Got a few hundred to drop on the best multimedia phone on the market? There are only two choices, and we choose a definitive winner. Is it who you think?
The iPhone is a marvel of modern design, and surprises with its sleek body and ultra-durable touch screen. The Nokia N95 is a swiss army knife of a phone, and looks the part. Though it has a unique, dual-sliding face, the phone is otherwise a brick, albeit a brick loaded to the gills. The Nokia N95 isn't an ugly phone, but it lacks the ultra-sensitive touch screen, or the clean looks of the iPhone. To its credit, the N95 has plenty of dedicated buttons around the rim of the device, which makes many features easier to access. Still, the iPhone is a revolutionary design, easily our favorite of the two.
Once again, the N95 certainly holds its own, but is simply outclassed by the groundbreaking interface on the iPhone. The iPhone sets a new standard, not only for touch screen interface designs, but for all phones and portable media players. With a sharper look, more polish and animations and intuitive icons, Apple proves its specialty is superb design. The N95's implementation of the Symbian S60 OS, with its specialized multimedia menu, looks great on the phone's large, crisp screen. But again, the iPhone sets the new standard, and is our favorite.
We tested each of these phone's on AT&T's network in New York City and New Jersey. The iPhone reported better reception in most areas, usually a full five bars, but the Nokia N95 had a dramatically better sound. The iPhone wasn't bad, but the Nokia N95 has an excellent microphone and speaker for calling. And in other calling features, the Nokia N95 pulled way ahead. The speakerphone on the Nokia is much louder than the speaker on the iPhone. The phone makes conference calls easily and features speaker-independent voice dialing, while the iPhone lacks any voice control whatsoever. Finally, the address book on the Nokia, which can be synchronized with Outlook and other programs, is far more robust than the contact list on the iPhone, with a more diverse selection of fields. The Nokia also features push to talk and video calling, though we couldn't get these running on AT&T's network
It is tough to decide between the Nokia's comfortable 12-key keypad and the iPhone's onscreen QWERTY. We had some difficulty with Apple's keyboard, but tapping number keys seems like a step backwards, for either a messaging or smartphone. For instant messaging, neither phone has an onboard program. The Nokia N95 has plenty of third-party options, as it is a Symbian phone, but the iPhone has a few Web options, and perhaps even a rumored Apple app on the way. In either case, neither phone comes preloaded. The iPhone has an easier setup for e-mail accounts, but the Nokia N95 has MMS (straight from the camera app), which the iPhone lacks. We prefer the iPhone's keyboard, believe it or not, and the threaded SMS, though we think the category is balanced by the N95's MMS and wider support for S60. We'll call this one a draw, but neither side is truly a winner here.
The iPhone may be the best iPod we've seen, but the N95 is no slouch when it comes to audio. The phone plays plenty of formats, including some DRM WMA tracks, and also lets you fine tune the equalizer, while the iPhone only lets you select presets. The N95 has an FM radio, and, like the iPhone, uses a 3.5mm jack for standard headphones, though the jack on the N95 isn't strangely recessed as it is on the iPhone. Still, for a total music experience, once you add iTunes to the mix, the iPhone is a much better choice. Though it may lack some of the advanced features of the N95, especially A2DP for stereo Bluetooth, the iPhone is a much more enjoyable phone to use for music, with the best music transfer software in the game. Even with speakers that could wake us from a sound sleep, the Nokia N95 didn't beat the iPhone / iTunes combo in our minds.
Both phones are able video players, and each has special access to YouTube using their own proprietary portal. Each phone played MP4 videos nicely, though with iTunes it was a bit easier to find content for the iPhone than it was for the N95. Still, videos ripped from our TiVo looked great on the N95...but not as great as they did on the larger iPhone screen. And, the video player on the N95 isn't as easy to use as the touch-sensitive iPod video player on the iPhone. Also, the N95 only supports microSD cards with capacities up to 2GB, instead of the newer microSDHC cards, while the iPhone starts at 4GB and jumps to 8GB at the high end. Overall, there isn't anything the N95 can do for video that the iPhone cannot, and the iPhone simply does it easier.
This category simply isn't close. The Nokia N95 takes photography seriously, and the iPhone doesn't. The N95 packs a Carl Zeiss lens and a 5-megapixel sensor with autofocus, controlled by a two-stage shutter release. The iPhone has a 2-megapixel lens and no options whatsoever. The shutter release on the iPhone is an onscreen button, impossible to use properly for self-portraits. Pictures on the Nokia N95 looked solid, which pics from the iPhone looked good only under the right lighting and motion conditions. The N95 can also record video, at 30fps in full VGA resolution, while the iPhone has no video capabilities. The Nokia phone can then playback videos, at nearly-DVD quality, on a television set. Pictures can be printed, e-mailed, sent via MMS or transferred via Bluetooth, but only on the N95. The Apple device has none of these features.
Before we saw the iPhone, Nokia's advanced browser on their N-Series devices was our favorite among Web-enabled phones. With smooth scrolling and the useful mini-map, the browser made the best of cell phones' small screens and limited controls. The N95 is no exception, but navigating the Web on an iPhone is a completely different experience. Better even than the Nokia browser, Safari will set a new standard for the mobile internet, especially if it gets a long-rumored Flash upgrade. Perhaps if U.S. users of the N95 got the same HSDPA capabilities as their European counterparts, we could have at least considered this category balanced, but instead both phones are limited to EDGE and Wi-Fi. We'd like to see Apple steal the mini-map from Nokia, but even without it, the iPhone is our clear favorite.
Another category tailored for the N95, the Nokia phone trumps the Apple device in many extra features, though some go unused stateside. Video calling and HSDPA, for instance, are available on the N95, though these features won't work here. GPS, however, works very well, and Nokia's mapping program is even better than Google's, both in terms of looks and function. Among the trove of third-party apps available for S60, QuickOffice lets you edit Microsoft Office documents on the N95, though without a QWERTY keyboard, this feature may be less than ideal. Finally, Nokia plans on bringing the N-Gage gaming platform to its N-Series devices soon, and the N95 is sure to be a flagship model. While iPhone users wait for games which may or may not arrive, even Nokia's flailing N-Gage platform has a healthy catalog behind it.
One of these phones costs $750, the other $600 with a 2-year contract. Having a value category is almost laughable, but there are hidden costs to consider. Also, if one of these devices could replace a music player or camera, it could prove more valuable. First of all, the iPhone pretty much requires a $60/month commitment for the next two years, or a termination fee of $175. Both phones would do an admirable job replacing your iPod nano, so that may save some money on future music players, but if you had your sights on a $250 iPod video, you'll want a higher-capacity iPhone to take its spot. The N95 takes great pictures for a cameraphone, and for casual photographers it will certainly do the job, but serious shutterbugs will still want a dedicated lens. The bottom line is the winner is AT&T (or, to a lesser extent T-Mobile), because AT&T will get all of the money you spend on service for the iPhone, and as one of two national GSM carriers, roughly half of the service costs for the N95.
This would be a much easier contest if the Nokia N95 had solved many of the problems we had with the iPhone, especially its lack of messaging options, problematic keyboard and lack of 3G networking. Instead, the N95 requires you to find third-party instant messaging, use the numeric pad for messaging and live in Europe if you want 3G. Some of its features, like stereo Bluetooth, N-Gage gaming and Office document editing, don't really impress us, but GPS navigation and the excellent camera make the N95 a standout.
The iPhone, on the other hand, completely blew us away with its interface design, advanced iPod feaures and the best Web browsing we've seen on a phone. Still, though these features are superlative on the iPhone, the Nokia N95 holds its own, and comes in a close second for each of these. Our final decision comes to this: the iPhone feels incomplete. There are too many bugs, too many critical omissions. A few features on the N95 didn't make the voyage across the Atlantic, but the iPhone feels like a version 0.9 product, with a little ways to go to get to version 1.0. Our advice for a buyer with a deep pocket is to buy the Nokia phone, and start saving right away for the next, improved version of the iPhone.
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