Walt Mossberg recently make a videocast about how he felt the control of the mobile phone giant prvoiders was really too overbearing. Given that they are all trying to sell one form of the Internet or another, the strict rules for what you can or cannot do and the amazing costs incurred really make it an interesting and somewhat frustrating time for mobile users.

Enter in 2007 the iPhone and the Nokia N95. Both of these unique handsets are setting the pace for mobile Internet and smart phones. In one corner, the N95 silver edition had the great camera, GPS and libraries of software. In the other corner, the iPhone had a new sleek operating system and touch controls. Since the heady days of summer '07, there have been many bouts between the two, with the iPhone just winning (mainly due the always-present Apple "wow" factor). And to give them credit, Nokia had really tried to help Mac users integrate the phone with their mac via the iSync module and the multimedia bowser for music and photos that they developed just for the Mac and N95.

So when Nokia released the N95 8 gigabyte black edition it was with great expectation that I got to see a preview model at the end of last year (the phone is now shipping in Europe and the U.S.). This comparison of the old and new version is really with a Mac user in mind.

Well, to begin, let's just quickly see the changes to the specs:

Size: The N95 8gb is one millimeter thicker - quite a little fatty these days
and another nine grams.

Display: Same 240 x 320 resolution but a 2.8" screen vs the old 2.6".

Bigger battery: Talk time up from 3.5 hours to five hours on a GSM network (expect less when using 3G data or WiFi).

Standby: Up from 215 hours to 280.

Internal memory: From 160 megabytes to 8 gigabytes - no memory card module on the new model.

Software: S60 3rd edition pack 1 same as before with a few additions and interface tweaks.

In a nutshell, the N95 is a solid upgrade for a top range phone. Tap in tomorrow for the usage notes and those software tweaks that make the N95 a good to go phone and more on how Mac-friendly the phone is.

I think Apple nailed it with touch screen tech on the iPhone, as one of my pet peeves with the N95 was the assigned buttons (at least you can reassign them). My hand are still always slipping over the 14 or so buttons on the silver N95 and to accommodate the larger screen. These have been made even smaller on the N95 8gb.

Fortunately, Nokia has tweaked the media buttons (which looked like they came from another operating system) on the silver edition. There are a a lot of little programs in the Symbian s60 software package, some I never really use (e.g., the barcode scanner and a bunch of demo games). Nokia has added links to its own music store, albeit the sound from the N95 is rather poor in comparison to any iPod.

The Nokia multimedia software that helps it sync both iTunes and iPhoto libraries and install software is a great plus for the Mac user, but that is where Mac support begins and ends. If you want to load the free maps software and upgrade the system software you either- get this - have to take the phone to a Nokia centre store for them to do it or sync everything via a PC or via a Mac running Windows. Despite the latter being much that much easier these days, I do feel that if Nokia wanted to get some of the Mac community onto their high end phones, they could at least offer this software for the Mac too.

That said, there are a bunch of other apps on the phone and they remain basically the same- you can open Word and PDF documents and at least you can use can access the internal drive directory and see actual files, the latter feature being something I do not think you can do on the iPhone.

The 8 GB N95 is solid multi-featured smartphone capable of functioning as an on-the-road media device with the ability to do presentations via the video out cables. It is a very solid phone, although the upgrade is probably not going to make a revision A N95 user switch. The 8 GB stands as a solid iPhone contender if you are looking for a better camera (it's superb) and arrives unlocked in most countries, not tying you to an exclusive wireless carrier the way Apple does (well, tries to) with the iPhone.

Given that the knives are out for supremacy in this growing market, I am sure you might see a 2008 touch screen n96 16 GB edition with larger screen before the year ends. Then I think we would really see something as an alternative to the ever-growing "wow!" of the iPhone.

Contributed by Neal Hoskins