#telstradesire vs Nokia N95-8gb
When I entered the Telstra Social Reviewers I said I was interested in geodata and that what I wanted out of it was to know if it was time to upgrade my 3 year old Nokia N95-8gb.
For the really lazy… Here is my conclusion..
I like the HTC, I like Android and I’m finding myself living more and more connected due to this phone. If you use Google a lot, this is the phone for you, if you use Google a bit, this is the phone that will make you use Google alot. There is a lot to like about it, there is a lot to be frustrated by it. But will I recommend it to people. Yes, with a big caveat you have to be someone with time to invest to get used to it. Also this phone is for someone with a dataplan. If you don’t have a decent data plan you are not going to get the most of out it.
On with the review…. my 3 year old nokia…Most people would say.. but the phone is three years old.. why haven’t you upgraded. The reason was evolution not revolution. The original N95 to me was the Revolutionary phone.. the N95-8gb which I got was the evolution. One of the reasons for getting was that it had Flash Lite 2.1… aka Flash Lite with Flash 7 video. (Sorry Steve but flash has been on mobiles for a few years now!), coupled with the GPS, wifi and 5 Mega pixel camera this phone still served me well.
What is interesting is that on paper the HTC-Desire is so close in so many areas. At least for the things that I was particularly interested in. Of course I am moving from the old Nokia to the new HTC as my new base phone, but what I think I should point out is just where the phones are different.
Comparison Table N95 – HTC (Table Modified from – GSM Arena)
| Display | ||
| TFT, 16M colors | AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors | |
| 240 x 320 pixels, 2.8 inches | 480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches | |
| - Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate | - Multi-touch input method - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Optical trackpad - HTC Sense UI |
|
| Speakers | Stereo | Mono |
| Memory | ||
| Internal | 8 GB storage, 128 MB RAM | 576 MB RAM; 512 MB ROM |
| Card slot | No | microSD, up to 32GB, 2GB included |
| Data | ||
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g |
| Bluetooth | Yes, v2.0 with A2DP | Yes v2.1 with A2DP |
| USB | Yes, v2.0 miniUSB | Yes, microUSB v2.0 (Includes Charging Via USB) |
| Camera | ||
| Primary | 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash | 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash |
| Video | Yes, VGA@30fps | Yes, WVGA (800×480 pixels) @ 15fps |
| Secondary | QVGA videocall camera | No |
| OS | Symbian OS 9.2, S60 rel. 3.1 | Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair) |
| CPU | Dual ARM 11 332 MHz processor; 3D Graphics HW Accelerator | Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor |
| SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging | SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM | |
| WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML | HTML | |
| Stereo FM radio; Visual radio | Stereo FM radio with RDS | |
| Maps | Ovi Offline Maps (Now $10) | Offline Maps with 3rd Party $50) |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS support; Nokia Maps | Yes, with A-GPS support |
| - Dual slide design | - Digital compass | |
| - WMV/RV/MP4/3GP video player | - Dedicated search key | |
| MP3/WMA/WAV/RA/AAC/M4A music player | - Google Search, Maps, Gmail | |
| - TV-out | - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration | |
| - Organizer | MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV9 player | |
| - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) | MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA9 player | |
| - Voice dial/memo | - Facebook, Flickr, Twitter applications | |
| - Push to talk | - Voice memo | |
| Battery | ||
| Standard battery, Li-Ion 1200mAH (BL-6F) | Standard battery, Li-Ion 1400 mAh | |
| Stand-by | Up to 280 h | Up to 340 h (2G) / Up to 360 h (3G) |
| Talk time | Up to 6 h | Up to 6 h 40 min (2G) / Up to 6 h 30 min (3G) |
For me what is interesting is that the Nokia still holds its own in a large number of these fields, including camera, wifi, gps and multitasking.
I’ve given the nod to Nokia for battery as well whilst on paper the HTC is the better battery, not once you start using the features of the phone and features is what is comes down to. Until people start putting “using the phone time” in battery life is somewhat of a useless number. 9 years ago this kind of computer was top end sitting on your desktop. Now it is in your hand.
The camera also goes to Nokia as well for the optics, but the camera controls are more refined on the HTC, but the dedicated Camera button on the Nokia is much easier to use, also the way you hold the phone is much easier with the Nokia and on the HTC I kept covering the lens with my hand.
The screen goes hands down to the HTC, it is a joy to use and is so bright and clear that even going back to the Nokia for 20 minutes was to be honest quite hard just to read the text on the screen.
I’ve already blogged about the GPS, which is incredibly fast and responsive and with the digital compass a huge advance of the Nokia. Couple that with the beautiful screen it is a great car gps as well. However Nokia still have one big thing over all the Android phones and that is Ovi Maps. The fact that you can now get (on all new Nokia’s) free world wide offline maps this is something that I missed with the HTC. I often use my Nokia to plan routes or when I am travelling outside phone coverage and even in the dense urban areas your map never goes offline and you never have to pay for data charges to get maps.
The Android Store can be a dogs breakfast when using if from your phone. Sure if you know just what you are after then it is great, but it still needs a lot of work to be really user friendly and help users find the apps and give them the control on sorting. However there are number of third party solutions, AppBrain in particular is very handy giving you control over your apps and the ability to see what your friends have installed.
I miss my Real Player and my Divx player as well. Like a number of things, that is not HTC’s fault, nor Androids, someone hasn’t built them yet. Sure people scoff at Real Player, but there are a lot of sites that still use it and a lot of streaming radio uses it as well. I am going to miss the TV out function as well, I liked being able to see my camera photos on the tv when I was travelling.
The wifi in the Desire is very impressive… getting signals at the other end of my house where the Nokia doesn’t. Which means that I can be a little bit further out from free wifi and still get a signal, which suits me perfectly.
As for the Telstra set up, I get where they were coming from in the way they put the apps on. Sure they want to push their own brand, but do it right. WAP is not an Application.. so don’t make things look like Apps that are just WAP Links.. Further why WAP… seriously this phone can display stunning webpages.. make light version of the page yes, but not WAP. And let people remove them. Why introduce limitations to a device that was designed not to have them.
As for Network, if you live outside the major metro’s I would say Telstra hands down. If you travel outside the metro’s frequently also Telstra hands down. Nationally their network is fantastic. Yes when they say their coverage is in more place and is stronger they are telling the truth. If you live in the city though other factors can come into play… price is the biggest one.
Using the HTC is fast, it is very responsive and with the update to Android hopefully due soon it should be even faster. Couple that with Flash 10.1 and this phone is seriously going to rock. I look forward to seeing what Nokia can come up with, but it looks like Android have me in their grasp for a while yet.
When I work out more things… I’ll just add more blog posts.. but without the hashtag 
Then Choose create file only.
