iPhone vs Nokia N96 : Battle of 2008

In my opinion the iPhone is the better phone here. Personally I expected better from Nokia when it comes to battery power, 2.5 hours of call time is frankly not enough from a phone manufacturer that has been in the business for so long and is aware of the consumers needs. I can accept that the iPhone is a letdown when it comes to its camera. The 2 megapixels and no flash are no match for the nokia’s 5 megapixels. It is obviously beaten by the nokia here. Overall however the iPhone is definitely the winner for me, longer battery life, both call time and music playback make it more suitable for long days out.

WTF, thats not the n96 in the pic

Don’t be too quick to praise the N96 – I bought mine six months ago and is the worst phone I have EVER owned…

First of all, it is slow. VERY slow. My contacts list takes 15-20 seconds to load when selected – and I have the latest firmware available to me here in Australia (12.043).

The TV you rate so highly is useless if, like most places around the world, there is no-one transmitting DVB-H – nobody does in Australia. Nokia make a big thing in their marketing here about a feature NOBODY can use, and are unlikely to in the life of this phone (unless they take it overseas).

The turn-by-turn GPS is NOT out-of-the-box. Here in Australia, you get a short free-trial and then you have to pay an additional $130/year to use it! Nowhere is THAT mentioned in their marketing! I tried the free-trial and it was useless – frequently crashing the phone and constantly gave wrong directions. The user interface is, quite frankly, terrible. I gave up and bought a dedicated sat-nav instead. At least that doesn’t disappear when a call comes in!

Bluetooth A2DP? Don’t even get me started! Did you even TRY this feature?! Obviously not, because you would have found IT DOESN’T WORK! The music suffers from the equivalent of a disk-skip every 10 seconds or so – the music isn’t constantly streamed. As good as useless. My $200 Parrot Party Bluetooth speaker unit is useless as a result (correction: everyone else can connect with THEIR phones – SonyEricsson, LG, Samsung etc. – Me, with my ‘market leading Nokia’ phone that cost more than theirs PUT TOGETHER simply won’t stream the music cleanly and sounds horrible).

Nokia have short-changed their customers by supplying a phone with a grossly-underpowered processor. It simply is NOT fast enough to handle the features.

So you read the spec sheets of each product and made your judgment. So did I. I have never regretted a purchase decision so badly as I did when buying the N96. For me, it was like waiting for Christmas only to find my new toy was smashed and broken upon opening it. Nokia’s customer service has been abysmal – TWO requests for service submitted via their own website – WITH confirmatory emails from them saying someone would get back to me in 72 hours, but so far, nothing. That was 5 months ago.

I guess they’re busy fighting all those other N96 fires.