I Love What’s Under The Hood, But Not The Hood Itself
Around 2 months ago, I decided to sell my old Nokia 3250 as well as my Qtek 9100 in order to get a second hand N95-1. Basically, I got it for around 350$, quite the sum when you’re an unemployed college student. But I knew I would be getting the do-it-all king of handsets. One week into it, I was in love with what’s inside the hood, but not with the hood itself.
I am still in disbelief as to whether Nokia could put something like the N95 together. I mean Nokia are the kings of sturdy and amazingly built devices, we have praised them for years now for how you can drop your Nokia, then pick it up and get going like nothing ever happened. Unfortunately, this is not something you can say about the N95. Even though mine is a 2nd hand device, and I am sure the previous owner wasn’t a careful one, the built quality is simply NOT acceptable for a 1yr old handset. The slider is wobbly as hell, and when it’s closed, I have heartaches each time I use the d-pad because I feel it’s collapsing under my fingers. The screws used to keep the top part of the screen with the slider together are super poor quality, and totally useless now, to a point where I decided to glue the screen parts together, yes GLUE them. There’s also a defect in the way the back cover gets fixed on the device.
I have had other sliders from Nokia in my hand, like mainly the 6111 and the E65. Those were sliders, like sliders are supposed to be. Superbly built, extremely nice feel in the hand, and well there isn’t a glitch about them. Now try to grab an Nseries slider, and see how poorly they’re built. It annoys the hell out of me. I wonder why Nokia considers that business users deserve a well-built handset, but not entertainment and power-users. I mean this is the category of people which is most likely to drop the device, or send it flying across the room: they are active people. Plus the N95 has so many features, it basically begs to be handled and used.
In conclusion, I decided I won’t be buying a slider Nseries handset from Nokia again, since they consider they don’t deserve a decent external quality to match with the hardware inside. It’s candybar all-the-way for me.
The only slider Nokia do that I rate is the 6110 Navigator. The slide stays firm even after 18 months of use and several “Trips to the floor”. I have a N95 from my work and I had to use a fix I found on the internet to sort the slider and even then its still piss poor. Totally agree, very poor design nokia. Must try harder!
I don’t think you should judge, specially that you didn’t try the N95 8GB, where the slider part is improved.
n82 FTW
When it first came out here in Norway it had the plum and sand variant of the N95.
The seller told me that the sand version didn’t have the slider issue while the plum version had this.
The seller himself had to apply the “tape trick” on his handset while I didn’t
However after unscrewing and changing the retail cover to a black cover bought on ebay, the slider got a little looser.
Reading the N95 service manual and looking into it, it seems as the bad build quality of the N95 lies in the slider mechanism itself.
There are 2 screws on each side which you can not tighten much more than the default. If that was possible it wouldn’t wooble much as these locks the “rails” in place.
Currently waiting for the N96 but I hope that the slider has improved over the N81 / N81 8 GB as it seems to be prone to woobles after much use.
Always had candybar phones from Nokia except the N95 and was a bit dissapointed of it.
I agree on the fact that N-series sliders are of bad quality (N95, N81) but I think it is because these users are more likely to replace their phones more often than E-series users.
The average users replace their phones after most 2-3 years and one of the market strategies is to not build the best phones, in terms of build quality and specs so that chance of selling new phones are higher. Unfortunately this fact is not just for mobile phones but applies to all the things surrounding us.
theres only one thing i can tell u.
FORGOT n81, FORGET n95.
use that n82 u won as ur main device. its the 6630 of 2008.
i didnt enter that competition because i thought they wouldnt send anything all the way to India (if i won anything that is).
Are they going to ship it to lebenon?
Oh by the way, heres an example of how sturdy the n82 is.
was getting out of a cab, the phone was on my lap.
it fell INTO this gutter/ditch/thingy.
it got completely immersed in DIRTY mcuky water.
took it apart, left it for a couple of hours, and it worked perfectly.
a similar thing had happened to an earlier phone and i had to pay a bomb to get it fixed.
“Business-Phones” were never built for hardcore users like us! They are made to keep it in the poket of a business suite and to put it on the table in front of you! Unfortunately …
I never had a PH that was built “good enough”!
Hey Rita,
nice to see another post from you. I was worried about your long absence from the blogosphere since I’ve read about some violent activities going on in Lebanon.
About the N95, come on, it can’t be that bad. I had my N95-1 for almost a year and it was still very good. You must have gotten one from a bad batch. You should have bought mine when you had the chance. =)
Again, and again, and again. I’ll keep repeating this until someone at Nokia finally does something about it.
The slider mechanisms on Samsung phones are completely different than ANY Nokia sliders. And they miraculously…work. And work great. And are spring-loaded, and so on. So Nokia, hire the guy that designs the mechanism for Samsung. Or someone who worked for him. Or his uncle. Or his grandson. I don’t care. It’s a shame, really. To be the No.1 manufacturer in the world and to (still, after years and years) be absolutely clueless as to how to design any other form factor than candybar. It IS 2008.
I think you can not coment about the Nokia N95 build quality, you bought a 2nd hand phone, is impossible to know where it has been and how many trips to the floor it has. It is known that the nokia N95 had some issues with its housing. But they are fixed by now and if you buy it brand new you will find a perfect build N95.
I had a similar experience with a N93, first I bought it second hand, then I sold it and bought a brand new one. It is unbelivable the diference between buying used and brand new, even if the used has been in good hands.
Currently I have a N95-4 and I dont agree with the bad stereotype you give Nseries sliders. I have no problem with it, it is very firm.
have you ever hold a brand new N95 in your hand?
i agree with the candybar notion that nonmoving parts is better than moving parts.
what is this that nseries can be made with less quality than eseries because of the turnover factor?!
the brand is what you are buying and paying for no matter what niche it is.
maybe the build quality issue lies on the developing team and not on the poor end user that pays thru the nose!
come on people shitty quality highend products are not acceptable .! (period!)
How many other dual slider multimedia computers did you compare the N95 with?
@Edward
The build quality on the N95-4 is very poor. I had to go through three to find one that was acceptable. Most of the people on HowardForums who got one faced the same wobbly slider problem. Rita’s right. The slider in the Nseries is far from perfect. Maybe it’s not as bad as she thinks, but it sucks.
@Rita
I agree that less moving parts is better, especially in Nokia’s case. The only problem is that candy bars can’t have big screens, to which I got used to after my experience with the N95 series.
Pruska,
If you go back a little bit in the Symbian-Guru backlog, you would see that I trialled an N95 8gb in January for two weeks, and the slider was better than my current N95 but FAR FROM PERFECT!
Cheung Yuen Wong,
I have the Plum version, maybe this explains a small part of it, but it’s still not acceptable that one color variant is better than the other.
Aatif,
I think they will ship it
Smooth Revolution,
That’s exactly why business phones shouldn’t necessarily be better built than multimedia devices, multimedia phones should be able to fly to the ground and come back in one piece.
Dan,
Oh and the situation is much better now that the politicians somehow got together. Concerning the N95 it is as bad as i described it. As to the bigger screen, I am aware of this, I will see how the N82 fairs and see if I can handle a smaller screen on a candybar.
Thanks for your concerns, but I was away because of my finals and thesis. I am now a proud pharmacist
Vlad,
We seem to agree on EVERYTHING these days, thanks for voicing my thought.
Micky,
I have had an N95 8gb, several first hand N95s, an N81 8gb, an E65, a 6111, and maybe some more sliders that I can’t remember, in my hands. Some of them were owned by friends, some of them I trialled. So I am not posting just to post. As Vlad said, Samsung makes AMAZING sliders, there is no reason why Nokia’s should be “Good”, they have to be “GREAT”!
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