HEROES AND VILLAINS OF… CONVERGENCE

Convergence – packing every technological task you could need into one pocket-friendly package – is the holy grail of the travelling gadget lover. But which converged gizmo should you go for?

TECHNOLOGY

HERO
NOKIA N95 8GB

This is the way to make a device that does it all. The N95 8GB is the follow-up to Nokia’s first phone/music player/camera/satnav, only now it comes with 8GB of storage for uploading 2,000 tunes, and you can buy tracks straight over the air to your phone with the new Nokia Music Store. Sync it with your PC and they will appear as if by magic on your desktop. But this renaissance phone doesn’t just do it all, it does it all with flair. The 5-megapixel camera is one of the highest resolutions on a phone and comes complete with Carl Zeiss optics; the built-in satnav will help you find your way even in busy cities and is ideal for business people abroad; and the large 2.8 inch screen is great for watching videos. And with 8GB of storage, you can fit plenty of films in your pocket. When you want to access the web, you’ve got 3G connectivity for fast access, as well as Wi-Fi for those few spare minutes in the departure lounge.

FREE ON CONTRACT. www.NOKIA.COM

VILLAIN
T-MOBILE SIDEKICK SLIDE

On the other hand, this effort from T-Mobile is less impressive. While it’s been big in the US, the Sidekick series has failed to be anything worth phoning home about, and this addition is sadly no exception. The shortest of all its shortcomings is the lack of 3G. That means you’ll have to make do with sloppy GPRS web access, which, as any iPhone owner will tell you, is like watching a web page being built before your eyes. You can speed it up by turning off the pictures, but then a website without images is like a glass of tonic water without a decent slosh of gin. The 4GB MicroSD card holds half the Nokia’s number of tunes, the screen is smaller and there’s no video capturing or playback, so your hopes of browsing YouTube are scuppered before your gadget’s even out of the box. The stills camera is also only 1.3 megapixels, which was top of the range about three years ago, and while the Sidekick shares the Nokia’s black paint job, it feels so plastic it’s more like a kid’s toy version of the real thing. In its defence, the Sidekick does have a QWERTY keyboard that makes emailing far easier, but that’s not enough to save it from the convergence hall of shame.

FREE ON CONTRACT. www.T-MOBILE.COM

WORDS BY JOE SVETLIK