The official press release says:
Nokia 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.