On paper, the more powerful N95 should crush the iPhone

Nokia has also made mistakes in the mobile phone market. It has a string of weaker products behind it, which have been met with embarrassment at best, but in 2006 it hopes to smooth the wrinkles on its fans’ foreheads with the best of the best, the feature-packed Nokia N95, which is supposed to have everything in one. Everything we’ve only dreamed of so far: from a camera and video camera to GPS and an accelerometer to fast 3G/HSPA data and even WiFi. The most feature-packed phone of all time, which has left the competition miles behind, according to both the phone’s presentation and the responses in discussions. But the phone wasn’t on the market yet.

According to its specifications, the Nokia N95 was a super-powerful phone. But it was too complicated to use and was far from being fine-tuned. It didn’t beat the Apple iPhone, but it wasn’t a complete failure either.

Image: Nokia N95

The company unveiled the phone in September 2006, but software problems delayed its launch until the end of the year. And then the beginning of the next. Then the guy in the turtleneck unveiled the iPhone, and the more enlightened people at Nokia realized that they had to get everything done before Jobs released the iPhone.

At the time, the iPhone couldn’t even compete with the N95 on paper: it had WiFi, but only slow 2G/EDGE data, it lacked GPS, it had a noticeably weaker camera, and there was simply no indication of a level playing field. But Nokia rushed the whole thing, partly because it had been a long time coming. And so the N95 hits select markets in March, with larger quantities shipping in April and May.

It wasn’t until June 2007 that the iPhone went on sale. A weak, pathetic iPhone. But compared to the N95, it had refined software, a clearly usable browser, and multimedia that people were willing to use intuitively. And it came with a demonstratively thin one-page manual, while Nokia supplied a centimeter-thick book with the N95.

Reviewers couldn’t help but notice that the N95 didn’t have very good software. Working with contacts was slow, the phone sometimes did what it wanted, and synchronization was problematic. It wasn’t a joy to use, while the iPhone, which was weaker on paper, was captivating. And reviewers and the market let Nokia know it.

After the iPhone was launched, Nokia tried to improve the phone with several software and hardware revisions, including a version with an extra 8GB of memory, but customers did not like the N95 as much as the company had expected. This was the first warning sign that the stock market had not yet noticed. At the end of 2007, Nokia’s shares were at their highest point since the dot-com bubble. One slip-up doesn’t mean anything…

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On paper, the more powerful N95 should crush the iPhone

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