N95 8GB highlights search function

Ran
into Jorgen Behrens (EVP Symbian) at the Symbian Smartphone show which is held in the
darkest throes of the docklands at the Excel conference centre. Behrens
came armed with various handsets he wanted to show and was particularly
excited by a bunch of new handsets including the i550 which was
launched at the show by Samsung. Significantly the press blurb claims
that the i550 is Samsung’s first handset with GPS built in.

Frankly I
find that hard to believe for a leading vendor such as Samsung. Perhaps
the PR bods actually meant Samsung’s first GSM handset with GPS built
in? Anyway, the i550 wasn’t what caught my eye. Instead it was Nokia’s
N95 8GB edition handset which I hadn’t actually seen before. And guess
what the first option featured on the N95’s screen happened to be? None
other than a facility to search the Internet plus ‘My Content’. 

Wishing to learn a little more, I played with the N95 8GB on the Series
60 stand. I’m no expert, but this search app looked entirely different
from the Search facility which is buried away under Tools on my own
ordinary N95. The 8GB app has an Internet search options right up the
top of the list. Unlike my own N95, this didn’t use Yell for a local
search. Instead it provided the choice of Yahoo! or Windows Live
search.

Underneath Internet search came My Content which had no fewer
than 12 sections. Some of these are very obvious - such as music and
contacts. It was interesting to see, however, that you can search text
messages and emails separately. What it can’t do is help you find that
picture you took months ago. It merely displays the file names which
are along the lines of ‘imagenokia1′. Not very inspiring and not very
helpfu l.

What was very interesting about the whole thing was the
prominence. What is Nokia plotting to do in terms of promoting this
facility? And is the N95 8GB just the first of many handsets to ship
with the Search facility right up there on top? I’ll let you know when
I find Nokia. The company held an event on the Sunborn yatch but when I
turned up late, I simply couldn’t find it. Ho, hum.