So who is considering a Nokia N95 for their next mobile purchase?

With it looking more and more likely on a March release date (yes I know this is not a NZ release date, I have not purchase a mobile phone NZ new in over 7 years and am well aware of the pro and cons of this. Please do not get off topic with discussion on this point) I am giving this some pretty serious thought.

I have a Nokia N80I currently so out of this I would be looking at a better camera from a subjective review of proto pictures I have seen compared to my N80 and substantially better video. Additionally a larger screen, HSPDA, 3.5mm port (screw you pop port!), GPS, slightly longer battery time from current indications of protos and some dedicated media buttons + UI landscape mode.

Over all this seems to stack up as a reasonable sort of an upgrade for somebody with an N80 or similar phone. The inbuilt GPS is particularly attractive to me since I am going on my OE in a few months along with the ability to not need to have multiple devices such as separate camera lugged round with me.

There are a few odd choices Nokia have made however with are still preventing me on being 100% sure this is the correct choice. Namely:

- Flash, why wouldn’t you put a Xenon flash in. I don’t mind loosing a small bit of battery life to get decent lighting.
- RAM, protos are still showing ~19MB free after boot. This may be my biggest gripe, totally retarded choice Nokia. If I spend $1500 on a phone I don’t mind spending $100 more so I can multitask in a half decent fashion.
- Screen resolution...The screen is bigger than the N80 yet the res is smaller. Another stupid choice Nokia, add 1mm to the battery and form factor for the extra juice required.

Really it seems like if they had made the device a tiny amount thicker (it is slightly thinner than the N80 already) and add maybe 15% to the cost they would have got a device which is far more functional. Given these changes I still think there would be good market appeal in the devices target market, in fact I think it would actually have more market appeal in its target market..

Anyhow what is everyone else’s impressions of some of the initial N95 reviews floating about and some of the points I have made above. I would be interested in seeing if others had some of the same concerns.