Mobile choice

[smilodon]

In the meantime

1. Nice slider phone. Not small but fits in a pocket fine
2. Simbian OS. Very powerful and there are masses of free and cheap pieces of software for it. You can find almost anything you want somewhere on the web.
3. Likewise themes and wallpapers. There are whole web sites dedicated to supporting the N95 and the Symbian OS
4. Decent Sat Nav built in. Free unless you want voice directions
5. Good media player and music player so you can dump your ipod.
6. 3G fast internet
7. 5 megapixel camera with decent Carl Zeiss optics. Decent quality if you are looking for a snapper.
8. VGA video recorder
9. Easy to use wifi
10. Bluetooth and loads of compatible accessories.

Downside.
1. Poor battery life. Will need a daily charge if you give it 'average' use. The sat nav will kill the battery after about 45 minutes use.
2. Firmware upgrades improve the battery quite a lot, however if you get the phone with a mobile phone package it will be branded for that network and the firmware updater will not work. It's pretty easy to unlock the phone although it could have implications for your warranty. If you buy it unbranded it will cost £300+ but will have no firmware issues
3. Slider feels a little flimsy although mine is going strong after a year
4. The digital zoom is dreadful (all digital zooms are worthless) so work on the basis there is no camera zoom regardless of what Nokia say
5. Which Magazine say Nokia is only average for reliability

Basically this is the most full featured mobile phone in the world. It does everything and does it pretty well. When it was launched in 2007 it took the  mobile phone market by storm and won a mass of awards and editors choices. However unless you are 'power' mobile user i.e. you use a combination of some of the following web, e-mail, mp3 player, camera, sat nav or 3rd party software you'll arguably be wasting your money and should look for something smaller with a better battery life.

N95 8gig review

N95 original review

[ChimpBoy]

Cheers for the review mate - much appreciated.

I had a quick browse, filtering the features I wanted and that seemed to be the popular one.  I was looking for something with the following features:

• Speaker phone
• Camera (just to take quick snaps - doesn't need to be ace)
• Tri/Quad band
• MP3
• FM radio
• Web browsing
• Video
• Bluetooth
• GPS (although a nice to have, not essential - TomTom & AtoZ can get me through)

N95 seemed to have all of that, but I'm sure there are others.  It's just been so long since I had a personal mobile that I'm a bit lost with all the variety nowadays to be honest.

[GhostMjr]

Contract renewal is due for me too in 4 months. Luckily you can stop the active stand by mode in the new nokia N series which drove me insane when i test drove the n82 and n73. I currently have a 6300 but this feels cramped when typing text messages as does the n82. I want wifi really and the ability to look at pdf/ office documents. The N95 does all these but i like the styling of the n73/ n82 as they are not sliders. I hope they'll let me keep my £10 contract .

[T-Bag]

N95 Pros:
Good phone, nokia has the interface sorted out the box
Camera is 5MP which is loads
8GB of storage can't be a bad thing
Symbian lets you customise the phone a reasonable amount

Cons:
It's not the most modern design
The Sat-Nav costs extra

Windows Mobile 5 Pros
More programs available - yet more customisation
Working sat-nav on some phones
Big Touch Screens are cool in my book

Cons:
Harder to use out the box (txting really needs a downloaded keyboard)
Much harder to use for videos

I'm still bigging up the WM5 side, they're good phones.