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Nokia N95 review
Nokia N95 review
Michal Jerz, February 25th, 2006 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, the N95 has just stated shipping. This review is based on a unit with final hardware and pre-sales firmware so some things may still change.
HARDWARE
1. The look
Asmentioned above, it's a true beaty. It weighs 120 g and measures99x53x21 mm (90 cc). Matt silver front and plum back really match eachother. The back side is made of a plastic so soft that it feels as ifit was a rubber. And it's a VERY PLEASANT feel. The front side of thedevice is dominated by a huge 2.6" QVGA (320x240) screen, only a tadsmaller than E61 and E61i displays - 55x41 mm. It's the same size as in the Sony Ericsson M600 and W950phones. The screen provides exceptional quality, vivid colors and highbrightness controlled by ambient light detector. Below the screen youcan find shiny silver buttons (two softkeys, Send and End button, Menuand Multimedia button, 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 USBMini-B port. On the upper part there is a Power On/Off button which isalso used to change profiles. On both sides of the phone there arestereo speakers covered with shiny silver grid. The left side alsocontains the infrared port, hot-swappable microSD card slot withprotective cover and the standard 3.5mm audio/video connector providingaudio and composite TV output (A/V cable is bundled with the phone). Onthe right side of the device there are three silver buttons: volumecontrol, camera button and a button providing quick access to theGallery.
TheN95's unique feature is that its front part not only slides up toreveal the traditional numeric phone keypad but it also slides downproviding access to a row of multimedia playback control buttons andautomatically switching the screen to landscape mode and launchingMultimedia menu with Music player selected. So depending on if you wantto make a phone call or listen to the music, just slide the front partof your phone in the right direction. Unfortunately, the music keysonly work with Music Player and Real Player and currently cannot beassigned to any other program like e.g. Ogg Player.
Slidingthe cover back to its standard position automatically locks the keypad(it also locks after configured time out). The movement is very smoothand additionally supported by a spring, which means: push it slightlyand 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, whichalso automatically unlocks the keypad... It's also just a bit too looseand tends to rattle a little (although it may be just my unit). Thekeypad has nice looking, convex keys providing decent tactile feedback.Blue backlight is controlled by light sensor.
 Let'snow take a look at the back side of the phone. It's where you can findthe 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Tessar autofocus camera with LED flash.It's protected with a manually controlled lens cover: opening the coverautomatically launches the camera application. Under the batterycover you can find Nokia's new BL-5F 950 mAh accu providing 160-240 minof talk time and up to 215 hours of standby. Considering the pre-salesfirmware version it's too early to comment on the power efficiency ofthe retail units, but the tested device worked full day with quiteextensive use and about two days with light use. The N95 doesn'tsupport USB charging.
2. What's inside
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 and the recently announced (and already reviewed by us) Nokia E90 Communicator. What does it mean? Great performance, additionally boosted by hardware 2D/3D graphics and imaging/video acceleration.
 Unlike the Nokia E90 Communicatorand the N800 Tablet, both equipped with 128 MB RAM, the N95 still staysin the smartphones 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 microSD cards up to 2 GB.
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 indoorsand under heavy foliage, but it's slightly less sensitive and alsoslightly less accurate than SiRF Star III based receivers. Besides theusual Landmarks and Position applications, the N95 also comes with Smart2Go software.Mapping functionality is free; navigation and city guides services canbe purchased as extra options. Unfortunately, no other existing S60 3rdEdition GPS software is able to take advantage of the built-in receiverbecause all of them are 'hardcoded' to communicate with Bluetooth GPSdevices via the Serial Port Profile. But of course N95 and E90optimized versions supporting their internal receivers will soon bereleased by developers (the location API is available to developers),so it's only a matter of time.
 TheNokia N95 is a quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WCDMA 2100 MHzphone. Sorry guys, again no support for North American exotic 3Gfrequencies but other than that almost everything's included...Connectivity and data transferoptions include HSDPA (up to 3.6 Mbps) with simultaneous voice anddata, wireless LAN (802.11 b/g, up to 54 Mbit/s) and UPnP (UniversalPlug 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.
3. Multimedia beast
TheN95 should be code named "Multimedia Beast". Its 5 Megapixel(2592x1944) autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar optics (f/2.8, 5.6mm, 10 cm ~ infinity focusing range) and 1/1000th ~ 1/3rd s mechanicalshutter provide the best quality you can get from a camera phone. The 5 Mpix resolutionis sufficient for even 28x36 cm (11x14" sized prints. The mechanicalshutter and Zeiss optics put the N95's camera on par with simplerstandalone digicams and the only thing that's missing is optical zoom ala N93 / N93i. 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 my Nokia N93 review I was complaining about excessive noise visible on pictures and videos taken by the N93, even in good lightingconditions. It seems that Nokia has seriously improved their noisereduction algorithms or some imaging sensor hardware components (e.g.amplifiers or A/D converters) as pictures taken with the N95, even atnight and in dim light, are almost noise-free, even though the CMOSsensor has much higher resolution, i.e. smaller photo-sites. One of thepictures I took at night with automatic ISO setting turned out to beISO 800 but I still couldn't find much noise on it! The only problem,present in recent S60 camera phones, and also strongly affecting theN95 is incorrect automatic white balance resulting in excessive magentasaturation giving pictures unnatural, purple hue. Hopefully this willbe fixed via a firmware update. Please check the sample photos belowand judge it yourself.
 NokiaN95 is not only a great still camera but also a fantastic videorecorder. Like other high-end models, it records MPEG-4 video with VGA(640x480) resolution at 30 frames per second. "DVD quality" iscertainly an exaggeration but it definitely offers quality of amateursingle-sensor Mini-DV camcorders. The tested unit, however, was stillrunning an early, unoptimized firmware, and the recorded video wasn'tsmooth, with some occasional jerks and delays. But this willundoubtedly be removed in retail firmware. Video stabilisation helpsavoiding shakes and vibrations. As in case of still pictures, the onlymissing thing you could think of is optical zoom. Incorrect purplishwhite balance problem also affects video clips so let's hope it'll befixed before the device starts shipping.
 Asmentioned earlier, the N95 has the standard 3.5 mm mini-jackaudio-visual connector. It can be used to connect stereo headphones andother 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 letsyou play games on large screen of your TV set, but I still don'tunderstand why the AV connector is located on the left and not on theright side of the phone. Considering that the TV out signal isgenerated in landscape mode when you hold the phone with the right sideout, having the connector (and the cable connected to it) on the rightside would be much more convenient.
TheN95 has stereo speakers and generates high quality stereo sound. Itsupports A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) letting you streamstereo music to stereo Bluetooth headphones. The headset bundled withthe phone consists of two separate parts. The remote controller parthas a standard headphone connector and a built-in microphone, whichlets you use other, higher quality headphones while preserving theability to make and receive calls.
TheVisual FM radio (87.5-108 MHz) is the same as on any other S60 3rdEdition phone. It requires plugging in a 'wired' headset which acts asan FM antenna, but you can redirect the audio to play via phone'sstereo speakers. Unfortunately, it is not possible to record from theradio.
4. Performance
The N95 is fast. It uses the same hardware platform as the Nokia N93. However, GLBenchmarkresults are currently about 10-20% worse than N93's, most probably dueto early unoptimized firmware as there are no reasons for the retailN95 to be slower than N93. Let's wait for final firmware and thencompare the two. Current GLBenchmark N95 results are available here.
 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 allthe remaining S60 3rd Edition smartphones (except for the Nokia E90 Communicator),so if you have previously owned any other S60 3rd Edition phone thenyou can expect the N95 to offer you the same capabilities when it comesto number of programs you can run simultaneously or size of documentsyou can open.
SOFTWARE
TheN95 is a Symbian OS 9.2 S60 3.1 (3rd Edition Feature Pack 1) phone. Aswith 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.
TheN95 supports landscape mode for the full UI, which means that everymenu and application can work in both the portrait and landscape mode.UI customization has been extended with possibility to select one ofthree font sizes, although I'd still warmly welcome yet another size,an even smaller one. As already mentioned, the N95 supports automatickeylock, which kicks in after configured time out or when you close thekeypad.
 Thetested unit with beta firmware only had QuickOffice 3 viewers. It isunclear whether the retail version will have the newest QuickOffice 4and if it'll also include document editors.
Beingbased on the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1, the N95 contains the new2.0 version of the Nokia OSS web browser. It's now faster and lessmemory hungry. Even the first version was very good at rendering webpages the same way as you can see them on your desktop PC, but v2 goeseven further and provides almost perfect accuracy. Moreover, it nowsupports both WWW and WAP, so it is now the only browser preinstalledin the phone. New features in the 2.0 version also includeauto-completion for form data fields, video plug-in, support forfavicons, 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-likesmall screen rendering mode.
 TheN95 has the same Music Player with equalizer (supportingMP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA/M4A) and Real Player as all S60 phones. Fullscreen video playback is 100% smooth and movies look great on N95'shuge screen. Supported video formats include: MPEG-4, H.264/AVC,H.263/3GPP and RealVideo 8/9/10. Video editor and Movie director letyou edit and enhance recorded videos.
 Allthe remaining applications and features are the same as in all S60 3rdEdition phones and have already been described in detail in our earlierreviews.
SUMMARY
Greatlooking phone and a great performer. Like Nokia says, it's trulyamazing "what computers have become". Great screen, powerful processorwith 2D/3D graphics and video acceleration, all connectivity and datatransmission options including HSDPA, WLAN b/g, UPnP, USB 2.0 andBluetooth 2.0 EDR, fantastic camera letting you take still pictureswith quality comparable to amateur digicams and record video clips ofmini-DV quality, great audio and video playback capabilities, TV outconnector, built-in GPS receiver and good mapping software - everythinginside small, light and extremely good looking housing. What's left tosay... GO, GET IT!
What I liked:
- powerful ARM11-based TI OMAP2420 processor running at 330 MHz
- superb 5 MPix Carl Zeiss Tessar camera with autofocus
- HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, UMTS, EDGE
- built-in GPS receiver
- high quality, huge 2.6" TFT screen
- quadband 850/900/1800/1900 GSM, 2100 WCDMA
- Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g 54 Mbps
- Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (3 Mbps)
- A2DP profile for stereo audio over Bluetooth
- TV-quality video recording @ VGA resolution and 30 frames per second
- good build quality, elegant design, good size and weight
- standard 3.5 mm mini-jack A/V out connector
- USB 2.0 Full speed via USB Mini-B connector
What I didn't like:
- the sliding part should have a lock to prevent it from sliding out (and unlocking the keypad) in your pocket
- the sliding part is a tad too loose - moves and rattles
- 22 MB free RAM is certainly too little for such a powerful device
- incorrect white balance in certain lighting conditions (purplish hue).
Discuss about Nokia N95 with other users on our S60 3.0 Discussion Forum.

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