give a comparison the Nokia N95 8GB (also known as the N95-2) with a Pentium 2 computer is a little unfair due to the time of when each was released but still as you can see from the above technical specs Nokia's slogan is true, at least in terms of raw fugures but lets go deeper.

The new 300Mhz processor in the N95 8GB version is faster and more responsive than the previous N95-1 version also it has been said that a firmware update has given the N95 8GB more dynamic RAM to utilise making the smart phone considerably faster than previous models.

Back in the old days a P2 computer would fly with 128MB of RAM, except that it would cost a fortune and nearly every computer came out with either 32Mb or 64Mb which really held the PC back.

Alos you will see the Nokia N95 8Gb has a whole 8Gb of flash hard drive, double or quadruple what a standard brand name Pentium 2 computer came out with. Better yet the flash technology being solid state is not affected by bumps and knock and it is faster accessing and writing data than a hard drive, especially the old ATA-33 drives in use in the P2 PC's.

The screen size on the Nokia N95 8Gb again is slightly larger than the previois N95-1 version, a whole .2" bigger which may not sound a lot but when you comsider it is about an 8% increase in width that makes a difference.

Compared to a PC with full sized monitor the N95 8Gb does not compare, at least double the viewing resolution is available on the monitor. But you must also take into account the viewing experience.

Since all applications, games and movies written for  the Nokia N95 8Gb are designed for it's screen size it works well. In fact the only 3 things I have so far found that the screen size matters is in internet browsing, viewing PDF documents and viewing word documents.

The safari based browser that comes with the N95 8BG is great, but even better is the free Opera Mini browser - it creates a downsized full edition of the webpage which you then navigate around to the parts you want hit the button to zoom in and read the text. Opera Mini resizes the text width to fit the phone, making it very easy to navigate and read on the mobile.

PDF's unfortunately I have not found an answer for and scrolling around the screen is necessary, but then I have not really looked for an alternative to the free Adobe viewer yet. Microsoft documents are the same for scrolling, so I save anything I want to read into .txt format and then use the fantastic Qreader ebook reader program. (Also great for reading all those free ebooks on Project Gutenburg)

The camera on the Nokia N95 8Gb works like a real digital camera, it is now a full replacement whereas on previous phones it was like a handy backup camera. Now I believe users can ditch carrying the digital camera around and just use their phone. Autofocus and Autozoom are included, the pictues are of good quality and the colours are great. Pentium2 era webcams where grainy and very poor in less than direct sunlight.

The N95 8Gb also has a front camera for video calling, though I am yet to figure out how to get video calls working on MSN chat, Yahoo, ICQ or SKYPE (or many others)

What?

Yes with www.fring.com you can make Skype calls to Skype contacts for free, call your SIP (voip) contacts for free on your phone and they can call you. You can also chat with all the popular programs. There are data charges for this but most countries have reasonable plan pricings, except here in Thailand so I just set it to use my wireless router at home and to ask before making internet connections.

Also the Nokia is silent, no fans, no hard drive humming and no old monitor high pitch noise.

In terms of usablity the Nokia N95 8Gb can do emails and can browse hte 'net, though it is preferable to have a larger screen if you are working for more than a few minutes, with a bluetooth keyboard though I think emails will be perfectly doable and updating blogs and CMS websites like this one will be possible if required - much easy to carry around when you are travelling than a laptop and considering I travel through some of the poorer, more criminal ridden regions not carrying a laptop around with you all the time is a nice option.

There are plenty of games available too for the Nokia Symbian S60 series 3 platform and many applications, usually at a very reasonable price.

But in conclusion overall I would say that yes Nokias advertising slogan for hte N95 8Gb "It's what computers have become" is in fact true but the Nokia N95 8Gb is a lot more, it is a PDA, it is a Camera, it is a SIP phone, it is a portable entertainment center (music and video files of all sorts are playable with some free downloads) but mostly it is very easily transportable.

BUT I would not go so far as to say that the Nokia N95 8Gb is a computer replacement, but it would serve as a laptop replacement while travelling mainly becasue of the portability and the easy Internet access provided by the phone.

All they would need to do for me to make it a full travel laptop replacement  would be to get Mozilla Thunderbird email client working on it, Mozilla Firebird and Open Office and to have a monitor out plug like the little Fujitsu laptops - so that you can plug the video output into a full sized monitor - THEN it would be a full (travel) laptop computer replacement..... and more.