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Pros
- Most powerful multimedia phone in the USA.
- Five-megapixel camera.
- Luxurious features.
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Cons
- No 3G support.
- All those features really drain the battery.
- Individual features aren't as good as best-of-breed single-purpose products, but c'mon.
Nokia N95 Specs
| Screen Size | 2.6 |
The N95 is so loaded with high-end features that it sometimes seems as if it dropped out of a time warp from the future. Perhaps its astronomically high $749 price won't be worth much in future dollars, but right now, that is a lot to pay for a cell phone. Still, for power users, it is worth the extra expense. It's the first 5-megapixel cameraphone to hit U.S. shores, the first decent camcorder-phone, the best music phone I've seen yet, and the only Symbian smartphone I've used that feels really, really fast. As if that wasn't enough, it also shoots video that's good enough to burn to DVDs. But wait, there's more. The phone's GPS mapping is gorgeous, its Web browser sublime, and its 3D games will knock your socks off. It plays sweet music, too, with a Napster or Rhapsody subscription. Oh, and it also makes phone calls.
For such a groundbreaking device, the N95's looks, at first glance, are that of an ordinary Nokia slider phone. Weighing 4.2 ounces, it's a little chunky, at 2.2 by 3.9 by 0.8 inches, but not unpleasantly so, and it still fits easily into pockets. The handset is handsome too, with a curved purple back and a silver face. Slide down the keypad and you'll find somewhat small, but nicely domed keys—unlike
The quad-band N95 gets very good reception on both Cingular's and T-Mobile's networks. The earpiece isn't all that loud, but it's clear, with subtle and pleasant in-ear feedback. Transmission is very good, too, with good blocking of background noise; it can sound a little tinny in noisy situations, but it's fine at other times. The speakerphone uses the N95's powerful stereo speakers, an effective combo. The handset worked well with the Plantronics Bluetooth headsets I use for testing. That said, the N95 uses Nokia's somewhat perplexing voice-dialing system, which isn't as easy to operate as the VoiceSignal and Nuance systems you find on other phones. Sure, the N95 is a perfectly fine phone, but that's not why it's so expensive. After all, if you just want to make calls, get a
The Power to Play
The N95 runs a 352-MHz ARM11 processor, according to the JBenchmark ACE test suite, powering a 2.6-inch, 320-by-240-resolution, 16-million-color screen. There's a 5MP camera with a Carl Zeiss lens on the back, a VGA camera on the front, and a 3.5mm stereo headset jack, microSD card slot, and stereo speakers on the sides. On the bottom of the phone is a real mini-USB jack for connecting to PCs in either sync mode, mass storage mode, or music player mode.
The N95 connects to EDGE and Wi-Fi networks for Internet access, though it can't talk to Cingular's high-speed HSDPA network. You store programs, pictures, and music in the 104MB of available internal memory, on the included 1GB microSD card, or on another card up to 2GB, if you choose to buy one.
Here at PC Magazine Labs, we put the N95 through the full range of tests usually given to "real" digital cameras, and we got a big surprise. For outdoor shots, it's the first cameraphone that can actually play in the "real" digital cameras' sandbox.
On outdoor shots, our digital camera analyst, Terry Sullivan, judged the N95's 5MP shooter to be quite good, if a little high in contrast. It delivered vibrant color, didn't wash out bright areas or fringe lines, and had just a few jaggies in the shadows. Under low light with no flash, the N95 took fairly decent photos, as long as the target wasn't moving. There was some color noise, but no more than you'd expect. Dynamic range—the ability to have both bright and dark areas in a shot—was excellent, and we measured the camera's resolution at the lower end of acceptable for a 5MP camera. The user interface is extremely simple, with options for burst mode, time-lapse photography, exposure compensation, and white balance.
That said, the N95 suffers from two major, common cameraphone pitfalls. First, it has possibly the world's slowest autofocus. If the camera thinks it has focused properly already, you're treated to a sprightly 0.5-second shutter delay. But if it doesn't, you're stuck waiting up to two full seconds for the damn thing to focus. Second, the N95 is graced with a worse-than-nothing flash, leading to poor indoor performance. Shots taken indoors sometimes looked either blurry from the low shutter speed or grainy from the forced high ISO. In addition, the "flash" gives everything a vaguely blue cast.
The N95's video mode takes 640-by-480 videos at 30 frames per second—a first for a U.S. cameraphone, and the first cameraphone videos you could conceivably burn to DVD without their looking totally awful. Videos are captured in MP4. The format's smaller file size helps save memory. There's even a "digital image stabilization" feature, but the camcorder actually works better with it off, as it gives videos a disturbing, wavery effect. Want to watch your videos on a big screen? No problem, the N95 comes with a TV-out cable. There's also a tiny, somewhat pointless VGA camera on the front, for people who like to take low-res pictures of themselves.
Music capabilities play just as important a role as do photos on the N95. If you slide the keypad one way, the N95 looks like a regular phone—but sliding it in the opposite direction reveals dedicated music keys. The N95 can handle MP3, AAC, and WMA music, including protected WMA. It's also been certified to work with Rhapsody, and I synced up with Napster To Go very easily. The 3.5mm jack lets you plug in standard music-player headphones or stereo Bluetooth headphones. I heard a bit of a background hiss in very quiet passages of music, but I could still leave my Apple iPod at home while commuting for several days without much pain. The hiss is effectively masked by background noise. There's a video player, too, that plays any video formatted for iPods, in full-screen mode.—
Extra Mobile Skills
The N95's built-in GPS isn't as sensitive as that of dedicated SiRFstar III-based units from such companies as Garmin and Tom Tom. For instance, I had trouble keeping satellite signal lock during an elevated-train ride in New York City. Still, it should work fine in lower-rise areas such as Phoenix. The device's mapping application is a joy to use, though, with beautiful, colorful, readable maps, and you don't need a GPS signal to find locations, plan routes between addresses, zoom in on points of interest, and even call the POIs' (Points of Interest) phone numbers. The N95 comes with maps of the U.S. and Canada and you can add live, turn-by-turn GPS-based navigation (with instructions given in a loud and polite British woman's voice) for $10/month or $78/year. Enhanced POI information from WCities travel guides for many cities costs $10.69 per city.
The N95 comes packed with other interesting features. As a Symbian Series 60 smartphone, it runs plenty of applications and comes with a crackerjack Web browser and basic POP3/IMAP e-mail program. It syncs contacts and calendars with PCs, too, using Nokia's PC Suite software, though it doesn't work with iSync on Macs. Lifeblog lets you archive or upload your photos to the Web or a PC easily. A built-in Bluetooth keyboard driver makes writing e-mails easier. A built-in "Download!" app points you to some other free applications, such as one for listening to podcasts (and showing video podcasts, amazingly), and the Gizmo VoIP client for placing Voice over Wi-Fi calls. But the most important thing is that the sluggishness I've always observed on the Series 60 interface is gone completely. I actually want to install more apps.
All of this power comes at a price (besides the $750 for the device itself): battery life. I had a better experience with the N95's battery than other reviewers did, but I still needed to charge it every day. If you use it for GPS, especially, it better be plugged into your cigarette lighter the whole time. To some extent, the N95's battery situation is worsened by its Swiss Army–knife functionality, as you'll probably use it for a whole lot of things, very often.
The super-powered Nokia N95 doesn't really compete with anything else. It's frankly the ultimate technology demo from the world's number one cell-phone company. Not a PC, a phone, or really a PDA; it's in truth a multimedia convergence all-in-one super-gadget. Buy one because you want to do more on the go.
Benchmark Test Results
Jbenchmark 1: 5113
Jbenchmark 2: 567
Jbenchmark 3D HQ: 932
JBenchmark HD: 634 (21.1 fps)
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