IntoMobile has some pics and info about the upcoming Asus M930W. It looks capable of competing with the Nokia E90, but more info will be needed before we can say that for sure.

It’s unknown whether or not it’ll have a GPS, and the internal screen looks pretty small. Other than that, it’s a pretty nice looking device.

This comparison has been done on other sites, but I feel I’ve got more to add. I’ve been following the iPhone for quite a while and came close to getting one. However, as I’ve said before I use an N95-3 as my current phone. As a result, I know a lot of the differences between the two phones and I’ll share them here.

I’ve heard two good quotes used when comparing these two phones. The first is “The iPhone is for viewing content, while the N95 is for creating it.” I find that to be a pretty good statement. The iPhone is a great device for consuming content — a superb web browser, great e-mail support, quick links to stocks/weather, etc. The N95 isn’t quite as good at those tasks, but with some help you can post directly to blogs, add videos directly to YouTube, post photos directly to Flickr, post workout information to Nokia’s SportsTracker site, etc.

The other statement I’ve heard is that “The iPhone is made for two hands, while the N95 is made for one hand.” Again, I agree completely. The iPhone is tough to use with one hand for a few reasons. First, it’s a soft keyboard; you can’t feel the buttons since they don’t really exist. Also, you have a QWERTY keyboard much of the time, which lends itself to two hands.

On the N95 side, you don’t even have the option of using a QWERTY (outside of an external bluetooth device). The phone is made to sit in your hand and use your thumb for typing on the keypad.

Shortcomings

Both phones have a handful of shortcomings. The iPhone has five big ones:

• No GPS. Given the slick Google Maps implementation, it’s quite a letdown. However, their reasoning was to conserve battery life, which I can see.
• No 3G support. With their excellent web browser, 3G speeds would have really helped. Again, battery life was the concern there.
• No ability to capture videos. This is just dumb. Why on earth can’t it do this?
• No ability to send MMS (pic and video texts). Again, why can’t it do this?
• You can’t load other software on there - it’s very locked down. They claim this is to ensure the stability of the phone. Given their target audience, I can sort of understand that.

On the N95 there are a few as well:

• No QWERTY keyboard, real or virtual. I like the fact that I can use it with one hand, but when I’m sitting down typing up something, a QWERTY would be real nice to have.
• Small screen. It’s not really that small; in fact, it’s larger than most phones. However, the iPhone screen is much larger in comparison.

Web Browsing

Overall, the iPhone wins this battle. Not only is a nice browser on a large screen with a great interface, but a lot of sites are building iPhone specific versions of their pages, which is great.

That’s not to say that the N95 browser is bad, as it’s quite solid. The other big advantage for the N95 is that you can load any software on that you want, including other browsers. Opera Mini is a very nice (free!) browser that you need to install if you have an N95.

E-mail

This is very similar to the browser situation. The iPhone has a slightly better default setup to handle e-mail, but the N95 allows you to load anything you want. I’ve loaded the Mobile Gmail client on my N95 and I’m thrilled with it. While the IMAP support works well on either phone, the Gmail software allows me to star/archive/etc my items, which you can’t do on the iPhone.

Weather

As with the previous two items, the iPhone makes this easy to use, but tough to improve. You’ve got a big button on your main screen for weather - great! However, if there’s a better weather application that you want to use, you’re out of luck.

The N95 doesn’t have anything built in to handle weather, but there is a variety of software packages to choose from (some free, some not).

Music

The N95 has a very nice music/video player that is included, but let’s be real — it can’t begin to touch the iTunes support on the iPhone. You won’t be disappointed with the music software on the N95, but the iPhone blows it away.

Maps

The iPhone comes pre-loaded with a very nice implementation of Google Maps. However, the N95 lets you download the latest version of Google Maps Mobile, which is even better. Why is it better? Two reasons:

1. GPS. It can follow where you are, and help route you to your destination. The routing needs some work to be on par with devices like TomTom, but it’s not bad.
2. Traffic. You can get live traffic updates on your phone, just like you can with the normal Google Maps. This is very useful. I expect this to come to the iPhone soon, but it’s not there yet.

Main Screen Tweaking

One complaint about the iPhone is that you can’t change the icons on the main screen (hacking aside). The N95 doesn’t give you a ton a freedom on the main screen, but you can change the icons to anything you want.

I assume the reason the iPhone won’t let you do it is because you can’t load any extra software on there, so why bother? Still, it might be nice to be able to put a few oft-used bookmarks on there or something. I like having the N95 main screen show exactly the icons that I want.

The Bottom Line

So which is the winner? It depends who you are. If I had to choose, I’d get:

• An N95 for myself and a few of my friends.
• An iPhone for my wife and a few other friends.

It really just depends on how you use your phone. I love to tinker with the N95 and see what I can make it do (SSH client? Sweet!), while many people (like my wife) would want to use it for web, e-mail, phone, camera and nothing else.

The iPhone has 3G support coming this year, as well as possibly some fixes for their other shortcomings. However, I don’t expect them to completely open up the phone to any software that you want, which means there will always be a place for phones like the N95.

I recently got a Nokia N95-3 and I’m loving it! I had wanted an iPhone for a while, but the N95 does everything I want (and much more). I’m still following the latest news and updates for everything mobile-related and plan to share the best things that I come across.