iPhone and Nokia N95 represent the best products from the companies which manufacture them, and it often happens someone to compare these smartphones when potential customers are up to make a purchasing decision. The iPhone is more mass and entertainment oriented, while the N95 goes offering features to professional consumers. It's interesting to compare them step by step, on each feature, because this is how you can make a good opinion on both products and you can choose on of them for you.
Some people would say that iPhone is not a smartphone, but I can contradict them because this device is a great feature phone and it has been created on a great software engineering base. The browser is pretty cool and the phone's media player is outstanding. It is very easy for iTunes users to upload photos, music and videos. It is also very easy to sync the calendar, the bookmarks and the contacts, and this makes this phone a cool personal use device, and not only, it can be successfully used by business users, after they install few applications from the AppStore.
N95 can do the things I've mentioned, but it takes a little more time to configure the sync process and there are no available solutions for syncing on Mac products and you can't sync your bookmarks. For Nokia users, there is Nokia PC Suite, but it can't be compared to iTunes or bookmark syncing on iPhone. iPhone can only send SMS messages to a single contact, and you can't forward a SMS to another person. Moreover, SMS is not offered by iPhone. For users who got used sending pictures over MMS, they will have to reconsider the e-mail support on iPhone. On iPhone, you can set up as ringtones only tracks you got from iTunes, while Nokia N95 offers the possibility to use any sound file you like as a ringtone.
Marketing can make miracles and make something to seem in clients' perception that it is more than it really is. Apple strategy is stunning, and we all "know" that iPhone is everything you need, in a nice packaging; you even get a red bow and it looks great: you have an iPhone, which includes all the features you need. Apple support their strategy by targeting a mass audience, and actually the product they sell and the image they create for it fits a lot of people. Nokia, on the other hand, has a different marketing strategy and they are targeting intense mobile users, and sometimes professionals.
Nokia N95 has the video center application installed, which is great for browsing, downloading and watching videos from various sources, including the well known YouTube. Flash Lite 3 is upcoming and it will offer users the possibility to view videos on web pages too. iPhone can do this only with h.264 content, and its media capabilities are still under development.
N95 has a 5Mp camera, a great flash and it can record at 30fps at a very good resolution. DVD-quality, as Nokia says is a quite stretch term for their video quality on N95, but the results are stunning, and you can compare it to something projected on a large screen. N95 can post images to Flickr and videos to Vox (the images with EXIF included and at full size), and the third party applications allow you to post content to blogs or in other online destinations. iPhone has a 2 Mp camera, which is good for still pictures, but has no video support, and when you want to send any picture, the iPhone automatically resizes it to 640x480 and erases the EXIF.
Both smartphones have 802.11g WiFi connection, but when you start downloading content or you stream it over 3G connection in a train or in a car, you might expect more then what WiFi offers; EDGE is good to check the email you have received. N95 can be used as a Bluetooth modem for the laptop, thing which cannot be done with the iPhone. N95 is great for transferring large files, and for this you really need a good speed.
Nokia N95 and iPhone have the same core engine for their browsers, webkit, and the iPhone comes closer to a desktop experience, because tabbed browsing is available, and Safari also restores tabs if crash or restart happen. N95 doesn't support multi tab browsing and it actually doesn't have enough RAM resources for multiple window surfing. Maybe in the future versions of the browser we will have this capability too.
iPhone has been hacked to make room for more applications, and it seems to be a single firmware version hacking because it doesn't bring users an open system for applications, and this hacking process does not give the user total freedom over the iPhone. Developping Safari can be done through Safari and it actually limits you to online services, without any local storage, you cannot access the basic feature and sync them with your online version ( contacts, calendar). There is no API for serious developments, while N95 allows adding a lot of applications which suit your needs. You can snap pictures and lifestream them to Flickr, and this is done with more applications: Zonetag accesses the location data and uploads it along with the picture and the EXIF data, for example.
The main advantage is that N95 is an unbranded unlocked device, while iPhone is strongly linked to AT&T carrier. N95 allows you to do whatever you want with the device, and you are free to change the SIM card, according to the carrier available, if you travel a lot, for example.
iPhone is a very strong product, very well marketed, which offers people more than they ever considered to be a handset, but there are advanced users who see beyond this commercial beauty and they might want something more advanced, like N95 offers, and which we hope to bring soon a visible firmware improvement. It's very important to choose the product which fits best your needs and preferences.
