The Nokia N95 is now shipping
By Stefan Constantinescu on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 4:05 PM PST In Devices
The official press release says:
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) today announced that the Nokia N95 started shipping in key European, Asian and Middle Eastern markets, with expanded shipments to other markets in those regions in the coming weeks.
<insert 6 paragraphs of technical specifications; if you want specs: GSM Arena>
All About Symbian received a retail Nokia N95 with special edition packaging; check out their unboxing pictures and mini preview.
One (major) thing to note:
Firmware is v10.0.018, dated 15-March-2007, which bodes well, it seems stable so far. NSU says there’s no more recent update. The bad news is that camera images still have that rose-tinted glow that has been much remarked upon. After talking to the N95 product manager, Rafe has ascertained that they’re well aware of the problem and that a fix will make its way into a firmware update.
Two words: Rushed Launch. If I’m going to spend close to $800 on a GPS enabled camera phone phone … I want my images to be absolutely brilliant. The entire point of this device is to snap pictures, hit a button and then have them appear on Flickr (or VOX, etc.) in a matter of seconds. No time to load up Photoshop or Picasa to do color correction.
The Nokia N800 suffered the same fate. It was released at CES in January without Skype support and a whole bunch of UI and OS quirks.
Both the N95 and N800 are going to get software updates that solve any lingering issues, but isn’t the first impression the most important?
It is for me.
UPDATE: I’d still give up an organ to own this phone, I’m just a perfectionist asshole. That one characteristic of my personality is the main angle (and point) of this blog. I want to see Nokia improve in the future. They are truly an innovative company who pushes the boundaries of what mobile phones are capable of. I love them for it.
That being said, I also love pointing out their faults and asking more and more out of their engineers.
Building the perfect phone isn’t something you can do in a vacuum. Users like myself and everyone of you who post comments on all the Nokia/S60 blogs out there help bring that goal of perfection closer to reality every year.
Yeah, it would have been nice if they had removed the purple tint. However, I would bet that 99.9% of the people who will buy the phone 1) will never ever notice it 2) even if they do don’t care much as they view the pics 99% of the time on the phone screen or at best heavily compressed on computer screens.. 3) they don’t read phone reviews. So I don’t think hurts Nokia a whole lot in the end.
man seriously thats gay, like comon man,, wats with 5 meg and a computer phone while u need a computer to fix the pics for u,no big difference between the proto and this one, noting changed,so wat was the wait for and , wow , nokia good job,, but stil i preordered it so ya,, this is why i am pissed,, dam $1200 on this phone,with other acceries make it $1450
Its only £89.99 with a mid range contract in the UK, expect it to be free within 6 months.
http://www.mad4mobilephones.com/news/680/
makes for prettier sunset pics?
funny, I don’t notice the rose-tint. maybe I like warmer colors? I even commented in one case that it’s not as red as it should’ve been:
http://cybette.vox.com/library/post/seeing-red-over-the-weekend.html
too bad the in-phone editing features don’t include colour correction
I don’t think I’ve yet seen a flawless mobile, which leads me to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a perfect device but I (we?) still love them.
There’s always firmware updates that makes things better and new devices to drool over to forget about flaws on older devices but I certainly love to point out issues and I continuosly keep buying new devices with enhanced stuff in it..
I am not sure Nokia will be able to fix the rose tint problem entirely, as I think it is a hardware rather than software. The reason why the Nokia colour adjustment is not working on the final production model is due to th variable amounts of rose tint which is dependant on the shooting environment! In essence Nokia needed to add an IR sensor to the side of the lense, measure the amount and hence be able to calculate the amount of colour correction to add. Better solution Nokia should have done before releasing was to scap the old camera system and redo it completely with proper infrared filter.
Mazor
i find that sometimes adjusting the white balance before taking the picture helps
They could build the perfect phone. Just take the N95 and put on a camera like on the Samsung B600 which has a variable lens with optical zoom, put in an internal harddisk of at least 8gb like in the N91 music edition for all the photos, videos, music and maps, put on a better battery, and put in a sirfstar 3 instead of a sirfstar 2 for the gps and there you have it. Sounds impossible but that was the N95 also until about 6 months ago.
The nokia n95 is finally available on a pay monthly contract in the UK. To see a list of online retailers stocking the nokia n95 visit http://www.nokia-n95.co.uk/
Hi Stefan,
thanks for your very interesting words. It is good that you also write about the negatives. I personally have used the AMAZING E65 (with a truly crap camera) for more then 2 weeks now and have become a Nokia lover. I would love to swap my phone against this N95 but will have to wait another year to see what is available then. Well done for this post and well done to Nokia for this truly amazing new series of phones. André