I've been using the Nokia N95 as a primary phone for several months. Like everyone who got the early release of this phone, I wrote some pretty glowing reviews. But I owe you all some comments after months of use too.

The phone has a phenomenal feature set. Stellar camera. On board GPS. Media player. It's a delight in terms of form factor. One of my all time favorites.

But it's far from perfect. The battery life, while greatly improved from when I first got it, remains mediocre on its best days. The camera bug has apparently been fixed with firmware upgrade as I haven't seen that in a while.

My complaint? Not enough memory to do anything really. Play media and attempt to take a picture and you get an out of memory message. Load both Jaiku and Shozu and try for a picture? Nope. Let Jaiku, Shozu and TalkPlus run concurrently? Guaranteed headaches.

In this original version of the N95, users need to gracefully accept KERN3 EXEC messages. For the unknowing, that's the N95 BSOD. It locks up. It reboots itself. It's generally just not reliable enough for anything mission critical. In short, it's leagues away from being an acceptable business class phone.

After months of use, I still love it, but the headaches that seemed minor in the early going are now a source of routine frustration almost daily. And while it's a fabulous gadget, when you have an N95 in one pocket and a Blackberry in the other, the battery life and stability quickly becomes very obvious.

Nokia markets the N95 as a lifestyle device, not a business phone. That's a wise choice. And now there's a new N95. I have no idea if I'll see one of those or not, but I'm confident it's a complete generation improved. And that's something the N95 needs...improvement


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