The Nokia N95 is just around the corner and after reading a few articles, there are a few things that make me think twice before doing an upgrade. I’ll list down what’s important to me and conclude whether or not it is recommended for other N93 owners with similar interests upgrade to the Nokia N95.

Thanks to Paul Whitaker, I noticed that the Nokia N95 only supports mono audio. While this is not a dealbreaker for me, going to the N95 from the N93, I will be losing the stereo recording. Since I upload most of my videos on YouTube, the audio are converted to mono anyway so other YouTube users will not be affected. However, watching the original videos on a computer with 2 speakers, or a TV, we lose audio depth. You can find out more about mono vs. stereo by BCAE.

Nokia N95 with Mono Audio

Nokia N93 with Stereo Audio

Sample Nokia N95 photos have been showing up with purple hue. They say that firmware updates will fix this, but after hearing the same thing about how Nokia will fix the noise on Nokia N93 pictures, I will not get my hopes up. Fortunately, the pictures can be fixed with software on our computers.

Color Corrected Nokia N95 Photo

Original Nokia N95 Photo

Nokia N95 has GPS… the Nokia N93 doesn’t. However, My-Symbian revealed in their Nokia N95 review that the built-in GPS receiver will initially only work with the included Nokia Maps. This is disappointing to me because I think TomTom is better, faster, and more usable than Nokia Maps.

Unfortunately, no other existing S60 3rd Edition GPS software is able to take advantage of the built-in receiver because all of them are ‘hardcoded’ to communicate with Bluetooth GPS devices via the Serial Port Profile.

Conclusion. So should I still upgrade to the Nokia N95? While the 3 factors above mention a few negative things, they are not that bad. Mono and Stereo are hardly noticeable through basic speakers, picture colors can be easily fixed, and I can stick with Nokia Maps until TomTom ports their software to use the GPS receiver on the Nokia N95. Nevertheless, I will be checking Fonegrabber or the Nokia N95 Price Check page for a trusted seller to have it in stock and still be one of the first few to buy it.

I’m sure I’m not the only Nokia N93 user feeling this way. Do you have a Nokia N93 and plan to upgrade to the Nokia N95? Let me know the reasons why or why you won’t upgrade.