Nokia N95 Review-Superb,Stylish & Sizziling

Nokia N95 Review

Introduction

With the N95 Nokia proves once again that they know how to make beautiful and elegant phones. And when the beauty comes together with power and functionality - do we need anything else?  Announced on September 26 2006.

Hardware

The look

As mentioned above, it's a true beauty. It weighs 120 g and measures 99x53x21 mm (90 cc). Matt silver front and plum back really match each other. The back side is made of a plastic so soft that it feels as if it was a rubber. And it's a Very pleasant feel. The front side of the device is dominated by a huge 2.6" QVGA (320x240) screen, only a bit smaller than E61 and E61i displays - 55x41 mm. It's the same size as in the Sony Ericsson M600 and W950 phones. The screen provides exceptional quality, vivid colors and high brightness controlled by ambient light detector. Below the screen you can find shiny silver buttons (two soft keys Send and End button, Menu and Multimedia button, and Edit and C keys) and slightly above the display there is a small, secondary camera used for video calls.

The bottom part of the phone contains charger connector and the USB Mini-B port. On the upper part there is a Power On/Off button which is also used to change profiles. On both sides of the phone there are stereo speakers covered with shiny silver grid. The left side also contains the infrared port, hot-swappable micro SD card slot with protective cover and the standard 3.5mm audio/video connector providing audio and composite TV output (A/V cable is bundled with the phone). On the right side of the device there are three silver buttons: volume control, camera button and a button providing quick access to the Gallery.

The N95's unique feature is that its front part not only slides up to reveal the traditional numeric phone keypad but it also slides down providing access to a row of multimedia playback control buttons and automatically switching the screen to landscape mode and launching Multimedia menu with Music player selected. So depending on if you want to make a phone call or listen to the music, just slide the front part of your phone in the right direction. Unfortunately, the music keys only work with Music Player and Real Player and currently cannot be assigned to any other program.

Sliding the cover back to its standard position automatically locks the keypad (it also locks after configured time out). The movement is very smooth and additionally supported by a spring, which means: push it slightly and it'll go further by itself. So far so good. What's missing, however, is any kind of lock keeping the cover in its central position. Unfortunately, it happens that it slides up or down in pocket, which also automatically unlocks the keypad... It's also just a bit too loose and tends to rattle a little (although it may be just my unit). The keypad has nice looking, convex keys providing decent tactile feedback. Blue back light is controlled by light sensor.

Let's now take a look at the back side of the phone. It's where you can find the 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Tessar auto focus camera with LED flash. It's protected with a manually controlled lens cover: opening the cover automatically launches the camera application. Under the battery cover you can find Nokia's new BL-5F 950 mAh accu providing 160-240 min of talk time and up to 215 hours of standby. Considering the pre-sales firmware version it's too early to comment on the power efficiency of the retail units, but the tested device worked full day with quite extensive use and about two days with light use. The N95 doesn't support USB charging.

Package Includes

Nokia N95 is powered by the fastest processor currently used in Symbian OS devices: ARM11-based Texas Instruments OMAP2420 running at 330 MHz it’s the same processor (and the same clock speed) as used in the Nokia N93/N93i, Linux-based Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. What does it mean? Great performance, additionally boosted by hardware 2D/3D graphics and imaging/video acceleration.

Unlike the Nokia E90 Communicator and the N800 Tablet, both equipped with 128 MB RAM, the N95 still stays in the smart phones camp with its traditional 64 MB total RAM and about 22 MB RAM free (E90 offers almost 80 MB of free operating memory). I haven't, however, experienced any memory related problems or 'No memory' errors. The N95 has about 160 MB internal storage memory (disk C :) and can be expanded with micro SD cards up to 2 GB.

Profile system

Profile system is same as in other phones it comes with six profiles mainly General, Silent, Meeting, Outdoor, Pager, Offline with no more changes as comparison to other phones of N-Series and you can set additional profile of your own choice whatever you want.

GPS receiver

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. Besides the usual Landmarks and Position applications, the N95 also comes with Smart 2 Go software. Mapping functionality is free; navigation and city guide’s services can be purchased as extra options. Unfortunately, no other existing S60 3rd Edition GPS software is able to take advantage of the built-in receiver because all of them are 'hard coded' to communicate with Bluetooth GPS devices via the Serial Port Profile.

The Nokia N95 is a quad band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WCDMA 2100 MHz phone. Sorry guys, again no support for 3G frequencies but other than that almost everything's included... Connectivity and data transfer options include HSDPA (up to 3.6 Mbps) with simultaneous voice and data, wireless LAN (802.11 b/g, up to 54 Mbit/s) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (up to 3 Mbit/s) and USB 2.0 Full Speed (12 Mbit/s) via Mini USB with mass storage class support.

Multimedia

Camera

Its 5 Megapixel (2592x1944) auto focus camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar optics (f/2.8, 5.6 mm, 10 cm infinity focusing range) and 1/1000th  1/3rd s mechanical shutter provide the best quality you can get from a camera phone. The 5 Mpix resolution is sufficient for even 28x36 cm (11x14") sized prints. The mechanical shutter and Zeiss optics put the N95's camera on par with simpler standalone digicams and the only thing that's missing is optical zoom. The flash is a white LED diode working within a range of about 3-4 meters.

While we're on the subject of the N93, in Nokia N93 review I was complaining about excessive noise visible on pictures and videos taken by the N93, even in good lighting conditions. It seems that Nokia has seriously improved their noise reduction algorithms or some imaging sensor hardware components (e.g. amplifiers or A/D converters) as pictures taken with the N95, even at night and in dim light, are almost noise-free, even though the CMOS sensor has much higher resolution, i.e. smaller photo-sites. One of the pictures I took at night with automatic ISO setting turned out to be ISO 800 but I still couldn't find much noise on it! The only problem, present in recent S60 camera phones and also strongly affecting the N95 is incorrect automatic white balance resulting in excessive magenta saturation giving pictures unnatural, purple hue. Hopefully this will be fixed via a firmware update.

Video recorder

Nokia N95 is not only a great still camera but also a fantastic video recorder. Like other high-end models, it records MPEG-4 video with VGA (640x480) resolution at 30 frames per second. "DVD quality" is certainly an exaggeration but it definitely offers quality of amateur single-sensor Mini-DV camcorders. Un optimized firmware and the recorded video wasn't smooth, with some occasional jerks and delays. But this will undoubtedly be removed in retail firmware. Video stabilization helps avoiding shakes and vibrations. As in case of still pictures, the only missing thing you could think of is optical zoom. Incorrect purplish white balance problem also affects video clips so let's hope it'll be fixed before the device starts shipping.

As mentioned earlier, the N95 has the standard 3.5 mm mini-jack audio-visual connector. It can be used to connect stereo headphones and other audio equipment, as well as PAL/NTSC TV set with composite input. Both audio and video are of very good quality. The TV out feature lets you play games on large screen of your TV set, but I still don't understand why the AV connector is located on the left and not on the right side of the phone. Considering that the TV out signal is generated in landscape mode when you hold the phone with the right side out, having the connector (and the cable connected to it) on the right side would be much more convenient.

Stereo speakers

The N95 has stereo speakers and generates high quality stereo sound. It supports A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) letting you stream stereo music to stereo Bluetooth headphones. The headset bundled with the phone consists of two separate parts. The remote controller part has a standard headphone connector and a built-in microphone, which lets you use other, higher quality headphones while preserving the ability to make and receive calls.

Visual FM radio

The Visual FM radio (87.5-108 MHz) is the same as on any other S60 3rd Edition phone. It requires plugging in a 'wired' headset which acts as an FM antenna, but you can redirect the audio to play via phone's stereo speakers. Unfortunately, it is not possible to record from the radio.

Connectivity

USB

Nokia N95 comes with USB 2.0 Full speed via USB Mini-B connector which helps you to transfer data speedily with no problem this is what you see when you connects your phone with your PC. But still there is a demerit with the USB pot that it doesn’t support charging while connected with PC.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is other major tool of Nokia N95 you can transfer data at an awesome speed including large files such as MP4 or AVI files or Video recorded files. It comes with Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (3 Mbps). This is what we can say that is a nice feature of this phone.

Wi-Fi

WI-Fi is Awesome in this phone the transfer and catching capability of this phone is awesome. You can easily enjoy internet facility without using GPRS. Even you can enjoy browsing and other internet facilities at offline mode or without having SIM inside the phone

Performance

The N95 is fast. It uses the same hardware platform as the Nokia N93. 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 smart phones, 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.

Software

The N95 is a Symbian OS 9.2 S60 3.1 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. The N95 supports landscape mode for the full UI, which means that every menu and application can work in both the portrait and landscape mode. UI customization has been extended with possibility to select one of three font sizes, although I'd still warmly welcome yet another size, an even smaller one. As already mentioned, the N95 supports automatic key lock, which kicks in after configured time out or when you close the keypad.

Browser

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. 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.

Music Player

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. Supported video formats include: MPEG-4, H.264/AVC, H.263/3GPP and RealVideo 8/9/10. Video editor and Movie director let you edit and enhance recorded videos. All the remaining applications and features are the same as in all S60 3rd Edition phones.

Summary

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 I liked

1) Powerful ARM11-based TI OMAP2420 processor running at 330 MHz

2) Superb 5 MPix Carl Zeiss Tessar camera with autofocus

3) HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, UMTS, EDGE

4) Built-in GPS receiver

5) High quality, huge 2.6" TFT screen

6) Quad band 850/900/1800/1900 GSM, 2100 WCDMA

7) Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g 54 Mbps

8) Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (3 Mbps)

9) A2DP profile for stereo audio over Bluetooth

10) TV-quality video recording @ VGA resolution and 30 frames per second

11) Good build quality, elegant design, good size and weight

12) Standard 3.5 mm mini-jack A/V out connector

13) USB 2.0 Full speed via USB Mini-B connector

What I didn't like

1) The sliding part should have a lock to prevent it from sliding out (and unlocking the keypad) in your pocket

2) The sliding part is a tad too loose - moves and rattles

3) 22 MB free RAM is certainly too little for such a powerful device

4) Incorrect white balance in certain lighting conditions (purplish hue).

Final Words

As you can probably tell, the N95 packs a whole lot into one heck of a nice package. Nokia even ran a few Web ads talking about how the N95 helps you reclaim your pockets, and how people did computing back in the 'old days.' The N95 is truly a different kind of mobile device. One where there are literally no limits on how you can apply it. It does try to reach too far for some people, and yet, because it can, the N95 is a nice device of its own.

If the battery life were a touch better, and the user interface were a bit more refined, I could see this being an even better device than what it is now. But, even as it is, there is no under-stating the fact that the N95 is the best mobile device out there right now. Whether you want to call it a phone, Smartphone, or multimedia computer, though, depends on how you will take advantage of its abilities.

Specifications

General	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 2100
		HSDPA 850 / 1900 - American version
	Announced	2006, September. Released 2007, March
	Status	Discontinued

Body	Dimensions	99 x 53 x 21 mm, 90 cc
	Weight	120 g

Display	Type	TFT, 16M colors
	Size	240 x 320 pixels, 2.6 inches, 40 x 53 mm (154 ppi pixel density)

Sound	Alert types	Vibration; Downloadable polyphonic, monophonic MP3 ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers
	3.5mm jack	Yes

Memory	Card slot	Micro SD, up to 8GB, hot swap, 128 MB card included, buy memory
	Internal	160 MB storage, 64 MB RAM

Data	GPRS	Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
	EDGE	Class 32, 296 kbps; DTM Class 11, 177 kbps
	Speed	HSDPA
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
	Infrared port	Yes
	USB	Yes, v2.0 mini USB

Camera	Primary	5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, LED flash
	Video	Yes, VGA@30fps
	Secondary	QVGA video call camera

Features	OS	Symbian OS 9.2, S60 rel. 3.1
	CPU	332 MHz Dual ARM 11
	GPU	3D Graphics HW Accelerator
	Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
	Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
	Radio	Stereo FM radio; Visual radio
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support; Nokia Maps
	Java	Yes, MIDP 2.0
	Colors	Silver, Plum, Black, Pink, Red
		- Dual slide design - WMV/RV/MP4/3GP video player - MP3/WMA/WAV/RA/AAC/M4A music player - TV-out - Organizer - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Predictive text input - Push to talk - Voice dial/memo

Battery		Standard battery, Li-Ion 950 mAh (BL-5F)
	Stand-by	Up to 220 h (2G) / 192 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 6 h 30 min (2G) / 2 h 42 min (3G)

Misc	SAR US	0.79 W/kg (head)     0.76 W/kg (body)
	SAR EU	0.50 W/kg (head)

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