Cutting edge dual slider ...

The Nokia N95 was first announced in September 2006 at the Nokia Open Studio event in New York. The N95 has just landed in UK shops this month and has created quite a storm of interest in our 3G Forum. We are convinced the N95 will be remembered as the 3G handset that took us to somewhere new.

Of course, the Nokia Nseries is aimed at users looking to pack as many features as possible into one device.The full title for the N95 is the N95 Nseries Multimedia Computer.

Click for larger photo

Even before it had started shipping it had won an award ! This was from Popular Science magazine's "Best of What's New" Award in the publication's annual search for the top 100 technology innovations of the year.

The Nokia N95 offers a unique dual-slider device, including integrated GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, digital music player, full PIM functionality and support for 3G and HSDPA networks. Oh, and a full suite of N-series applications and an excellent Web browser (with Wi-Fi support).

Can the N95 weighing only 120 grams and with a maximum thickness of 21 mm really deliver all that Nokia claims. Well lets dig deeper.

It runs the latest version of the S60 software platform ( S60 3rd Edition P1 ). This means a new version of the S60 browser, a better RSS application, Flash Lite and more. It's all powered by a thumping ARM11 OMAP 2420 processor running at 330 MHz.

The unique two-way sliding design works as follows.  Slide up to reveal the keypad and slide down to reveal the touch sensitive media player controls. With the player controls viewable, the screen powers into landscape mode. The player controls include forward, back, stop and pause play for the Music Player.

 

 

Click for larger photo

This is a reasonably light handset for a multimedia computer and the Nokia design team must be congratulated. With the phone closed the menu and normal key functions are accessible. The primary camera is at rearside along with a LED light / cover. For video calls, the secondary camera is located top front.

The Nokia N95 offers a powerful 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/5.6 mm lens, auto focus and flash. Pictures are shown on the impressive 2.6 inch display. You can upload your photos directly from your camera phone to the Flickr online photo community. At 30 frames per second, you can easily capture moving objects.

The ring slider opens and closes the shutter. The camera switches on when the shutter is in the “ON” position. The screen is used as the viewfinder with the phone held horizontally. If you can use a digital camera phone, the N95 is similar to operate.

The result is a camera phone that produces results close to digital camera quality but with some limitations. The main observation would be limited sharpness / blurry results. However, unless you closely examine the results you may never notice anything adverse.

 

The full technical specification of the camera is is as follows :

Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/5.6 mm lens with auto focus

5 mega pixel (2595 x 1944 pixels) CMOS sensor

5.6 mm focal length corresponds to a 35 mm frame

Mechanical shutter with 1/1000 to 1/3 seconds

20x digital zoom

Focusing range: 10 cm (macro) to infinite

Macro range: 10 cm to 50 cm

Integrated LED flash, range up to 1.5 m

Flash modes: on, off, automatic

Capture modes: standard, series, self timer, video

Subjects: landscape, portrait, night, sport, macro, night portrait

White balance: automatic, sunny, cloudy, lamps, fluorescing

Color tones: normal, sepia, black & white, color saturation, negative

Speed: automatic, high, medium, low

Closeable flap to protect the optics

Looking at the technical specification above you can see there are plenty of features and options such as landscape, portrait, night, sport, macro, night portrait to experiment with.

Click for larger photo

We are told you can record video but didn't get that far as we wanted to concentrate on the match winning camera and on-board GPS.

The GPS is a crowd-pulling addition to the N95. According to Nokia, GPS can be accessed in 100 countries. Mars and the Moon are not included to-date. The Maps software application lets you view - would you believe downloaded maps !

Once you got the maps on your device you are ready to go. The maps themselves are free but you will need to purchase the navigational data from Nokia. This means that if you want real-time directions ( visual and voice ) you have to pay. We recommend you just purchase a week's worth to get started and see if the experience / package meets your needs. A very clever earner from Nokia.

The way it works is as follows :

- you search for your desired location by location, address or post code

- it jumps to your present location and displays this ready to track you

- follow the on-screen and audible instructions e.g. turn right etc.

Does it work ? Yes it does and it can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode. At the moment there is no speed camera or road traffic alerts but I am sure this will come. The search facility seemed a bit hit and miss but a route planned trip of 35 miles was okay. One thing to remember is that you need to have the bottom slider open to get the best GPS signal because this is where the antenna is situated.

The only issue could be that the downloading of maps from the nokia servers becomes slow. It will be tested over the next few months as there is a stampede of new N95 owners ready to join in. Of course, as its Free the stampede may turn into an avalanche.

One possible way to avoid this is to use your PC to download large maps onto your microSD memory card. In 2006 Nokia bought out Smart2go and the Smart2go application became "Nokia Maps". So checkout www.smart2go.com and save yourself a lot of wasted time. You could download the whole of London in one swoop.

The whole music player thing is slick and functional. Nokia’s music software lets you transfer tracks easily. There is also drag and drop possibilities. The sides of the phone house the stereo speakers and the sound was well balanced with a good feel. With a cutting edge handset like this you still need to be able to use your bins. So I'm glad to see the 3.5mm headphone socket.

Nokia has introduced a Mozilla type proprietary browser for the N95. I'm not quite sure what this means yet I know you can browse in portrait or landscape modes. There is a “fast browsing” option which speeds things up by displaying thumbs of the pages. Might be useful.

All the N95 applications and particularly the GPS must have an adverse effect on battery life. I feel that for phones with GPS the phone makers now need to include an official “GPS battery time” just like for talktime, videotime and standby time. During our tests we found it needed an evening charge each night. Our N95 had a Nokia Battery (BL-5F) 950mAH.

The bottom line for the N95 is that it is getting close, but at the moment cannot fully replace a dedicated digital camera or a sat-nav system. There are limitations. But HEY, a 3G HSDPA phone with a 5 mega pixel (2595 x 1944 pixels) camera and on-board GPS means its going to be very well accepted by all you mobile warriors out there.

The battery really needs to "go the extra mile". If it lets you down you will physically end up miles short of your destination.