Martin Murphy linked to an interesting bit of spouting by a Nokia exec on how the Nokia N95 walks all over the iPhone. I won’t get into the feature race debate but will say that having both devices I know which device I’d rather carry around and it isn’t the N95.
What I will loose my lunch over though is:
For a mobile handset to be able to access Web 2.0 applications, that is the key to the future.
Barring the lack of 3G the iPhone is the king of “web 2.0″ delivering phones. The bigger and better screen, the better browser experience, the touch-screen interface. Navigating Flickr, GMail, MySpace, FaceBook, Digg etc. on a N95 is impressive until you try the iPhone. The N95 has a great browser on it (same internals as the iPhone browser actually; webkit) but you have to use the four-way scroller to move a tiny pointer to the link you want to click or to scroll down the page. Hold it down for 15 seconds and you might just get to the end of the Digg page. On some websites I have been unable to select a link because it is between the spaced hops the pointer makes (it moves up and down, left and right on a grid.)
On the iPhone you flick the screen and it scrolls. You tap the link you want to visit. You press the input field you want to fill. You double-tap to zoom in, double tap to zoom out. Want to pan North East? Just drag your finger.
Another thing for the Nokia exec to remember is the numerous iPhone tailored web-apps that are popping up. Digg has an iPhone URL. I haven’t seen one website offer something special for the Nokia N95.
So if the key of future phones is delivering the best web experience then Apple has only one step to make; add 3G. The Nokia N95 has to completely redesign it’s hardware interface and, having used Symbian applications, I’ll buy you a pint if you can make one have the same responsiveness as OS X on the iPhone.
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