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| Nokia N95 Review - Is This What Computers Have Become? |
| Written by Maxit | |||||||
What's In The Box  The phone itself, BL-5F Battery, AC-5 Charger, HS-45 Headset and AD-43 Adapter, TV-Out cable, DKE-2 Connectivity cable, 1GB MicroSD card and SD Adapter, User Guide, Software CD, Screen protector, Leather case. (Package contents may vary from country to country) Design  Measuring in at 99 x 53 x 21 mm and weighing only 120g, the N95 is neither huge nor heavy, considering the features built into the phone. The 2-way slide mechanism works like a charm and can be used to switch the UI orientation. The phone is available in two colors - Plum and Sand - though the color is retained only by the rear and sides of the phone. There is the graphite color available too but only to O2 subscribers in the UK. Retailing at around 800$, the phone definitely doesn't look as good as some cheaper phones but its not ugly either. The front of the phone is made of plastic and the rear too but it has a leather/rubber feel to it just like on the N73 which I liked very much.  The front of the phone is occupied by the excellent 2.6 inch screen sporting a resolution of 240x320. Below the screen are the Menu key, the D-pad, and the multimedia key surrounded by the two soft keys, the call answer and end keys, and the clear and pencil buttons which are chromed. There is very little spacing between these keys that my finger slipped onto the surrounding buttons (especially the multimedia key) when using the D-pad. Above the display is the secondary CIF camera which can be used video calls and there is also a ambient light sensor beside it. The speaker is positioned in the center and is covered by a not-so-good-looking chrome mesh. The 2-way sliding mechanism works perfectly well but the phone wobbles a bit in the closed position and the slid up position which seems to be fixed in the latest batch of phones rolling out from the last week. (Unfortunately mine came from the first batch).  Sliding the phone upwards reveals the number keys which are averagely sized and need some getting used to. You are really gonna hate them for a week or two if you do a lot of texting and have big fingers. The phone can be slid downwards too which reveals the music controls which are easy to access. The ON/OFF button is placed on the top of the phone in typical Nokia style, and doubles up as the profile change key too.  The right side of the phone sports more buttons including the volume control key, the gallery quick access key and the all important camera shutter release button. I really didn't like the idea of a gallery quick access key but some others might! These keys are large enough and easily accessible. All the keys have a good response and are well lit in blue. On top of the volume control keys is one of the two chrome grilled speakers. We will talk more about them later. The other side of the phone has the hot-swappable microSD slot, the Infrared port, the 3.5mm audio-cum-TV Out pin and of course the other speaker. The microSD slot is covered by a flap which is solid and firm unlike in some older Nokia models.  The bottom of the phone has a welcome change - the old Pop-Port is replaced by the miniUSB port instead; but unfortunately the phone cannot be charged via USB. The charger connector and the microphone round up the bottom. The rear of the camera is where all the excitement is - the 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens and Autofocus sits in all its glory and the lens are very well protected. There is the LED flash (sadly no Xenon goodness :( ) just beside the lens. Below the camera unit is the battery cover with the Nokia logo over it. Software and UI  The standby screen resembles any other latest S60 device with the active standby turned on by default. The menu is arranged in a 3x4 gird view which can be changed into list view too. Most of the operations can be carried out without opening the slide.   The UI switching works like charm not only with the default applications but also with most of the 3rd party applications. Sliding the phone downwards switches the UI into landscape mode and automatically launches the multimedia menu too. A few applications like SmartMovie and the freeware DivX player didn't seem to like this feature however!! They would simply crash and require the user to remove the battery to reboot.  The phone comes pre-installed with the games - Snake and System Rush. Quick Office is also included. Other featues like Contacts, Logs, and Calendar didn't receive any notable updates. There is a barcode reader too installed on the ROM.  Other applications worth talking about include the Visual Radio which can download station info and guides and the Video Center application which downloads video feeds direct to the phone. The Lifeblog software allows you to blog directly from your phone and Flashlite enables you to view mobile flash content.  A new feature helps identify applications that are currently running by showing a small indicator not only on the top of the application's icon but also on the folders and subfolders of that application as well. This is not really helpful as the list of running applications can be seen by holding the menu key for a second. The N95 has 160MB of internal memory which is more than enough to store your messages and contacts and ONLY 64MB of RAM of which ONLY 20MB is available after startup. This is one of the few shortcomings of the phone as there are many RAM hungry applications and be prepared to see the nasty "Memory Full" warnings! Music Nokia phones are continuously improving in music playback and the N95 is another leap ahead for Nokia. This phone definitely performs better than some of those old music branded phones. The stereo speakers present on either sides of the phone provide decent output but they have their limitations. There bass response is too low (well, we can't expect thumping bass!) and there is a little hissing sound when playing some songs. This is more audible when playing at full volume maybe because the small speakers can't handle all the frequencies at the same time. The phone has a 3.5mm connector to plug in your ear phones and the sales package already included the HS-45 headset and the AD-43 adapter (which also works as a remote control). The headset performs decently and it too has poor bass response. The cable is very short and you should connect it to the adapter if you really want to listen to some music for a long time. Anyways, your best bet would be to buy better quality earphones. I don't have any earphones so I plugged in my Razer gaming headphones into the N95 (I would say this is over kill!!  ) and I should say, I am really impressed. Its almost like listening on an iPod. The bass response was amazing and there is no distortion or hissing whatsoever at the maximum volume level.Music playback can be controlled by the four dedicated keys which work in any application. The changes are notified through a pop up. The Bluetooth on the N95 supports A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) and AVRCP (Audio Video Remote Control Profile) which means that users can not only enjoy stereo music wirelessly on their Bluetooth stereo headsets but also control the music.   The music player found on the N95 is the same one as on the new Music Edition phones and supports playback of MP3, WMA, WAV, and ACC formats. The player is designed very neatly and songs are sorted by Artists, Composers, Genres, Albums, and the user can create any number of playlists. The player has a equalizer with 5 presets and the ability to edit existing presets or add custom presets too. Stereo widening can be turned on or off (I really didn't notice any difference!). There are three visualisations too - Album Art, Spectrum, and Oscilloscope. Music can be transferred to the phone through mass storage mode or by syncing the phone with Windows Media Player. Both methods work well but there are some issues with data transfer which I will discuss later. The Visual Radio application lets you play FM channels and you can save upto channels for quick access. Earphones are to be plugged in in order to listen to the radio. Video If there is one area that benefits massively from the 2.6 inch display, that got to be video playback. Real Player is pre-installed on the phone and is capable of playing MP4 videos in full screen and video playback in landscape mode simply rocks. The Video Center application lets you to subscribe to video feeds and view them right on your phone.  Many freeware and commercial applications are available for S60 phones to enable them to play DivX encoded avi files as well. I tried DivX player and SmartMovie and they worked pretty well. However the phone hanged whenever I tried to switch UI modes when in these applications. TV Out This feature is one of my favorites and this opens up a lot of possibilities. The TV Out feature on the N95 gives the user a host of new and exciting options to explore. The 3.5mm connector doubles up to offer the additional connectivity option, there by letting users see whats on their phone screen on a much bigger screen. This feature is best to view videos and photos on you widescreen TV. But hold on, its got more to it! You can plug the Red and White pins of the TV Out cable into your HiFi music system and enjoy some great music. Fire up the web browser and get ready to browse the web on the largest browser ever - your TV!! If you wanna have more fun, just open any game on your phone and turn it into a console. This is an absolutely awesome feature both in terms of productivity and fun. Connectivity As mentioned earlier there are a host of connectivity options including Bluetooth, Infrared, WiFi, HSPDA, EDGE, GPRS, UPnP, and PC Synchronisation. The N95 has a Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR radio and is the first Nokia phone to feature both A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles which is a welcome improvement.  WiFi works as expected and there are no issues whatsoever. But a few users are complaining about frequent disconnections during browsing. This is because of Nokia wanting to save some battery life by enabling power saving mode and it can be easily disabled from the settings.  I had no chance to check out the faster connectivity solutions (3G and HSPDA) but I tried out GPRS and its flawless. The major problem started when I connected my phone to the PC with the provided DKE-2 datacable. The data transfer speeds from the microSD to PC were no where near to what I achieved using a card reader and there is a bigger problem that concerns me. Storage The N95's internal storage is 160MB and the storage space is expandable by adding a microSD card. Now, I am the bearer of some bad news for you guys in Europe and Americas. Nokia has decided to keep the costs as low as possible by not providing a microSD card with the phone. Now this is pretty bad considering the fact that a photo shot at full 5MP resolution takes anywhere between 512KB and 1MB and 1 minute of video recorded at 30fps is gonna eat away 25MB!!
Luckily the Asian version I bought came with a 1GB microSD card and at present the highest capacity you can buy is 2GB and is available online for around 70$ after some searching. There is a controversy regarding the microSD cards supported by the N95.
Sandisk is planning to launch 4GB microSDHC (High Capacity) cards later this month and according to Nokia, the phone doesn't support SDHC cards (based on FAT32 filesystem as opposed to FAT12/16 on the current cards). But Sandisk claims that the N95 supports its 4GB cards!! This is something interesting and only time will tell. I will update you as soon as I confirm this. GPS   It takes around 5-10 minutes when in open areas to lock on to the satellites to acquire the position and the phone should be slid up to get the best signal because the receiver is beneath the number pad.  The phone has a Maps application which is basically the Smart2go software developed by gate5. The application is still in beta but there are no real issues with it as far as I knew. There is also a MapLoader software available for PC which can be used to download maps of many countries onto your microSD card and use them with the Maps application. The software however has some serious limitations. Maps cannot be downloaded at speed greater than 5KB/s. I took me more than an hour to download a 10MB map! I hope Nokia looks into this issue and fixes it very soon. The maps are also marked with a lot of points of interests including airports, restaurants, shopping malls, hotels and many more. You can also save any location as a landmark and access it directly in the future.  The Maps application allows you to plan your routes from point A to B, show a simulation of the route, and track the route if you wish. You can buy navigation too if you wish which provided you turn by turn instructions in real time. This is pretty cool as you get all the maps you want and basic services for free and you can pay for it only if you need it. This is the best part about the GPS feature on the N95. GPS however is a real battery drainer and a fully charged N95 wouldn't last for more than a couple of hours with GPS usage. So the best way would be to hook it up to your car charger all the while when you are using GPS. Battery Life As I mentioned earlier, GPS and data transfer can drain the battery real quick and also using WiFi and the yet to be discussed camera, can easily empty the juice. The battery generally lasts one day with moderate usage but heavy usage which includes video recording, GPS, WiFi can drain your battery even faster. My phone is lasting 24-36 hours on a single charge on moderate usage without WiFi and GPS.  We can't really blame Nokia because they have done their best to keep the phone's size and weight in check and so they had to go with the 900mAh BL-5F battery instead of a 1000mAh one. I seriously hope that Nokia releases a better battery for power users as soon as possible. Camera I know what you guys are waiting for - the most exciting part of this review... the 5MP autofocus camera with a mechanical shutter and Carl Zeiss Lens. But unfortunately I am struggling with my exams currently and I can't do this part now. I promise to finish the best part of the review by Thursday, trust me!!
This one is of my friend taken in shade with default settings and flash off. (looks great with very little noise and good colors) This is taken in my room with with flash on. This is a shot of my headphones taken with default settings and flash on. (little noise here, blame my shaky hands!!) A shot of a cardboard box in closeup mode (macro) with flash off. The keyboard shot with default settings and flash off in poor lighting conditions. (lot of noise because of the low light)
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