For out first Nokia smart phone review we thought we’d start with the ever popular, award winning N95 smart phone.
With all the features crammed into the N95, it is quite a long review, but we’ll summarize it by saying that the Nokia N95 is a great looking multimedia smart phone with and class leading capabilities in most features, and above average performance in the rest. Its huge screen and 2D/3D graphics and video acceleration makes it a brilliant video player; its 5-megapixel camera is a class leading camera; it’s music player easily rivals the iPod; then there’s also tons of connectivity and data transmission features, built-in GPS, and a preloaded Web browser and productivity applications to keep you informed and up to date.
The Design
Despite all the features that are crammed into the Nokia N95, it is not hefty phone and measures 99 mm (3.8″) long by 53 mm (2.1″) wide by 21 mm (0.8″) thick while weighing only 120 g (4.2 ounces). Nokia’s innovative two-way slider design is responsible for the N95 relatively compact dimentions. The two-way slider design gives you access to the alphanumeric keypad by sliding the front cover up, and access to the media player controls by sliding the front cover down. Unfortunately the front cover is a bit loose and is prone to rattle about a bit.
The N95’s matt silver front and plum rear is a pleasing color combination, making the N95 a rather attractive phone. In addition, plum rear cover has a soft-touch finish that makes the phone a comfortable to hold and easy to grip. The front of the phone is dominated by a 2.6″ screen with a 320×240 pixel resolution and 16 million-color output, which combine to provide exceptional image and text clarity, with deep, vivid colors and sharp definitions. Unfortunately, it is not a touch screen and has a tendency to retain finger marks and smudges. A built-in ambient light detector automatically adjust the backlighting to ensure that the display remains readable in fading light. The 2.6″ screen automatically switches to Landscape mode when you slide the front cover down to reveal the multimedia controls.
Above the screen and slightly to the right is a secondary, low resolution camera that can be used for video calls, as well as photos and video recording, while below the screen are the navigation controls, which consist of two soft keys, a Talk button, an End button, a Menu button, a Multimedia button, a Clear key, an Edit key, and a four-way toggle with a center select button. The navigation controls are slightly raised to make it easier to locate.
By sliding the N95’s front cover up and down you’ll get access to the phone’s alphanumeric keypad and the multimedia controls, respectively. The alphanumeric keypad has large, tactile buttons with bright backlighting for better nighttime visibility. The buttons are also raised making it easier to dial by touch. However, the multimedia controls are not as tactile and require a bit of pressure to register the commands. Sliding the front cover down automatically switches the screen to Landscape mode and launches the Multimedia menu with Music player selected. The sliding movement is supported by a spring mechanism, which makes it easier to slide the front cover up or down, while making the movement smooth. However, there is a locking mechanism to keep the front cover in place, making it quite easy for the cover to slide open in your pocket, and activating the alphanumeric keypad, which occurs automatically when the front cover is slip up.
The 5-megapixel autofocus camera is located at the back of the phone, along with the Nokia’s new BL-5F 950 mAH battery. The N95’s camera, with its is protected by a manually controlled lens cover. When you slide the lens cover off, the N95’s camera application automatically launched in Camera mode. A nice feature of the N95, is the location of the camera activation button, which is on the right side of the phone. This requires that you hold the phone in landscape modes, like a digital camera. Along side the camera activation button, is a shortcut to the photo gallery and the volume control. On the left side of the phone is a standard 3.5mm headset jack that you can plug your favorite headphones in, an AV connector, an infrared port and the microSD expansion slot.
The Features
The Nokia N95 is a feature rich smart phone with features that include camera and video recorder, a music and video player with FM radio, built-in GPS and wireless connectivity. All of this on top of the standard mobile phone features.
Mobile Phone
The Nokia N95 is a quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WCDMA 2100 MHz phone that now offers compatibility with the North American 3G/HSDPA/UMTS networks. The phone has the usual speakerphone, speed dial, conference calling, voice-command support, a vibrate mode, and text and multimedia messaging features you would expect from a phone. It’s address book allows you to store multiple phone numbers, work and home addresses, e-mail addresses, as well as birthday, a photo, one of 44 ringtones, and a group ID for each contact. Call quality is excellent that it sounds like you’re on a landline rather than a mobile phone, and call quality doesn’t diminish when you activated the speakerphone. You can also connect a Bluetooth headsets for complete hands free operation.
Imaging
The most impressive feature of Nokia N95 has got to be its 5-megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar f/2.8 optics, a 10 cm ~ infinity focusing range, 5.6 mm focal length, a 1/1000 ~ 1/3 s mechanical shutter speed, a self-timer, and a sequence mode for shooting multiple pictures. Quite impressive features for a stand-alone digital camera, never mind a phone camera! On top of that, the N95 has an equally impressive amount of configuration and editing options, including five white balance settings, eight scene settings, and five color tone settings. The white balance settings are user, close-up, portrait, landscape, sports, night and night portrait; the scene settings are automatic, user, close-up, portrait, landscape, sports, night and night portrait, and the color tone settings are normal, sepia, black & white, negative and vivid. Not to mention an up to 20x digital zoom. On top of this, the N95 camera also has a red-eye reduction and digital stabilization to reduce camera shake when you take photos.
The digital stabilization is also handy for taking videos, but while the N95 is an excellent still digital camera, it’s not as good a video camera. The same Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar optics are used for video recording with the N95 able to record up to 60 minutes of mp4 video clips at VGA resolution and 30 frames per second (fps). However, video clip length will be limited by the available free memory. The N95 can also record 3gp video clips for multimedia messages.
Unfortunately, audio recording uses a single mono microphone that is directed towards the video subject. The N95 does have automatic gain control with the recording level being sampled and automatically adjusted several times a second. This allows the N95 to record audible and non-distorted soundtrack under most conditions, from speech to music concerts, however, the gain control causes variations in sound source, depending on what background sound is the loudest.
There are not as many settings in Video mode as there are in Camera mode, but there is still five white balance settings, including automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent and fluorescent; two scene settings, namely automatic and night; and five color tone settings, including normal, sepia, black & white, negative and vivid. Digital zoom is also reduced to up to 10x digital zoom. In terms of video quality, the N95 can be described as only average when compared to a budget camcorder. Nonetheless, video playback is excellent both on the N95’s 26″ screen, and on TV/DVD/Monitor via the TV-out port. Then there’s also Video editor and Movie director software that you can use to edit and enhance the video clips on the phone.
Multimedia Palyer
The N95’s integrated video and music player is also quite impressive. The video player is a RealPlayer media player with support for mp4, 3gp, and RealVideo video clips, while the music player has support for mp3, WMA, W4A, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, and OMA DRM 2.0 and WMDRM protected music files. Audio playback is further enhanced by a built-in equalizer. The music player’s playlist and music library can also be categorized by artist, album, genre, or composer. Then there’s also a Visual 87.5-108 MHz FM radio, although you have to use the included headset to access the radio as the headset acts as the tuner.
For enhanced audio output, the N95 has a standard 3.5mm headset jack in which you can plug your favorite headphones, and which makes the multimedia experience that much better. Not that there is anything wrong with the built-in stereo speakers that are of very good quality and only lack deep bass.
GPS
The N95 is one of only a few smart phones that feature a built-in GPS receiver. The GPS is based on the same chip you find in the Nokia E90 and is quite sensitive, although getting your initial satellite fix can take a while. Once a satellite fix is obtained, the GPS will remain connected indoors and under heavy foliage. However, the N95’s GPS is not as sensitive and not as accurate as SiRF Star III based GPS receivers. The receiver is backed up by the Nokia Maps application with the usual Landmarks and Position software, as well as Smart2Go software that shows you trip information, such as total distance, time, average speed, etc. However, you need an add-on subscription if you want navigation and city guides services.
Wireless Connectivity
The Nokia N95 also has the standard wireless connection options that you’d expect from a mobile PC. There’s integrated Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, and infrared. The N95 smart phone also has support for a number of Bluetooth profiles, including wireless headsets, hands-free kits, wireless keyboards, and A2DP for Bluetooth stereo headsets. In terms of Wi-Fi side, the N95 is 802.11b/g compatible with support for Universal Plug and Play (Upnp). The latter allows you to connect your N95 to a compatible wireless access point, PC, printer, or home entertainment system via Wi-Fi.
Software
The operating system on the N95 is a Symbian OS 9.2 S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and is fully compatible with all existing S60 3rd Edition software. The phone comes QuickOffice preinstalled. Quick Office allows you to view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. If you want to edit documents, you will have to upgrade the preinstalled copy of QuickOffice. QuickOffice optimizes the pages for the phone’s screen, eliminating the need to scroll left to right to read the document. The N95 also supports IMAP4, POP3, and SMTP e-mail accounts with an attachment viewer.
Then there is a new version of Nokia’s OSS web browser, which now supports both WWW and WAP, and includes auto-completion for form data fields, video plug-ins, support for favicons, Flash Lite 2.0, RSS and Atom feeds, password manager, support for landscape orientation, toolbar, background sounds, offline browsing, operator cache, visual windows manager and user agent profile. Like QuickOffice, the OSS web browser optimizes Web pages for the phone’s screen, eliminating the need to scroll left to right to read the page, and making the N95 ideal for browsing on the go.
Performance
Unfortunately, performance is a bit sluggish with all the features the N95 needs to support, but menu operations, image processing, video recording and playback, 3D graphics in games and web browsing are decent enough. Video playback is also smooth with accurate audio and video synchronization. The one area where the Nokia N95 does disappoint is the battery life. The Nokia BL-5F 950 mAH battery is rated for four hours of talk time and up to nine days of standby time but we were able to get up to eight hours of talk time in our battery tests. However, battery time was greatly reduced when using the various features on the N95.
Summary
In short then, the Nokia N95 is a great multimedia smart phone with decent performance. It has a huge screen with 2D/3D graphics and video acceleration, all connectivity and data transmission options you’d expect, a TV out connector, and built-in GPS receiver and good mapping software. On top of that, the N95 is an excellent still camera, a decent video recorder, and a music and video player. There’s aren’t many comparable devices that beat the N95 at its feature. In our book, it’s a good buy.
Filed under: N95
