1st few days with the Nokia N95 8GB

After using my N95 8GB for a few days, finally got the hang of numeric pad SMSing again, it had been almost 5 over years since I used a phone with a proper numeric keypad… no more funny side keypads with my old SX1 or having the need to use a stylus with my HP rw6828. I can actually SMS with one hand now! LoL, but WOW! Ok go ahead and laugh….

The 2.8″ screen is very big and nice, even bigger than my HP pocket pc. The rotating menus are very cool, too bad they are not part of the main IU navigation. The thing which really shines in this phone is the camera, the pictures are really nice and clear, not to mention the video at 30fps as well, too bad the camera settings cannot be saved and the you can change the camera shutter to 4 different capture sounds except OFF, weird…

Strangely, I can get my phone one-touch paired to my A2DP Motorola bluetooth head stereo headset, but the played music always simply skips whenever I play it, dang. Good thing I can use the 3.5mm jack with my own headphones without the need for an adapter. My biggest complain is with the N95 is particularly that of nature of series 60 3rd edition phones as well- Unlike the old s60 phones I’ve previously owned- you need to go through some redundantly dumb certificate signing, which serves no other purpose but just a barrier to install 3rd party applications. Sure extra security you can call it, but I can just simply sign all the software myself using my developer’s account at symbiansigned.com, anyone can do that and once you get the hang of it, you can practically install most compatible software. I simply see what’s the need for the signing feature.

After spending the whole of yesterday installing countless number of applications, it’s disappointing I can’t install all my old s60 applications I brought for old SX1 previously- they all simply cannot be used with the new Symbian OS at all, just great. Now I have to get a new irRemote control software (for coffee shop TV channel changes and school air-con adjustment), Bluetooth presenter and the CORE video player to play Dixv, Xvid, WMV files as the phone is unable to do so out of the box. Wonder are there any freeware alternatives I can use.

Maybe I could have excited the phone alittle more than usual the last few days, but the battery life is kinda short, I had to charge almost everyday, with some music, Wi-fi for emails, MSN, some SMSing, short chatting and few photos for my blog, the most it can last is one day+. I doubt the phone can last a full day photo-hunt marathon on the streets.