I had the pleasure of treating myself to a new phone recently. I had a lot of options, but I finally settled on a Nokia N95. It is a good phone, with good features, and I would recommend it to anybody who wanted more out of their not so smart phone, but couldn't quite justify the use of a PDA. I'm with Robert Scoble, though, I'd prefer to get an iPhone, but that won't be released in Australia until early 2008.

For more info on the N95 visit the NSeries website, it will tell you more about my phone than I can.

There have been a few issues with the phone in regards to the GPS software included with the phone 'Nokia Maps' and there seems to be much forum confusion as to what the deal is in Australia. Hopefully I can clarify the situation:

• As bought from the shop, you can find POI's, addresses, and calculate routes. It will cost you data using your chosen mobile Internet access point. As you move about the map, it will download imaging via your Internet connection. If you plan a route, you can simulate the route by downloading the voice commands, or you can have the GPS track you as you traverse the route
• If you want to have real time navigation, you will have to pay around $130 AU for 3 years. This gives you the 3D view and a voice telling you when to turn.
• The good news is, that you can download the entire map for any country using the abominable Map Loader program available from Nokia. The bad news is that in Australia, you will be lucky to get a download speed greater than 2.2kbps. The maps for Oz are 70MB.
• Searching for POI's and addresses still uses Internet time, so plan your routes via your home WLAN to save money.

The maps take forever to download, so in the interest of being a nice Internet citizen, I have decided to begin sharing them on the ED2K network. Alternatively you can download it from me directly.

You will need something to open .rar files - I highly recommend WinRar.

To be honest, for the most part, Google Maps on the mobile is a nicer all round experience, but until it starts using the in built GPS, it is still a toy. If you want something to use in the car, go get yourself a dedicated unit, the N95 has better POI's but it still doesn't come close to the TomTom One XL.

Personally, I plan to use the GPS feature for bush walking, and Nokia provides an excellent route stat application called Sports Tracker. With it you can graph your movement, and save the results in Google Earth compatible files, XML, CSV. For this, the N95 absolutely rocks.