Choosing Between The Apple iPhone Or Nokia N95

With all the hype over the iPhone in the past few weeks, it was hard not to get caught up in it.

With the time approaching to upgrade my own handset, I was very tempted to jump in to the pool and ttry Apple’s iPhone myself, but resisted the urge.

Last week though, I went looking, and it came down to a choice between the Apple product, and Nokia’s N95.

Working my way around different shops I got to play with both. I found the iPhone very intuitive, but price was always going to be a major factor in my decision.

I have been using a Nokia 6288 for the past couple of years, and didn’t expect the N95 to be that much different, though I did find it less intuitive than the earlier phone.

I did end up settling on the Nokia product though, as in most areas, for me at least, it appears to match, if not better the iPhone, and is of course much cheaper to purchase.

Okay, Where Do I get It?

Right The Nokia N95!

I made my decision, but of course, there has been a big push on the Nokia offering too, so it seemed to be sold out every where I checked.

The local store was expecting new stock ‘some time’ over the next week or so.

The two stores that I checked at Sydney airport were both out of them, so I called into Westfield at Parramatta on the way home.

There must be one here I thought, with such an abundance of phone stores!

But I appeared to be out of luck! Having made arrangements to meet my wife at Kmart, I gave up my search and went to see what sort of a hit our budget had taken.

As I neared the bottom of the escalator near Kmart, I glanced over and saw another phone store, maybe…

The Vodafone store, part of the Star Communications chain, was flat out!

Here I met Dennis, Fung and my new phone!

I’m mentioning these guys because of the excellent service that I received when I walked into the store.

Once Fung had checked and saw that I wouldn’t be happy with something else, he got on the phone, turned to me and said “We have one at another store, and it will be here within an hour or so”.

Great! We fixed up the details so that I could be under way as soon as I returned, and I went in search of my wife.

After coffee, I returned to the store and was on my way, phone in hand within minutes.

Why do I mention this part of the purchase?

Left the Apple iPhone!

Simply because of the attitude of the guys in the store. You see, being involved in marketing, and dealing with the public, I like to see how different businesses operate.

To me, there is no sense in spending a fortune on advertising to draw people in to your store if they are going to leave disappointed.

Word of mouth is a powerfull marketing tool, both in the positive and negative sense.

I’m sure that Apple has sold a lot more of their phones due to the buzz on social networking platforms than they otherwise might have.

Most of the stores that I had tried earlier in the day simply said no, or handed me a card with instructions to call in “next week sometime.”

The fact that I lived almost three hours away was lost on them.

The Vodafone Select store operated by Star Communications can be found at Shop 3044A, Westfield Shopping Center, Parramatta.

You can contact them on 02 9687 0700. (International +61 2 9687 0700)

Please Note:

I have no affiliation with Star Communications, Vodafone, Nokia or Apple.

Opinions expressed in this post are based on my research, and the conclusions that I’ve reached are based on my personal needs.

Right The phone that my N95 replaced, the Nokia 6288!

Update November 16, 2017

Nokia what? I’ve long since moved into the 21st century, and am now using a Samsung S7. I never could get used to those iPhones, though today the debate is about Android and the Apple product.

I prefer Android simply because the number of manufacturers competing for consumers keeps development moving.

2016 saw me purchase what I thought was the best phone that I’d ever had, the Note 7, but of course that didn’t last to to well documented issues…. disappointing to say the least.

Of course, Nokia is no longer the force that it was, though it is trying for (another) comeback after being snagged, chewed up and sold again by Microsoft. How things change..