Of course we don’t know everything that the iPhone in the end will be capable to do. Apple has probably saved something for the final release. My biggest thing against it, is that it except for bringing a new way to interact with the phone, doesn’t deliver anything new. In fact it is pretty useless when it comes to productivity! We don’t know if it will be capable of syncronizing with any PIM solution, Lotus Notes or Entourage. There is also no 3G support in the first two models to be introduced, something that just seems to become more and more useful here in Europe. Half a year ago I didn’t see the point with 3G phones, as there was no good software making use of it. A last thing that I question is why did Apple choose to use Google Earth instead of implementing GPS?

This week Nokia released an almost perfect phone, the N95. It might just be the iPhone killer, a real multimedia phone. As I see it, it does all the things that the iPhone can do, plus all those real important features:

• When it comes to connectivity, it supports USB, Infrared, Bluetooth, GSM, WCDMA, HSDPA and WLAN. Ok, HSDPA is currently only something for Europe, but is Super 3G!
• GPS. The phone cames with a great onboard software. The new Maps application allows you to browse around maps (which are downloaded onto your device over the air) in 2D or 3D and do route planning. The map coverage varies by country, but many places are covered down to street level. The software includes the ability to find addresses and location by street name, location and postcode.
• Syncronization possibilities.
• Camera is now with a quality that it can compete with other compact digital cameras, is can take photos with up to 5 megapixel resolution. The camera also Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and auto focus. And hold on, the phone will send pictures Flickr’s API, too.

One of my favourite newsites, InfoSync World, has tested the phone and published a small video showing the phone in use. And what I find best is that Nokia finally has managed to create a useable graphical userinterface for the Symbian OS. It was about time! Did you see how good the graphics was on that demo game? I have never been a big gamer and especially not on phones. But having said that, it just another thing that makes this phone so feature complete as it appearently is!

Of course having to use Real Player instead of iTunes is a downer. Nokia really should once and for all get rid of Real Player. They can do better themselves! The phone also comes with it’s own inbuilt Music Player with equalizer (supporting MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA/M4A). Full screen video playback is 100% smooth and movies look great on N95′s huge screen. Supported video formats include: MPEG-4, H.264/AVC, H.263/3GPP and RealVideo 8/9/10. N95 also only lets you put in a 2 GB memory card. This doesn’t really compete with the iPhone in terms of storrage. N95 has as the iPhone A2DP profile for stereo audio over Bluetooth.

The N95 also lacks a browser that can compete with iPhones inbuilt Safari browser. But perhaps Opera will come with a version of their Opera 9.x browser for Symbian?

I don’t know if Apple will sucsseed with the iPhone, but they have already managed to forced the traditional phone makers to design better phones. Something to think about just hours before Apple announces new/updated products at their Keynote on NAB, Las Vegas (08.00 PM Cet).