My new shiny Nokia N95 uber-phone arrived. So far, I am very pleased with it - this is by far the best phone / personal computing device I’ve ever had and quite a lot better than what I’d expected

• Phone: the basic phone functionality works just fine. That should be obvious, but it isn’t always the case with the most sophisticated computer-phones on the market.
• Web browser: as far as I’m concerned this is the most important function after the phone itself - I find it very convenient to have web access at all times. The browser is very good from both usability and rendering perspective - I’ve used it successfully to access all sites I use regularly.
• Email: I haven’t even tried the built-in email client. Instead I downloaded the GMail mobile application, which works great.
• VOIP: I haven’t played much with the built-in SIP client (unlike Vodafone and Orange, O2 don’t disable it). I just installed Fring, which allows me to connect to Skype, Google Talk and SIP at the same time, and works well. Nice!
• Music: The built-in music player is usable and with 1GB of memory (which I might increase later on if I find that use the phone as a walkman often enough) I can definitely enjoy listening to music from time to time (I still hate listening on headphones, though).
• Camera: have only played with the camera a bit, but it’s surprisingly good, and with 5 megapixel resolution not having mechanical zoom almost doesn’t matter - this camera is about as good as my dedicated one.
• Product design: elegant, usable, light and though only time will tell, the device feels pretty robust.

Some things I found disappointing:

• GPS: the phone boasts built-in GPS, but no matter how hard I tried - indoors, outdoors, on the bus, I haven’t managed to get it to work. This isn’t a feature I need desperately, but what’s the point of including it if it doesn’t work?
• Amplifier: as is often the case with such devices, the amplifier is very weak - not enough to allow me to play music in volume sufficient to block the noises of the outside world.
• Battery: You have to be very careful - after using enough of the extra functions, like WiFi connectivity and music play for only a few hours, the battery goes dangerously low.
• Multimedia menu: what a silly idea - in addition to the normal, and perfectly usable menu, Nokia have included another menu - the multimedia menu, with it’s own dedicated button. The extra menu is barely usable, because it triggers slow and confusing animations after every click you make - it allows you to access a subset the same applications you would access from the normal menu. Pointless!