I finally saw the Nokia N95 smartphone up close and personal. And, it is quite a phone. The top (left in this phone) slides out to reveal the multimedia controls. The bottom (right on this photo) slides out to reveal a dialing keyboard. The lack of a QWERTY thumb keyboard is the only shortcoming to this otherwise remarkable looking phone. I wish Nokia had used an LCD soft keypad like Microsoft does in Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition devices and provided a pull out QWERTY keyboard at the bottom instead.
The web browser appeared to render much faster than my Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. It uses a full-screen desktop-like view with a thumbnail navigation window that zooms in like the Microsoft Research Deepfish experimental browser does. Of course, the difference is that this is available in a production Nokia device. That said, the device is unavailable from carriers in the US at the moment. Navigation between applications seemed very crisp.
Speaking about applications, Nokia announced their Series 60 Web Runtime and Widgets for S60 phones today. I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow.
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In terms of using the MiniMap browser, I think it’s actually best on the Nokia E61 – the screen is larger and it seems more usable.
My only problem is a lack of a touchscreen. When I first used an E61, I kept wanting to tap the screen!
Personally, I use Opera on my WM5 handset, and have it collapse pages into a single column. The webkit-based browser on my E65 is nice, but I’d rather it squished the pages to fit on the screen than have me scroll around all the time.
Ah, so it’s not Opera like on the N800. Interesting. The N800 is not a bad device, I’ve been having fun playing with mine for the last couple of weeks.
John: You are correct. The browser used by the N95 has been around at least 12 months (probably closer to 18 months). I guess 18 months = ages these days :-). However, the point remains that it renders much faster than the Mobile Internet Explorer used on the Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PCs I use and seems to have a more natural and better user interface.
There’s nothing special about the browser in the N95 – it’s been around for ages, and is used on the N80 and later Nseries, most of the Eseries, and some other S60 handsets.