I have the N80. I've had it, and used it, for ages - I've just been a little too busy to review it in the depth I would like to.
In any case, rest assured that my comments in "Why you want to buy the N80" remain as accurate as they were on the day I wrote them. The competitive market has undergone a somewhat radical change, however - the range of products is diversifying rapidly, with phones becoming much slimmer (e.g. Samsung's Ultra series) and new market niches being created (e.g. Motorola's Fone, which is a -great- idea).
Even the niche which the N80 is in (Smartphone with no touchscreen) is becoming croweded, what with the availability far more models from Dopod, and a new windows mobile 6.0. But the N80 is still a pretty good buy, as it has become one of the most affordable choices with that featureset.
But it isn't significantly -better- than the competition any longer, and indeed Nokia must produce a "better" handset for upgraders - so what does Nokia have as a response? Why - the Nokia N95! It seems to be really really good - something which is a worthy upgrade in terms of features - which is pretty amazing given the featureset of the N80. The N95 adds GPS, a 5MP autofocus camera (marked with the Carl Zeiss trademark, in case that interests you) along with a substantially larger screen (2.6" vs. 2.1"), while maintaining the smorsmagord (sp) of features already in the N80 (WiFi, Symbian, memory expansion slot). It's also probably going to be physically prettier, although that's hard to say without access to an actual object (*nudge*hint*).
However, there are certain "soft" features which could have well been included in the N80 but were not, and that is the subject of discussion today. What does the N80 do badly, in spite of itself, and what should the N95 include? Here is my list of the most important improvements which will nevertheless never (well. are less likely to) appear in a feature list:
Interface speed - This is much better than the older symbian phones, it's probably marginally more responsive than the 6630/N70, but not close to the newer Nokia Series 40 phones (e.g. 6280) and I think this will actually be improved as the N95 is supposed to include a faster processor. Hopefully there won't need to be too much of a sacrifice in terms of battery life - being able to use the phone for at least a day without recharging is probably the test.
Audio - The audio output is not ideal, because of several things:
1. There is a very subtle background hiss when attached to sensitive headphones when playing music, and there's a very obvious hiss when changing between tracks whatever headphones are in use. I would also say that the included headphones aren't very good, but I suppose asking for that might actually result in a significant price increase. (and I don't have a personal interest in the matter, as I use either Etymotic ER4p's or UE 5 Pro's. :p)
This is also true for the N73, but is hopefully (I don't know) not an issue for the N91. This hiss is correctable - just use a resistor - for example, the one included with UE5's. Nokia would be able to do it better by adding something like that within the circuitry of the phone - if a resistor is added, the only thing which needs to be increased is the amplification ability.
2. The audio quality itself is not so hot. I suppose that this would be expected in a "multifunction" device, but it was a little disconcerting to note that the N80 sounds worse than my old 3G ipod, which is pretty (5? years) old.
3. Music player interface - please please please either use the space in the music player to display the album art, or resign the music player interface such that there's no obvious space. Even better, provide both.
The music player interface, apart from this, is potentially the best of
-ALL- portable mp3 players on the market, because ipod wheel scrolling (and the U10's d-click) lose as compared to being able to type the name of the song you want (assuming you have at least 2GB of songs). The player also lists what's coming up next, which is a sweet touch. The other thing which might be interesting to add is some easy interface to select the upcoming songs - the best implementation of this I've seen is the "party playlist' feature in iTunes.
The N95 makes it even better with dedicated start/stop/forward/backward buttons.
4. Jack sensing - please at least make it an option for the music to stop playing when headphones are removed or the adaptor is removed. It's something which the phone does detect in any case.
Apps/phone software - the apps and the integral operating system that the phone shipped with have also improved, but several things could change for the better:
1. Calculator - Work out a deal with mtvoid, pretty please, and include Calcium as part of the package. It's an excellent calculator.
2. WiFi access - the current interface sucks. Really. It's not actually difficult to create creating access point profiles - but finding out how to do it is really tough. This is why you have usability specialists right? Make profiles creatable more easily! Bonus points if an easy way to authenticate with "free" Wifi hotspots which require you to access a webpage to enter information is implemented.
3. application stability - I get software (including snake) killing themselves sometimes when messages come in or the phone rings. This really shouldn't happen. I also can't zoom more than 50% in the gallery without getting an "out of memory" message. Messages like that are also not uncommon when using the browser.
4. Calendar - please include tasks categorization.
5. Clock - support for NTP servers please! Given the "connectedness" of the phone, this should be included.
6. USB transfer - I bet you didn't know (unless you own an N80) that it's only USB 2.0 in terms of conformance to that specification - transfer speeds of the N80 are limited to USB 1 speeds (i.e. super slow.) I hope that the N95 actually supports USB 2.0 in terms of it's higher transfer speed. Note that this is not deceptive marketing or anything like that - for some reason the USB-standards body said this is kosher.
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I think that this list of items actually demonstrates that Nokia did pretty well with the N80. Hopefully the N95 will also be basically all that is promised... although for my audio "woes" I might be best served by just going to get a new ipod...
