 In a nutshell: The most technically advanced smartphone ever! Complete with GPS satellite navigation, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, 3G video calling, and every other gadget you can think of! On the downside it's large, and like most smartphones does not have 100% robust firmware.
If you've used another Nseries phone or Symbian phone before, then you'll love it! Available in 4GB and 8GB versions; in silver and black.
Best buy (Nokia N95 4GB): *Free* with £35 line rental from Dialaphone or direct from Three at £24 line rental; or £469.95 on Pay as you Go from the Carphone Warehouse.
Best buy (Nokia N95 8GB): *Free* at £50 line rental from Vodafone (the 8 Gbyte version and comes preloaded with a full length copy of the feature film Spiderman 3).
Use this code to get a free Bluetooth Headset with every contract phone purchased from Vodafone: vodablue1.
Another Nokia Nseries smartphone! And this one is the most technically advanced ever! Can it really live up to the hype, or will it prove to be as unreliable and bug-ridden as some of Nokia's other Nseries phones?
The headline features of the eagerly-awaited Nokia N95 are mouth-wateringly amazing:
* Built-in GPS navigation
* 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss & Tessar optics
* Wi-Fi wireless internet connection
* 2.6 inch display with 16 million colours
* Ultra-fast HSDPA data transfer
Let's start with the basics. The Nokia N95 is a 3G smartphone built on the Series 60 Symbian interface (version 3.1). Let's be clear from the start that these types of phone are slow, have a tendency to freeze or shut down, and have unstable firmware. They are also large and heavy.
At 120g the N95 is of average weight for a smartphone, but is pretty bulky, despite its slide design. At least you won't forget which pocket it's in! When closed, you can access menu functions using the 5-way navigation key and the associated control keys.
The N95 also has several other dedicated media keys that can be used as shortcuts to media functions. This is a good feature if you like to have lots of buttons to push, but sometimes they just end up getting in the way. When you slide the phone open you have access to a full keypad, but like the Nokia N73, the buttons are too small to be really comfortable.
The user interface will be familiar to anyone who has used a Series 60 phone before: it's not as simple to use as the Nokias of olden days, but you wouldn't expect such a high powered device to be, would you? So, without getting into the functionality of the phone yet, we'd give it 2 stars for usability.
Now, the kind of person likely to buy this phone isn't going to be put off by wimpy considerations like size and ergonomics. Perhaps not even by warnings of bugs and a sluggish user interface.
It's what the phone does that matters most. And this is where the N95 really delivers! The first multimedia feature that you encounter is the screen, and it's a massive one: 2.6 inches across, 240 x 320 pixels, and an incredible 16 million colours.
An ambient light detector is used to control the brightness of the screen, making it usable under most lighting conditions. It's one of the best screens ever, and does full justice to the camera and navigation systems.
|
