TheGood
- Best in class camera and camcorder
- 2D/3D GPS satellite navigation
- WLAN, mini-USB, UPnP support
- Unique slider design
- Stereo speakers
TheBad
- The bad:Awful battery life
- Sluggish when multitasking
- Average LED-based flash
- Additional GPS charges (data and spoken navigation)
Design
Nokia's N95 isn't much wider or taller than most compact phones, but its thickness makes it slightly hefty. Measuring 99 by 53 by 21 mm when closed, pocketing the N95 in tight jeans creates a slight lump -- about as much as a compact camera like one in the Canon IXUS range.
The N95 is the first device we've seen with a two-way slider design: slide it up to access the keypad, or down to get to the dedicated multimedia controls (FF, play/pause, stop and RW keys), which also puts the 2.5-inch screen into landscape mode.
On the back is a 5-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, auto-focus, and a lens cover switch that activates the camera -- again, turning the large and bright screen into a viewfinder. The LED flash isn't as good as a Xenon flash, like the one found on Sony Ericsson's K800i, but does a decent enough job for close-range night shots. The pictures we've taken on the N95 are, without a doubt, the best we've seen from camera-phone to date. Recorded video is excellent, too, at 640x480 pixels and 30fps (which is technically DVD quality in the US -- NTSC).
Around the edges of the N95 are stereo speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an infrared port, a microSD card slot, a mini-USB port, and some volume and media shortcut keys. Nokia includes a 1GB card in the box.
Features
The Nokia N95's wireless abilities include 3.5G (aka HSDPA) for fast downloads through your mobile operator, 802.11g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 and infrared for archaic devices. The N95 also doubles as a wireless broadband modem for connecting your laptop while you're on the road, say.
The Web browser renders pages very well, the only fault we could find was the lack of flash support for looking at sites like YouTube. Multimedia treats include an MP3 player, video player, FM radio and support for Bluetooth headphones. A custom large-icon menu also appears when you slide out the multimedia keys. A zippy sci-fi racing game called System Rush can also be found here.
Photos taken with the N95 can be uploaded to Web sites Flickr and Vox with ease, or shared via the traditional methods like Bluetooth, MMS, e-mail or infrared for really old phones.
See what the Nokia N95 can do connected to a TVThere's an AV cable in the box that lets you hook up the N95 to a TV or stereo to browse photos or watch movies on the big screen, or to listen to music through a stereo. Nokia includes a pair of average-sounding headphones in the box, which doubles as a hands-free headset, thankfully you can swap these out with any other standard 3.5mm pair. A mini-USB cable and a Windows software CD is also bundled for fast PC or laptop data transfers.
Performance
The N95 biggest flaw is battery life -- we rarely got more than a single day's use. If you are using something as your MP3 player, email device, Web browser and phone, it's no surprise, really. Nokia rates talk time on 3G at only 2.5 hours, music playback 7 hours, standby time 9 days -- but who would pay over AU$1000 for a device just to sit there. With minimal usage -- a couple of texts per day -- we got just under three days.
While the battery is our number one gripe, another is the sluggish processor when multiple applications are running. Adding to the problem -- or causing it -- is the N95's Symbian-based operating system, which keeps multiple applications open unless you specifically hit exit, each taking their own slice of system memory.
GPS mapping on the N95 looks promising; the second phone after the Mio A701 to have sat nav built-in. However, we weren't able to lock onto a GPS satellite for some reason during our test period -- perhaps the areas we tested in didn't have a clear enough view of the sky. Regardless, maps and routing info are downloaded over-the-air and on-the-fly (for over 100 different countries Nokia tells us), but beware this attracts data charges from mobile operators -- maps are not pre-loaded or included on the memory card.
You can "upgrade" the N95's navigation abilities to support automatic voice instructions for each turn, but this attracts an additional charge per region -- it costs from AU$12.45 for a 7-day licence to AU$132.94 for 3 years. Other premium services include city guides -- the Sydney one costs AU$13.28, for example. Thankfully local points of interest like restaurants and attractions are included for free, and you can easily make a call to make a dinner reservation at any eatery you find.
Despite battery and performance issues, the N95 sets new standards for mobile connectivity and we award it Editors' Choice for its innovative design, the best imaging we've seen in its class, and support for standards such as UPnP, mini-USB and 3.5mm audio output.
Business users might balk at the lack of a QWERTY keypad, but there are viewers for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. Synchronisation of calendar, contacts, to-do, notes and e-mail is also supported.
Camera
The photos themselves are pretty impressive in most situations. The camera's night mode does a fair job of dealing with dark situations, and the camera's flash will even turn on automatically to aid in focusing in such cases. The flash itself, which defaults to an auto mode, does not work all that well. The flash is too blue in color, and the camera's white balance system is not programmed to compensate for that. It is also too harsh when shooting anything in close-up/macro mode, which otherwise works very well, and not really powerful enough to aid much in dark situations where the subject of the photo isn't located in the flash's sweet spot range. I don't consider this to be a real issue since few, if any, flashes built into cameraphones are worth anything at all. The only real complaint I have about the photos the N95 creates is that sometimes they appear to have been over processed by the noise reduction algorithm. This makes the photos sometimes look almost as if they were painted when viewed at full resolution. It generally isn't something one would notice when viewing the photos at anything less than 100% zoom on a desktop computer.
The N95 can also shoot pretty high quality video clips. It supports recording at a maximum of VGA (640x480) resolution at 30fps (frames per second). To be honest, though, the video seems the smoothest at the middle of the five quality settings, which records video at QVGA resolution. The digital image stabilization works pretty well, as does the digital zoom system. Audio can optionally be disabled when recording clips. You'll find a number of sample video clips in the Photo Gallery section at the end of this review.
The N95 is fully capable when it comes to audio as well. A built-in FM receiver is backed up by over-the-air downloading of station presets. The regular music player application supports most audio file formats and can even synchronize with Microsoft's Windows Media Player on a desktop Windows computer. The player has the normal shuffle and repeat modes as well as a graphic equalizer with user editable presets. The music player also has great support for the creation and editing of playlists, as well as the ability to automatically organize music by artist, album, genre, and composer - assuming that the media files are properly tagged. My non-expert ears were plenty pleased with the music volume and quality levels. The stereo output can be listened to with a regular pair of wired 3.5mm headphones, external speakers, or a Bluetooth stereo device. When a 3.5mm plug is inserted into the headphone connector on the N95, the user is asked which type of device has been connected: headphones, speakers, or TV out cable since the N95 can route its output to a TV just as the Nokia N93 and N93i can.
With its microSD memory card slot, the N95 can handle microSD memory cards of up to 2GB in capacity. That's good for an easy 250+ photos at the full 5 megapixel resolution, or 750 or more audio tracks - depending on the format used. The N95 also has around 150MB of internal storage space, which is enough to store a large assortment of applications, media files, and user data.
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