I bought the N95-1 while in London despite no 3G in most of Canada and knowing the N95-3 was coming out the same month.

WiFi goes a long way in making up for North America 3G limitations and is much cheaper, if not always free. The complaints about battery life and lack of memory are overblown in my opinion. In real life, simple practices such as exiting applicaitions, and charging overnight or when in the car, mean that I have yet to experience either battery failure of out of memory issues.

Multitasking doesn’t seem to be an issue as applications open and close quickly.

The video, GPS, phone and Nokia OS are all worth the $. The camera is good quality, but with truly dreadful shutter lag and shot to shot refresh. I am running a 6gb Ultra chip and personally the shutter cover and chip access were more important than NA 3G and more battery life.

If you travel to Europe the N95-3 doesn’t do 3G there. So my decesion set showed the N95-1 to be all and more than I needed.

Finally, with the updated firmware, the phone has been very stable and trouble free- it is well past the beta tester stage.

I feel slighted by this product.
I would actually buy one if Nokia would release its equivalent in Australia…

We have the original N95 – but your comments are exactly spot on.

Crap battery life and inadequate memory mitigated the wow factor enough to stop me buying it (well that and the AU$1200 -roughly US$1k- price tag)

I don’t read that as a knock either. I read it as good advice: first releases are for beta testers. Always have been.