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3 Reasons Why Nokia’s N95 Is NOT A Smartphone – It’s Not Replacing MY Smartphone

Categories: Content, Devices, Nokia, Symbian
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 3:25 AM

Nokia N95 is no smartphone, or superphone - dunce?Yes, yes, the Nokia N95 is a great phone. It has a badass 5MP camera rocking those high-quality Carl-Zeiss optics – like only “ze Germans” can do. It boasts quad-band 3G GSM and GPS radios. It’s got that beautiful, dual-sliding screen. If only it were a smartphone.

You don’t get to be a smartphone by having some nifty features and a nice camera.

  1. Edit Documents
    Being a smartphone is about being “smart” enough to make things easier on the user. Smartphones boost the user’s productivity by helping them shoot out quick emails, text messages, and even edit office documents. The Nokia N95 only gives you an “Office Document Viewer.” You get an email attached office document, you check it over, you try to edit a correction, frustration ensues…
  2. Keyboard
    And speaking of shooting out quick emails and SMS text messages, a smartphone should have a keyboard – not a keypad. Unless you like tapping furiously away at those arthritis-inducing number keys, there’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t want a full keyboard. Think about how much time you waste correcting T9′s text prediction. Forget T9, get QWERTY.
  3. No Touchscreen
    How many d-pad clicks does it take to get to the bottom of an email? Too many, if you don’t have a touchscreen. Viewing webpages is a joy with the Nokia N95′s browser and high-res screen, but navigating through them can be a trying experience – without a touchscreen. And don’t even think about trying to highlight and copy a line of text, you’ll be at it all day – without a touchscreen.

Nokia N95 is no smartphone, or superphone - dunce?To be a smartphone you have to save time and make it easier to edit documents, reply to emails, and navigate webpages. The N95 has such an impressive feature set, it’s really too bad that Nokia left out the right ones. The lack of editor, keyboard, and touchscreen turn these tasks into such an exercise that you might as well just wait ’til you get back to your computer.

In the end, the Nokia N95 is a pretty cool phone, just don’t call it a smartphone.

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About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • dave

    have you ever heard of quickoffice and bluetooth keypads? and the definition of a smartphone is a phone that functions on an open operating system that can install 3rd party apps which last time i checked the n95 could because of its S60 OS. I could go on but you get the point.

  • James

    Talk about a dodgy smartphone definition. The vast majority of smartphones sold don’t include a QWERTY keyboard.

    And if you bothered to research it the on board documents viewer can be upgraded to editing capabilities via SMS payment… The functions there you just need to unlock it.

  • Sid

    I’m with will on this one… Without the QWERTY keyboard -or- a touchscreen, the N95 is just a toy to me.

  • John

    qwerty i dont care about, most phones with them are too bulky (not that the N95 is small by any means) but a touchscreen would have made the n95 so much better

  • dusanb

    Who ever said that a smartphone must have a QWERTY keyboard? The first Windows Mobile smartphones were shipped WITHOUT keyboard, even if they came with Windows Mobile Smartphone edition.

    Regarding the Office things, you can always install the 3rd party software.

    And the touchscreen is not envisioned for this device. Or that’s at least according to Nokia.

    Know any other device that can play YouTube at this moment? :)

  • Daniel

    N95 runs S60, S60 is a User Expandable Operating System, thus a smart phone, and if this phone ran s40 you would be correct. How many “non-smart phones” can view office documents? Yeah that’s right not many.
    C’mon being the mobile & smart phones expert you are, do you remember the 7650?
    -No Touch Screen
    -No QWERTY
    -No document editing out of the box.

    I remember it being referred to as a smart phone.
    Wikipedia is only a few clicks away buddy research your material before you post junk.
    Cheers.

  • lobsterobbster

    With Windows Mobile 6 you can get Youtube to play using mobile flash 7 (which i think is still available for free from adobe in beta)….

  • timmay

    Nowadays most new phones are going to fit that lose definition of a “smartphone” but I think the point is that “SmartPhone” is just a term that’s starting to get thrown around… The N95 is a frickin sweet phone, yes, but will any business professional really be able to use it for work? Not really.

    Maybe it’s the most amazing “funphone” on the market, sure. And I’m sure plenty of real enthusiasts will go out and buy a bluetooth keyboard to carry around with them whenever they want to reply to an email or comment on a website. But c’mon, what company do you EVER see buying these for their employees? Simply put, it’s a phone designed to be cool and fun. Not really useful.

    Don’t get me wrong though, from everything I’ve seen Symbian S60 is awesome, and I think some REAL smart phones will be putting it to more “useful” use in the near future.

  • Will Park

    Yes, there are many ‘smartphones’ our there without keyboards and touchscreens – both past and present devices. But I would argue that we should not label them as a ‘smartphone.’

    The term really is used too loosely – it’s all marketing – I’m with timmay on that one.

  • Eric

    “boasts quad-band 3G GSM”

    eh?

    GSM radio is quad band.

    Does anyone have quad band 3G?

    HTC has tri-band 3G but I’ve never heard of quad band 3G.

    What are these four mythical frequencies? 450, 1700, 1900 and 2100?

  • will

    @ Eric
    That should be read as quad band GSM AND 3G. No mythical frequencies here, just a misunderstanding/typo.

  • John Barton

    N95, and other N9x, is outstanding for its camera and design…while handling docs or speadsheets, you need a touch screen. This is what a general smartphone can hardly do.

  • vinzy

    There is a clear distinctive look btw a smartphone and a pda-phone. smartphone Nokia-symbian mostly fall under pearl DFRD(device family reffernce design) according to which u need a keypad and a screen for the Input and output. And more over a keypad is a better option for a smartphone than a keyboard, coz its a phone which has the functionality of a PDA but firstly it’s a “phone”[talk-listen thing]. And smartphone is a phone which can make u smart(not intelligent) ;) PIM+telephony = smartPhone

  • noki0

    I disagree. PIM+telephony = just about every modern cellphone on the market. I think that if phones evolve so do our definitions. Smartphones of today have evolved into what’s basically a mini computer that should perform most of the same operations efficiently. Convergence in action. I don’t really think that a keypad is all that efficient personally and with the lack of a touchscreen the N95 really would only be good for taking pictures, playing music and making phonecalls. I can do all that on a sub $100 phone (minus the awesome camera). Yeah it’s got a great browser but try navigating complex web pages with a D-pad, pain in the arse!

    I guess it’s just my opinion, everyone is entitled to their own :)

  • Lexi

    This is the best phone in the world as we speak.
    Nokia rules! :mrgreen:

    @timmay
    Do you realise nokia has different classes of phones for different target people. Have you ever heard of nokia business and fashion phones?
    If you have you wouldn’t bringup the issue of the N95 not being bought for employees. Most companies i’ve seen buy the communicator/E-series for their staffs, and not these types.
    Not like these series can’t do the job, but they weren’t fashioned for that.

  • Chuck

    It depends on the user.

    I personally HATE QWERTY keypads, and for the love of me cannot understand why people think they are faster for emails and such. I prefer the standard keypads as found on the Nokia N95. I can shoot out text messages and full length emails about 4x as fast vs a QWERTY pad.

    Unless the QWERTY pad is something you can lay flat on a table and pound on like a PC or Laptop keyboard then I’ll take the regular keypad anyday

  • Darksun

    Hi.Source:wikipedia.This proves u,the writer of the article wrong.According to the def. the nokia n95 is a VERY complete smartphone.Thanks.
    Definition

    Smartphones can be noted by several features which include, but are not limited to, touchscreen, operating system, and tethered modem capabilities on top of the default phone characteristics. A full-fledged email support seems to be a characteristic key defining feature found in all existing and announced smartphones as of 2007[2]. Most smartphones also allow the user install extra software, normally even from third party sources, but some phones vendors like to call their phones smartphones even without this feature.

    Smartphone features tend to include Internet access, e-mail access, scheduling software, built-in camera, contact management, accelerometers and some navigation software as well as occasionally the ability to read business documents in a variety of formats such as PDF and Microsoft Office. :mrgreen:

  • Vaibhav Sharma

    I like many people above don not agree one bit. For me a smartphone is one that allows me to add applications and extend its out of the box features/limitations.

    I for one dont like a touchscreen, its too frigging inconvinient at times. Does that mean i can not have a smartphone? N since i’m not a business professional i dont need office doc editing and even if i do i can always purchase it. I respect your opinion and may be it is accurate for say an Eseries S60 device but not with the nseries :!:

  • Josh

    :???: My last Nokia (before my N95-2) was a 3650 smartphone and it had quite a lot less capabilities than the N95 yet it is still marketed as a smartphone. Hell, if you want QWERTY keyboard, get a portable BT keyboard. If you actually practice with T9 you can get pretty damn fast, even comparable to typing on a PC. The beauty of the N95 being a smartphone is you can pretty much do anything you want with it. If you want touchscreen, get an iPhone, HA!

  • Kickass

    I don’t care if N95 is considered a smart phone or not, the biggest shortcoming for this phone is the lack of QWERTY keyboard, it drives me nuts using the numeric pad to type in information, and the N95 has so many places that needs textual input. I have to keep my blackberry just for the qwerty keyboard and the messaging efficiencies. Otherwise, I am on the N95 bandwagon long ago. So many good software, such great underlying hardware, completely screwed up by the lack of a qwerty. Truthfully, N95 needs triple slide keypads, a slide for numerica keys, a slide for qwerty, and another slide for the media keys. I replace my BB with a cell phone like N95 with qwerty in a heartbeat.

  • bfrordorf

    … the last NOKIA product I bought! Not even the file manager does what it should do: permit to handle / move / rename files.