Nokia N-Series vs. iPhone 3G: Head to Head Smackdown

The great thing about the Nokia N-Series of cell phones is that it offers so many choices.  The N-Series offers a media-savvy phone with a killer 5 megapixel camera (the N95), an NGage-equipped phone with a built-in gamepad on the earpiece (the N81 8GB, above), and even a phone with a built-in digital TV tuner (the N96).  The stuff Nokia is throwing at us with the N-Series is undeniably cool.

But how does the N-Series stack up against Apple’s latest offering and current King of Cool, the second-generation iPhone 3G? Read on to find out.

Telephone Quality: N-Series beats iPhone

There’s no question that Nokia’s N-Series handily beats the iPhone in phone call quality, though it’s tough to imagine why Apple didn’t seek to make the iPhone the king in this category. Chief among our complaints with the iPhone 3G (especially when compared to the N95 and N81) are the iPhone’s speakerphone, which just doesn’t get loud enough.  There also appear lots of blips, pops, and drops on our iPhone 3Gs, artifacts that do not occur on the N-Series (with the exception of the N73, which did seem prone to weird audio distractions).

Telephony Features: iPhone beats N-Series

Whether it’s merging calls, placing people on hold, flipping back and forth between contacts and keypad while in-call, the iPhone just makes it easier.  Using Nokia apps while in-call is a persistent frustration, and while later firmware releases have improved the Nokia experience, it’s still more difficult than it needs to be to add a contact while in call or jot a note while in call.

Messaging Features: Tie

If it weren’t for the iPhone’s idiotic lack of MMS (media messaging) capability, the iPhone would’ve won this category hands-down, because of its revolutionary visual voicemail, which allows the user to control and recall voicemail in a random-access fashion from the iPhone’s touch screen.  Nokia offers no such luxury. Text-messaging on the Nokia phones is reliable but often slow, with users the world around reporting inexplicable lockups while sending SMS messages.  Also, the keypad on the N-Series tends to be frustratingly small, with each key just big enough to use for texting (this despite the fact that many of the N-Series phones themselves offer a lot of unused space on the sides of the keypad).  Give the iPhone MMS and it wins this category. Give the N-Series a bigger keypad or a model with a QWERTY and it wins.  Without either, it’s a tie.

Media Management and Enjoyment: iPhone beats N-Series

There’s no question that the iPhone’s large screen gives it an unfair edge over the N-Series in this department. Photo browsing on the iPhone is a breeze, with the finger-flick controls providing a tactile enjoyment that Nokia cannot duplicate.  Listening to music on the N-Series would be OK if the navigational controls for music playback didn’t remind us of a Wyse Terminal.  Apple has definitely figured out the UI equation for mobile devices, and it gives iPhone the edge for media browsing.

File Management and Bluetooth: N-Series beats spanks iPhone

Why give the iPhone Bluetooth if there’s nearly nothing you can do with it?  By nearly nothing, I mean no automotive audio linking, no desktop file synchronization (not even through Apple’s own iSync), and no local-area media sharing.  N-Series offers all of the above via Bluetooth, and they all work very well.  Windows and Mac users alike will have no trouble synchronizing via Bluetooth on their N-Series phones, but iPhone users are, at least for now, up a creek.

Camera: N-Series beats iPhone

I have no idea who Carl Zeiss is, but apparently he makes a darn good camera lens, especially if the N-Series phones are an indicator.  From the top-of-the-line phones with 5+ megapixel cameras down to the lower end cameras (2 megapixel in the N81 8GB, for example), the cameras take great daytime pictures, decent high-motion pictures, and all offer flash.  Since the iPhone doesn’t offer flash, it’s tough to photograph moving subjects without blur unless you’re outdoors, and forget nighttime photography altogether.  Video recording is also not possible with the iPhone without using third-party apps, so Nokia definitely has the edge here. (This photo was taken with the Nokia N95.)

Third-Party App Support: iPhone beats N-Series

Apple’s rapid move to the top of the AT&T/Rogers sales chart has spurned an enthusiastic community of money-hungry application developers and keen-eyed media privateers like Facebook, both of whom have embraced the iPhone like no other mobile device prior.  The consistency and abundance of third-party apps for the iPhone is unmatched even on Windows Mobile, and is sure to quell many of the concerns about the sparing feature list Apple wrote for the first-party iPhone software.  No question, iPhone OS X third-party development is more active and vibrant than that of Symbian (the software powering the N-Series phones). To boot, the App Store allows third-party apps to be delivered directly to the iPhone in a pain-free and consumer-friendly way.  Browsing the application catalog on a Nokia phone is an unpolished, difficult mess.

Strings: N-Series beats iPhone

Until the day arrives that you don’t have to commit two years of your cell phone life to a certain carrier in order to carry an iPhone, the N-Series will always win this category.

The Verdict

Now I’m not on Apple’s payroll, so it may come as some surprise that I’m still recommending the iPhone for those who want a frustration-free, minimal-hack cell phone experience.  There are drawbacks, and places where Nokia has licked the iPhone (camera, MMS messaging, and so on), but for me, it’s about ease of use and being really good at what I use it for the most. That is, using it as a phone.  No question, iPhone’s ahead of the game.

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Tags: at&t, camera, hardware, iphone, n-series, nokia, review, rogers, service, software