My N95 review

Question

It’s almost a year now that I was waiting for this magnificent piece of technology, I mean 5 megapixel camera, 3.5G, WLAN, S60…what could you ask for more? Surely the N93 turned heads with its twisting and turning but this baby did more than that.
So let’s see my first impression after I opened the box…it looked exactly like those ads we see everyday on the highway or on the internet, only smaller and better looking.
I saw a huge screen with QVGA resolution and 16 million colours, 13 main keys including a joy-pad, a stylishly placed camera popping out of the housing, a speaker, and that infamous Nokia N sign.
On the right side of the phone I see something that reminds me of the N73, not just the colour, but those blue backlighten keys. Up and down, gallery, autofocus and camera buttons and also a “chrome” speaker grill with 12 holes.
On the left side there is another speaker grill and a special 3.5mm jack of which I will speak about later, it also has an infrared cover and the microSD slot, very nicely built on the cover and easy to remove.
On the back we obviously find that awesome Carl Zeiss lens 5 megapixel camera with DVD recording and a powerful flash and even a stylish shutter. You also find the battery cover, which contains a BL-5F 950 MaH battery, same as the N93.
The top part has simply a ON/OFF/Profiles button while the bottom has a charger input, a miniUSB port and a microphone.
The phone is very thick, 21mm. We can compare it to the massive 7710 but its quite light for its kind, especially without the battery. The weight is 120g, it’s 99mm long and 53mm wide.
The main keypad feels weird for people who are used to Nokia’s soft keys. The soft keys are still there but they are made real thin as there are Menu and Multimedia keys next to them, so if you’re not careful, you will press the wrong buttons but eventually times cures everything.
Time to slide the cover up and uncover an ergonomic keypad. This keypad is rather small for such a big space, but it’s not an issue, because the keys and modelled in such a 3D shape that it’s actually comfortable and pleasant to play with them. There is a line dividing the first row of keys from the rest, I don’t know why though. The GPS module is under the # key and the lock slide sensor is in the middle of the first row of keys. There is sort of a wall that looks like a cover of the phone: between the keypad and the cover there is a big space and you can rest your fingers there, quite nice and stylish I would say.
The keypad lightning is done very well, there are lines of blue light coming between the keys when it’s dark and it gives the phone that futuristic look. The lightning of the LCD is also done very well, a very bright screen but still a perfect contrast.
This slider phone got something I’ve never seen on a phone of its shape: the base is huge and the top slide is thin as a needle. But moving on to the other slide, I notice that when opening the slide, it makes an ugly and loud voice, oppposite of when closing the phone. Turning the phone on the pther way, activates the landscape mode. They multimedia keys on the left side of the phone aren’t keys, they feel like a touchpad, you can’t see them, they are flat, a stylish manouvre and an ergonomic choice, they are also blue backlit. When turning the phone to landscape mode triggers the multimedia menu which can be customized, and pressing the play button activates the music player. The screen’s rotation is quite fast and it doesn’t usually crash.
And then, there’s that camera shutter. Just like in a proper camera, sliding the shutter down activates camera mode, even if the keypad is locked, and only this way the right side keys will light up.
What to expect from this Symbian OS9.2S60 V3 with FP1? Oh well, looking from the past this OS seemed to be advancing to an extreme, possibly outlining Windows itself! But no…9.2 isnt that great unfortunately, perhaps I’m owner of a young version of it, my phone has v10.0.0.18 on it, and it behaves quite well in general, although no AGPS or FOTA on this version yet.
On the waiting screen we have that old S60 GUI with the active desktop, WLAN status, shortcuts, operator, signal, battery, clock and the selected profile. We head to the menu and see the 4x3 assembly with animated icons or the choice of list view. There are 3 folders: tools, applications and office. There is a little tool called Search and was built in conjunction with Windows Live, some marketing from the Microsoft guys I guess. There’s also a Maps application which I will talk about later.
When you enter Settings you can see everything much more organised and clear, more functions, practicaly everything is connected to the Settings program, even the Themes.
The GPS Data application tells you the Latitude, Longitude, Precision, Altitude, Altitude Precision and Speed, and on the other tab you can find averages and bearing (compass). Then there is the actual maps application. You must have your country’s maps installed, as in doesn’t come with every country, unfortunately most African countries aren’t there which is bad for me as I’m somewhat an explorer. Another disadvantage is that voice navigation is costly. You can see roads, petrol stations, define and save places with the application. The search button doesn’t work well as my searches always return no results, and the GPS takes quite long to startup. The latest firmware version (12) offers Assisted-GPS but that will need some sort of internet connection. The voice navigation cost 106$ for 3 years.
The web browser is very advanced, letting you open different windows, offerring minimaps and a mouse cursor, quite lovely. It also plays Javascript and flash animations.
The music player improved a lot, let’s you search for music, shiws album art and has fantastic visualizations. It has 6 predefined equalizers and you can change the settings on 5 of them. There is a modern multi functional headset device of which I will talk about later on.
In the Office folder you can find a Zip application, I wonder what does…There is also a Video Centre application which streams/downloads videos from different sources like Reuters.
When it comes to connectivity, the N95 is king. Starting with Bluetooth 2.0, transfers at full speed and up to 6 devices at the same time. Followed by the old infrared system, and then the ever-growing Wireless LAN, which let’s you easily access internet and join networks. Unfortunately you cannot create networks with other phones.
Then there’s our lovely HSDPA or 3.5G. Fast browsing and downloading at 1.8mbps, just awesome. If that doesn’t work, there’s 3G, EDGE, and EGPRS which is an advanced class of GPRS.
There’s also a miniUSD port which when connected with a cable provides Mass Storage, PC Suite, Media Player and Image Print options. Of course Mass Storage won’t activate if you got a theme or an application running from the memory card.
As I said before, I would like to especially talk about that 3.5mm jack on steroids. Normal jacks offer just a two channel input or output. This one has 3 channels, both input and output at the same time, which is a wonderful connection by Nokia, I haven’t seen it or atlease noticed it anywhere else, so for me, these small details count a lot. This special jack helps with the audio controller and also makes way for TV-Out. It can be used normally and connected to stereo systems.
Now it’s time for the camera, it offers 0.3mp, 0.8mp, 2mp, 3m and 5mp resolutions. There are options such as: capture mode; flash option; timer; sequence mode; light compensator; white balance; colour tone; ISO sensitivity; contrast; and sharpness.
Video mode at 640x480 30fps has options of mode, white balance and colour tone.
What was really missing here is optical zoom as its digital zoom is unfocused. The front CIF camera works poorly as it’s only for video calls.
The flash is very powerful, in totally dark situations, it looks like daylight, especially indoors.
The sound on this device is great, 3D Stereo speakers offering a loud quality music output, even as a loudspeaker for calls it behaves perfectly. Unfortunately the included stereo earphones are really soft, so you might have to get a new pair. The memory card included should be enough to store about 300 songs, it’s a 1GB. The music can be converted through PC Suite, but this phone supports most music formats so it won’t be necessary unless you wish to change the bitrate.
Now any phonehas faults, and the N95 is no exception: the lights on the multimedia keys off during music playback, not nice if you are driving at night and want to pause the song as you won’t be able to see the keys. The battery doesn’t last long, 950mah is very light, and if the default screen saver isn’t set to an acceptable time range, the phone will die very quicly as the screen consumes and extreme amount of electricity. If you use the phone moderately, let’s say for internet and music, you will end you charging it every night or so.
The top slide isn’t assembled properly, you can see some cracks and openings on the sides, and white light escapes minimally, this tells us that the phone is very fragile.
The sildes makes a huge noise as I said before, this problem doesn’t exist on the competitors, and Nokia failed there.
If you have a third party 3D theme running the phone will considerably slow down, especially on typing.
When playing Java built games, the phone’s battery lasts long enough, but when playing SISX games that push the powerful Graphics IC to its limit, the battery drains quite badly.
Java applications all drain the RAM very badly and the phone crashes if you try to multitask, making me restart the phone, and that can get irritating for heavy users like me, as you will have to restart 5+ times per day.
The phone comes with a good audio controller for earphones or an external audio output. The controller features a microphone, a 3.5mm stereo jack, a holder, a security key lock, volume up and down, answer button, play, forward and backward buttons.
The provided earphones have an extremely short left ear cable and a long right ear cable which is not very comfortable.
A TV-Out cable is also provided.
Advantages: 5mp Carl Zeiss camera with Autofocus; DVD-like recording; Powerful flash; loud speakers; 3.5mm jack with 3 channels; HSDPA; GPS; S60 OS9.2
Disadvantages: Weak battery; GPS takes long to startup; OS is still young in some aspects.
Rating: 9.8/10
full review at: http://merajchhaya.googlepages.com/nokian95
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Answer 1

02-Aug-200703:19 PM
dfulgo wrote:
...hmmm, very interesting...
- BT in compliance with NOKIA point of view, BT protocol missed.
- Outlook sync according to NOKIA way, SyncML protocol missed.
- History calls ALWAYS with mobile icons, CommonSense missed.
...so, no matter if the new firmwares are getting things worse than before?
...wow, Nokia, you're right, continue in this direction, your Customers will never be disappointed, they simply don't care...(sigh).
you are quite right, i guess i never noticed those details
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