Nokia N95 User Agent String - Default Browser

Here is the User Agent String of The Nokia N95 Web Browser:

As you can see, with the final statement it identifies itself as Safari.

But IT IS NOT SAFARI!!!

Nokia Series 60 (N95 is part of this family) browsers were built using the WebKit tool. Before the release of the Series 60 a hit on a web server from a WebKit browser would almost certainly be from a genuine Safari browser (as few other WebKit flavoured browsers were in wide-spread use). For this reason the too became synonymous to many people.

So much so that even major hit-tracking applications like Google Analytics register Nokia Series 60 / N95 hits as Safari version 413.

If you see any other Safari versions listed in Google Analytics they will almost certainly be genuine Safari hits.

Quite why Nokia have decided to add to this confusion but branding their browser as Safari is unclear. Other portable devices such as the Sony Ericsoon W800 identify themselves specifically as do games consoles such as the Playstation 3.

The decision may’ve been made to prevent browser-sniffing; this is the practise of serving up different pages to different browsers.

A large part of the N95’s appeal to me was its ability to render standard web pages with rich content very well on a small screen. Perhaps Nokia think this functionality would be diminished if it were often served up with streamlined pages written specifically for a phone when the user was expecting a standard page.

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