Recently I lost my new blackberry while traveling back from vacation.
With not enough budget to buy one more phone, I decided to dig into my collection of gadgets that I use no more. Nokia N95 was my first pick as it still had all the keys working :)
While the phone itself is not in such a great shape, I wanted security and comfort level that I had with other phone with also features that I can. Having not used Nokia phone for some time, I thought of doing some research and find out how to set up security and emails.
Security
Nokia N95 (I am assuming all Nokia phones that are latest) has a feature to enter phone lock code. By mistake, I entered wrong code in PIN Lock and my sim card got locked. I called my carrier (AirTel) and they gave me back a PUK code.
Here is
Nokia Support page for more information.
Remember, to get PUK code, you have to have your SIM card and provide numbers that are on the back of the sim card.
PUK code can be saved in email for future reference.
Once you have PUK code, you can unlock SIM card. One of the thing you can actually do is change PIN lock code itself. This will require you to enter PIN code (4 digit) at start/reboot of the phone but you will have additional level of security. This is when you use this SIM card only.
You can also set Nokia Phone Lock Code (5 digit) to have your phone keyboard and screen locked and will require this everytime you want to unlock.
Note: Security is to protect from average users. I do miss blackberry features like complete wipe out with 10 wrong passwords and encryption of SD card with our without media files. Your SD card is not secured this way. And I trust blackberry a lot lot more.
Email
Email was a bigger challenge in the past but not anymore. You can download latest nokia email application either from Nokia site (email.nokia.com). This allows you get push emails from upto 10 different accounts.
Instant Messaging
While there are not native gtalk client, you do have skype. There is no BBM messenger but you do get Fring.
Contacts
I had all my contacts on blackberry synced to google contacts. Getting those to my phone was a tougher task. One of the option was to download and sync to a desktop account and sync it to phone using Nokia Ovi Suite. But after further research and trying to install google sync, I found out that you can use Mail For Exchange on Nokia to sync google contacts and calendar with the phone. Google has worked hard to support Exchange Protocol for synching. While Yahoo is trying to improve the site look and feel, it should also look at these kind of features that are really useful.
Here are the instructions at google site.
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=147951
Google Instructions and screenshots are not perfect but if you play with it, you will get it right. Both contacts and calendar info.
I am not sure whether mail for exchange works with exchange 2003 and 2010 but that is something I still have to check.
Keyboard
How can I live without my blackberry keyboard. That is why I originally switched from Nexus One to Blackberry. Well, for the time that I am using N95, I am using predictive text input method which works OK. I also paired using bluetooth my wireless keyboard from Apple and it worked flawless.
Conclusion: You can pretty much get contacts, email, calendar and download latest apps from Nokia Ovi store. There are few nice apps including sports tracker, etc.
Google also provides gmail native application and google maps.
And you can use all these with Edge network using Airtel 98 INR/month plan for 2 GB.
Well, not smart phone but I am surviving for last 2 weeks.
I have to note that my N95 does support 3G and has front and back facing camera but my Airtel Provider does not support 3G at where I am. And this phone is 4 years old.
