Robert Scoble postulates that his Nokia N95 may be “better” than the iPhone. He isn’t the first person to say it, either. Leo LaPorte has said similar things after buying a Nokia N95. Frankly, it’s hard to argue. The Nokia N95 is a brilliant phone. Imagine everything you ever wanted in one pocketable device and there ya go. It has GPS, 3G (in Europe), a music player with dedicated music controls, video, integrated RSS, a 5 megapixel digital camera, a 640×480x30fps video camera, and God knows how many other features. In the end, this phone may actually be the biggest competition on the open market that the iPhone has.

Or not.

I don’t know if I just have really shitty luck or what, but I can say that from my experience, the N95 is more show than go. How do I know? Because I had it.

For 4 hours.

See, I wasn’t lucky enough to get one for free. Instead, I worked my butt off to convince the wife, got the okay, and got the phone. I put it on the charger at my office and let it charge. It was at about 75% when I heard the familiar Nokia sound. The phone rebooted.

So I left it there, and waited until it was charged. At one point I decided to start setting it up which meant moving my SIM into it. After restarting the phone, I started flipping through menus. While I was looking at the various neato features, it rebooted again.

Now I started getting worried. Had I bought a lemon?

I kept working with the phone, promising myself to be a trooper and not let a few reboots stop me. The $750 price tag be damned, I was buying this phone. I put it on the window sill behind my desk and let the GPS acquire a satellite signal. As it started to pin point where I was, it rebooted for a third time. I immediately yanked my SIM out, put it in my BlackBerry Pearl and never looked back. For $750 it had better be a buttload more stable than that.

Now I know what you’re thinking. One phone does not a lemon make.

A friend of mine had also bought the phone and fallen in love with it. When I told him of my troubles, his face sank. “Same here,” he said, “But I love it so much I’ll just deal with it. As long as it reboots, I’ll be okay.” I shook my head. That wasn’t going to do for me.

Another friend showed up a few days later. He asked me if I still had mine, and I said no. Then he said, “I’m having problems with mine.”

“Let me guess,” I said, “Random reboots?”

He nodded, then proceeded to give me the same answer my other friend did: He wasn’t thrilled with it rebooting constantly, but he liked the thing enough to deal. Again, not for me.

3 people with the same identical issues. 2 decided to keep it despite those issues.

I liked the N95 while I had it. Frankly, it is the coolest phone I’ve ever owned even though I only owned it for roughly 4 hours. They like it too. Both of them still have it.

Calling something “the best” versus something that isn’t out has two pitfalls, particularly in this case. Out of three N95’s sold in my office, 3 of them exhibited stability problems. Not a good sign. Secondly, the iPhone isn’t out yet. It isn’t just Apple’s reputation that makes that phone amazing, it’s the phone. If you’ve seen the ads or the demos, you can’t possibly chalk it up to mythology.

Robert makes a few other comparisons and even beats some of the old and often-used ones to death. No 3G, no GPS (don’t know how he knows that, but okay), and no keyboard (something anyone who’s used the iPhone have already dismissed as unimportant because the integrated text entry methods work perfectly).

I’m not saying the N95 is not a nice phone, but it’s definitely bigger at promising than delivering and that’s from someone who owned one. The iPhone may be the same way, but comparing anything to a product that isn’t even on the market yet and that only a select few have even touched, seems like asking for crow to be served on a silver platter when the device does hit.

And don’t think I’m not praying for the iPhone to be 1,000 times better because if it’s as unstable as the N95, there are going to be serious problems ahead for Apple.

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