My daily commute is all messed up. I am someone who lives by routines and I have worked over the last year to tune my 2.5 hour commute to/from San Francisco. I know how long traveling takes, I fill my iPod with engaging podcasts and I read news and email on my mobile device. For the next few weeks, I am throwing a big part of that out the window.

I’m trying out an N95 provided by Nokia. I was approached by a Nokia representative asking if I’d be interested in using a phone for three weeks and blogging about it. Sure, why not! I’ve been frustrated by my phone of late and have heard lots of good things about the N95. Plus, who am I to say no to anything free? I now have an N95 8GB.

Having used the phone for 3 days, here’s some initial thoughts.

1. The size and form factor is nice. The N95 fits well into my pocket; it fits better than my AT&T 8525. The size is also perfect to hold to my head when talking.
2. I like the slide up screen and like that the slide is a means to lock/unlock the keyboard.
3. I am quickly missing a dedicated keyboard, especially since the predictive typing is off by default and was tricky to find and turn on.
4. Popping my SIM card into the phone quickly and seamlessly connected it to the AT&T network.
5. The first setup task I tackled was syncing contacts with my Mac address book. This proved to be pretty tough since a firmware update was required (on Windows). After the firmware update, I had to hunt for a correct iSync plugin since the one on the North America site is incorrect. Asia has the right one. I now have all of my contacts on the new phone.
6. Next, I setup two email accounts, one for Adaptive Path and one for Yahoo! Mail. The setup wizard made it pretty straightforward though again, I was wishing for a keyboard when typing in IMAP server names.
7. Email on the N95 is a bit strange, at least to me. Unlike my 8525, I can only download message headers on a scheduled basis. I have to manually download the full message. Also, the phone keeps pulling down old, deleted and archived messages from both accounts.
8. The map application is slick. I found the UI to be intuitive and easy to navigate and the GPS worked really well. Traveling on the train, I could refresh and see the GPS quickly pick up my new location.
9. I am searching for an RSS reader. As I mentioned earlier, I spend 60-09 minutes each day reading news on my mobile via a feed reader and without it, I don’t know how to fill my commute time! (well, I’m writing this post, so there’s that)
10. I perused the downloadable application store and found it extremely useful to have access to get apps anywhere, anytime. Too bad I didn’t find any apps I wanted (e.g., no RSS readers).

That’s all for now. I’ll keep using the N95 for the next couple of weeks and will post my thoughts here and on Twitter. If you are an N95 power user, please offer me your tips and tricks!