In one of his posts, Thomas Otter describes me as:
..the human mashup: half curmugedeon-half gadget freak
I laughed. It’s true. Much of today has been spent either playing with my latest toy or flipping over to the compliance conversations. My toy? The utterly gorgeous Nokia N95. I struck a deal of which VInnie would be proud – but still tell me he could have done a better deal.
I bought the toy over e-Bay because shop prices for network free devices in Spain are ridiculously high – check El Corte Ingles at €735 and even worse Madrid Airport Duty Free at €930. But I didn’t buy before I did a LOT of homework. It gave me the chance to practice my miserable Spanish, asking questions of the seller and checking references. The seller’s service was impeccable even though the manual is in German, which I neither speak nor understand. That doesn’t matter because I found an online manual in English.
I’ve had Nokia handsets for many years. One reason I stick with them is that despite relentless innovation, Nokia has held fast in the way it organises and presents core functionality. Not for them a redesigned UI like Office 2007 with its utterly confusing ribbons. Sorry Microsoft but the new Office UI really slows me down.
I wanted the N95 for several reasons. Vanity and cool kudos aside, I’d seen some excellent reviews showing what it can do. It struck me the N95 might make for a reasonable compromise between a high end camera phone and a Crackberry Blackberry Pearl. And so it does.
The 5 megapixel (with inbuilt flash) camera is much better than my Rollei 4000 digital camera. The N95′s screen can be viewed in strong daylight and picture quality is certainly good enough for the casual snapper. The inbuilt MP3 player is adequate but doesn’t come up to iPod standards. Nevertheless, it would be useful for podcasts. My main interest however is in the mobile applications.
There’s a growing list of mostly free applications for the N95. For immediate consumption, I downloaded GMail, GoogleMaps, Fring, FWD (FreeWorldDialup) and a sweet Gmail to Mac Address Book Importer 2, along with the Nokia iSync plug-in for the Mac.
Fring is especially interesting because it lets you use wifi to make calls to other Fring users completely free of charge, including data transfer charges. You can also set it up to access your Skype, GoogleTalk and Twitter accounts providing what amounts to an all-in-one communications environment. As part of my mini-testing process, I sent Tweets over my home wifi network. They transmit faster than those sent directly from the MacBook. Wow!
I also sent Vinnie who is in Florida a test message to see how well it works. Lightning fast and completely reliable. It means that provided the N95 can find my wifi network, I don’t need to be tethered to the laptop. Fring is only available for later E and N Series Nokia devices. These are very popular in EU but not so much in the US. FWD is a free SIP dialup service so that just got thrown into the mix. I don’t know what use I’ll find – yet.
Vinnie was impressed, especially as he expects to be taxed $3.49 a minute plus 20% tax in cell hone charges while traveling in Eastern Europe. I was thinking a little broader. Can you imagine the reduction in communications costs if all your mobile staff had Fring accounts? It makes the €620 I paid for the N95 seem a relative bargain. Especially when I tell you my average cell phone bill is currently running at €130 per month. How much might I save? We’ll see.
Here’s a curious side effect. With Blackberry and similar devices, you are always on which is fine unless you have a constant stream of email coming in when it is a positive irritation. Using the mobile Gmail application, I can decide when to check email. I just did that and found it surprisingly speedy to get through the latest batch. Having a mobile device makes me more picky about what I choose to reply to as I’m not a great fan of using mobile keyboards to type stuff. That might change if I pimp the kit with the optional wireless keyboard.
I’m told that battery life is poor when using mobile applications with GPRS and only time will tell. It will get a serious workout while I’m in London next week. I’ve barely scratched the surface and there’s lots more to discover. But if first impressions are anything to go by then this mashed up gadget freak is seriously impressed. And anyone who knows my curmudgeonly side will also know that takes a lot.
Technorati Tags: innovation, Nokia N95, puppy
