Ever since the Nokia N95 first debuted back in September 2006, it's been one of the most anticipated and highly coveted smart phones. In fact, Nokia didn't even have plans to bring the N95 to the United States, but after the high number of requests from U.S. customers, the company finally decided to ship the hot smart phone across the pond. What's all the hubbub about, you ask? Well, let's see: it boasts a 5-megapixel camera that can also record VGA-quality video, a robust media player with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a dual-slider design, and integrated GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Not to mention, it's a Symbian smart phone as well.
Appearance and design
Dimension: 100 x 53 x 20 mm; weight: 121g.
The Nokia N95 is a somewhat large slider form factor handset. It measures 100mm x 53mm x 20mm (3.9" x 2.1" x .8") in size and weighs 121g (4.3oz), which is to say it is by no means in the running for the thinnest and lightest handset on the market. The front of the N95 has a normal looking silver paint finish, but the sides and back of the device make use of a soft touch style deep burgundy color paint that has a very nice feel to it. Nokia has done a far better job with the slider mechanism on the N95 than it did on the N80.
It’s another attraction of the N95 - the innovative two-way slider design. Not only can you slide the front cover up to reveal the alphanumeric keypad, you can also slide it down to expose the media player controls.
The dual functionality is nice, but I had a couple of concerns. First, the cover, which houses the screen and navigation buttons, felt loose and rattled around a bit. It just didn't feel like it was securely locked into place, thus leading to our next complaint. When putting the phone into a pants pocket or even when thrown into a bag, it was too easy to slide open the phone. There is a keypad lock, but we would prefer that the N95 just had a stronger mechanism for locking the position of the front flap.
Keypad
Beneath the display are the N95's navigation controls, which consist of two soft keys, the Talk and End buttons, shortcuts to the main menu and the multimedia menu, a Clear key, an Edit key that lets you choose the text input type, and a four-way toggle with a center select button. For the most part, the controls are easy to use, though they're a bit slick and the toggle and outer ring of buttons could have been bigger. Still, they are fine for their intended purpose.
The regular alphanumeric keypad has its own issues, though. The keys are very stiff and located even lower on the slider than on the N80, which makes them a bit of a tough reach for somebody with large hands. The keys are also a fair bit smaller than those on the N80, making things all the more difficult. For their part, the d-pad and its dedicated center select button work very well, as do the rest of the dedicated keys that surround them.
Display
TFT, 240х320, 16.7 million colors
Moving onto the display, the Nokia N95 features a gorgeous 2.6-inch QVGA TFT screen with a 16 million-color output and 320x240 pixel resolution. Be aware, however, that it isn't a touch screen. Images and text looked great, with deep color saturation and sharp definition. You can change the theme of the home screen, backlighting time, and font size. There's also an ambient light detector to adjust the backlighting depending on your environment, which helped keep the display readable in various lighting conditions. However, I noticed the N95's screen had a nasty habit of holding fingerprints and smudges, so keep some kind of wipe cloth close by.
I should also note that when you slide open the phone to access the media player controls, the screen automatically switches to Landscape mode but once you close the phone, it doesn't automatically switch back. You have to open the dial pad to get back to portrait mode, which is annoying
.
Camera
2592x1944 (5.0 Mp), Video, ZOOm
Nokia N95 a 5 megapixel autofocus camera. The camera takes mostly wonderful photos in a wide variety of lighting situations. The automatic white balance system in the camera seems to be very accurate in most situations, though perhaps the photos might appear a bit cool (blue) in color for some.
The camera's user interface is simple to use and consists primarily of a series of icons that run across the right edge of the display when the N95 is held horizontally. The user can move up and down with the d-pad to quickly pick a setting and press the select button to change it. Nudging the d-pad left or right accesses the digital zoom. One of the more interesting aspects of the camera is the built-in orientation sensor that allows the user to take landscape or portrait mode photos just by holding the N95 horizontally or vertically - no menu access required. It is not fool proof, however.
Sometimes the orientation sensor appears to get stuck in the default landscape mode, and there is no way to tell if it is working or not since the settings icons remain on the same edge of the display regardless of the orientation. A couple of taps on the side of the phone before taking a photo in portrait mode seems to increase the chances that things will work out properly.
Additional buttons
On the right side of the device a dedicated two-stage camera shutter button can be found (half press to focus, full press to snap the photo) and a photo playback/gallery button that is similar to what one would expect to find on a dedicated digital camera. Pressing the button once will display the last photo on the screen, pressing it again will bring up the photo gallery. Also on the right side of the N95 you can find the volume rocker switch and one of the two stereo speakers.
The top edge of the N95 is home to the power switch, which is also handy for changing profiles when pressed briefly.
Sizes, Ports and Slots
On the left side of the phone you can find the 3.5mm stereo headset jack, the Infrared port,
and the covered microSD memory card slot.
The bottom part of the phone contains charger connector and the USB Mini-B port.
Menu
The N95 is a Symbian OS 9.2 S60 3.1 (3rd Edition Feature Pack 1) phone. As with other S60 phones, firmware can be updated at home using the Phone Software Update service. N95 is fully compatible with all existing S60 3rd Edition software.
As has long been the case with S60, the user experience is pretty consistent and intuitive. The main menu can be viewed as a 3x4 (or 4x3) grid of icons, or as a list.
Softkey and d-pad select button usage makes sense to me, and the option menus and their pop-out sub-menus are easy to navigate. The Nokia Active Standby menu system puts the user's most accessed applications and bookmarks on the standby screen where they can be easily accessed. Currently playing media tracks, upcoming appointments, new message counts, and nearby WiFi access points are also displayed on the Active Standby screen. Active Standby can be disabled, but one would be hard pressed to find a valid reason to do so in my opinion.
Menu operations, image processing, video recording and playback, 3D graphics in games (e.g. System Rush), web browsing - everything works very fast. Memory limitations are the same as of all the remaining S60 3rd Edition smartphones (except for the Nokia E90 Communicator), so if you have previously owned any other S60 3rd Edition phone then you can expect the N95 to offer you the same capabilities when it comes to number of programs you can run simultaneously or size of documents you can open.
Being based on the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1, the N95 contains the new 2.0 version of the Nokia OSS web browser. It's now faster and less memory hungry. Even the first version was very good at rendering web pages the same way as you can see them on your desktop PC, but v2 goes even further and provides almost perfect accuracy. Moreover, it now supports both WWW and WAP, so it is now the only browser preinstalled in the phone. New features in the 2.0 version also include auto-completion for form data fields, video plug-in, support for favicons, Flash Lite 2.0, RSS and Atom feeds with automatic update, password manager, support for landscape orientation, toolbar, background sounds, saving images and whole pages for offline browsing, operator cache, visual windows manager and user agent profile. Wow, it's now a fully mature browser. The only thing I miss is Opera-like small screen rendering mode.
The N95 has the same Music Player with equalizer (supporting MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA/M4A) and Real Player as all S60 phones. Full screen video playback is 100% smooth and movies look great on N95's huge screen
The N95 features a built-in GPS receiver. It's the same chip you can find in the Nokia E90. It's quite sensitive and after obtaining fix it keeps working indoors and under heavy foliage, but it's slightly less sensitive and also slightly less accurate than SiRF Star III based receivers. Besides the usual Landmarks and Position applications, the N95 also comes with Smart2Go software. Mapping functionality is free; navigation and city guides services can be purchased as extra options.
Imaging
5 Megapixel Camera
Digital Zoom
Autofocus
Flash
Camera Key
Carl Zeiss Optics Tessar™ Lens
Scenes Settings (Automatic, User Defined, Close Up, Portrait, Landscape & Night)
White Balance (Automatic, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent & Fluorescent)
Colour Tone (Normal, Black & White, Sepia & Negative)
Video Player
Video Recorder
Video Streaming
Video Modes
Video Calling
Second CIF Camera
GPS Navigation (100 Countries Maps)
Messaging
SMS (Text Messaging)
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
Email (SMTP, IMAP4 & POP3)
Email with Attachments
Picture Messaging
Instant Messaging
SMS Distribution List
Predictive Text
Sound
Music Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ & WMA)
Stereo FM Radio
Visual Radio
MP3 & Polyphonic Ringtones
Stereo Headset
Nokia Music Manager
Voice Commands
Voice Recorder
Voice Dialling
Handsfree Speaker
Vibration Alert
Entertainment
Java™ Games
Java™ Applications
Embedded Games
Downloadable Games
Organiser
Phonebook
Contacts
Calendar
Notes
Clock
To Do List
Calculator
Converter
Conference Call
Push To Talk
Document Viewer
OS Symbian Operating System
S60 Software
Connectivity
3G
Bluetooth™
USB 2.0
Pop Port™
EDGE
HSCSD
WLAN Wi-Fi
Network
Quad Band (GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900)
HSDPA
Internet
WAP
XHTML
HTML
Memory & Talk Time
160 Mbytes Memory Plus 128 Mbyte MicroSD™ Memory Card
6.5 Hours Talk Time
220 Hours Standby
Weight & Size
120 g
99 x 53 x 21 mm
Pluses
Elegant design
Superb 5 Mpix Camera
Built-in GPS receiver
Huge TFT screen
Wi-Fi
GPS Navigation
Minuses
Too loose sliding part
Too little free RAM
Poor standby battery life
The hardware feels a bit cheap
Conclusion
Great looking phone and a great performer. Like Nokia says, it's truly amazing "what computers have become". Great screen, powerful processor with 2D/3D graphics and video acceleration, all connectivity and data transmission options including HSDPA, WLAN b/g, UPnP, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, fantastic camera letting you take still pictures with quality comparable to amateur digicams and record video clips of mini-DV quality, great audio and video playback capabilities, TV out connector, built-in GPS receiver and good mapping software - everything inside small, light and extremely good looking housing.. What's left to say...
