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The best smartphone in the world? Just about


It's not quite all in the name. Nokia's revamped version of its successful N95 do-it-all smartphone may trumpet its extra storage in its moniker, but the N95 8GB brings more than simply more tune space to the table.
Nokia has reworked the look of the N95, introducing a slick black casing and enlarging its display, but at the same time Nokia has enhanced the GPS capability of the handset, upgraded the software onboard, and boosted battery life by adding a higher capacity power pack.
Sure, the timing of the Nokia N95 8GB's release, alongside the N81 8GB, may suggest just a touch of iPhone-awareness in its launch schedule. But much of the N95 8GB's appeal comes from a hefty bunch of core features that Apple's iPhone doesn't touch on.
Once again, the new N95 comes with a benchmark-setting 5-megapixel camera, utilising Carl Zeiss optics for high quality imaging, and is equipped with a built-in GPS receiver for satellite navigation functionality.
This now supports A-GPS (Assisted-GPS), which uses satellite location, in conjunction with mobile network information when necessary, to help pinpoint the phone's location more accurately - and more speedily.
Users have the option of using the N95 8GB's 3G HSDPA mobile data connectivity or Wi-Fi for browsing or downloading content at high speed. As one of Nokia's flagship music player mobile phones, it's one of the first models to arrive with support for the Nokia Music Store over the air music download application installed.
This Symbian S60 smartphone is also geared up for Nokia's Ovi platform of services and applications, including Nokia Video Centre access for downloading and streaming video from a variety of sources.
Nokia's newly revamped N-Gage gaming platform is included here too - one of the first Nseries phones to support it. Our sample came with demos of the sophisticated games N-Gage promises, although at the time of writing the launch of the interactive service - which features social networking elements as well as advanced graphics - was still delayed.
Much of the software improvements that come with the N95 8GB are also available in the latest firmware updates available for the Nokia N95, but there are other significant improvements here. Of course, the 8GB of internal flash memory is a huge upgrade to the original N95's 160MB of storage.
The N95 8GB sacrifices MicroSD card expansion, which is a shame, although there's an additional 100MB of internal dynamic memory reserved for messages, images, contacts and other stuff.
One of the impressive improvements Nokia has made to the design on the N95 8GB is with its larger display. Already big for an S60 smartphone, the N95's 2.6inch display has now expanded to a 2.8inch QVGA (320x240 pixels) screen.
This 16.7-million colour display is a rich, bright platform for appreciating the phone's impressive imaging, multimedia and mapping capabilities. To demonstrate the screen in its full glory, Nokia is supplying the N95 8GB pre-loaded with the full movie version of Spider-Man 3.
It may not be your cup of tea as a film, and you may not be convinced about movie watching on a phone's display, but we couldn't help but be impressed with the smoothness and clarity of the playback
The overall dimensions of the N95's case haven't altered despite the screen gain - it's a slightly bulkier 128g, measuring a pocket-bulging 99(h) x 53(w) x 21(d) mm. Despite its size, its feels good in the hand, with the slider mechanism particularly more-ish.
Naturally, the two-way slider mechanism employed on the original N95, has been retained; slip the phone one way and the phone's numberpad is revealed, the other way and a panel of music player control keys emerge. Similarly, a secondary camera for 3G video calling still sits above the display. What has changed is the control buttons under the screen.
The navigation pad and surrounding keys have been reduced in size to compensate for the added screen footprint. Side by side with the original N95, they look kind of squashed, but in reality they're no more difficult to use. We'd rather have the bigger screen than larger keys, that's for sure.
The phone's numberpad is a simply arranged in a standard grid formation, and individual keys are slightly rounded to make them stand out from each other, making for a digit-friendly text tapping experience.
Sliding out the media player buttons tray immediately rotates the display through 90 degrees, making its suitable for landscape viewing of content, the browser or just the menu system if you prefer operating it like this.
N95 owners will notice a small but possibly significant change on the back panel of the phone - no lens cover, and the LED flash has rotated through 90 degrees too. Although this exposes the lens to potential scuffing, the trade-off is that the camera is can no longer be accidentally (and battery-sappingly) engaged in your pocket or bag by a rogue sliding cover.
The side of the phone that's the top when held like a camera is home to the camera activation button, zoom/volume control and gallery access keys. The other side contains an infrared port plus a standard 3.5mm headphone jack socket.
That means you can easily upgrade from the earphones supplied to a higher quality set of your own. And if you prefer to share your music collection with others, the N95 8GB has stereo loudspeakers on the sides of the phone too.
The Symbian S60 3rd edition smartphone platform offers a flexible number of ways to access the multimedia goodies onboard. Shortcuts at the top of the display give you quick accesss to several features, while the phone has the regulation Symbian menu button to take you into the full spread of applications and features available.
A multimedia key flanking the D-pad provides a fast route to recently viewed content, web addresses, contacts and maps, presented in an attractive carousel of frames for each category. You can slip into the tune player from here, too.
The increase in storage capacity for the N95 8GB inevitably shifts attention firmly onto the phone's music player credentials. The Nokia music player software employed on the N95 8GB has a very presentable user interface -clear, relatively simple and easily usable.
Cover art is supported, and tracks are organised into familiar categories - playlists, artists, albums, genres and composers. The intuitive interface employs either the D-pad as the control panel, or when slipped out, the dedicated music player buttons come into play.
Playback quality is impressive, and with plenty of detail and tonal range, the N95 8GB produces a lovely audio performance. The supplied earphones are pretty decent too, although you can up the quality further by upgrading the headset to quality phones.
Our reference Sennheiser and Bose sets made an appreciable difference. Nokia has also included an FM radio - supporting visual radio too - as part of the music app suite.
Stacking up tunes in the phone's 8GB memory is pretty straightforward. Connect it to a PC with the supplied USB cable, and you've the choice of syncing tracks and video content with Windows Media Player 11, using supplied Nokia Nseries PC Suite software to manage tracks or simply drag and dropping tracks with the phone in mass storage mode.
Bluetooth swapping of tracks is also possible, As we've mentioned, you can also indulge in downloading tracks from the Nokia Music Store, or any other compatible music download service, including mobile operator's own-brand services.
As well as the cost of the tracks, it's worth noting that Nokia Music Store downloads will also incur network data charges if you're not on a flat rate data deal. You can download using Wi-Fi, however, if that's a more cost effective option.
The improved A-GPS system used in the N95 8GB is welcome too. It's quicker to locate your position from start-up and is as accurate as you need for navigation. The interface has been improved too, and again is pretty intuitive, with 2D and 3D mapping and easy to use location search options.
Nokia Maps software is loaded onto the N95 8GB; you get maps for the whole of the UK and Ireland pre-loaded into its memory, so looking up locations, points of interest and directions is more fluid than on the original N95, where the Nokia Maps implementation required over the air updates of mapping information via the mobile network.
You still need to upgrade the service if you want to add turn-by-turn voice guidance for navigation, or add extra maps for additional countries, travel guides and so on. Without a MicroSD card slot, changing software to another third party Sat Nav system is more difficult than simply slipping in another memory card, however.
Imaging is another strong suit for the N95 8GB. The 5-megapixel camera inside this phone is one of the best around, using Carl Zeiss optics too to add a bit of extra quality. The shooter here has a wide range of settings adjustments for refining shots.
There's a responsive autofocus system onboard too, with a two-step capture button to ensure you're happy with the image.
The macro facility also allow you to get crisp close up shots too. As a result, the phone can produce high quality images, delivering plenty of detail and rich colour, while the automatic settings adjust well for different lighting conditions even before tweaking; we were suitably impressed.
Even with other mobile makers adding extras like optical zooms and face detection technology to their 5-megapixel models, the N95 8GB is still one of the best cameraphones around.
As well as producing high quality images, the N95 8GB delivers some of the highest quality video footage we've seen recorded by a cameraphone. Shooting in VGA quality at 30 frames per second, recordings are terrific compared to most other mobile efforts.
Thanks to a set of TV-Out AV cable supplied with the N95 8GB, you can play back captured video directly on your television - and it still comes across impressively. Incidentally, the TV-Out cable can be used to view most of the phone's content and apps such as the web browser, games, video player, and even face-to-face video calls on your TV screen.
Nokia has tuned into the online sharing potential for the excellent quality images and video footage, by providing options to upload video or still straight to Vox or Flickr accounts.
On the phone itself, there's Nokia's Lifeblog application that can store all pics, video clips and messages in a blog-alike timeline, which you can post online or archive.
As we mentioned, video playback on the phone itself is stunning - downloaded or sideloaded footage plays extremely smoothly and the large display makes it highly watchable.
It's a shame we weren't able to test the N-Gage games platform on our review sample. The demos supplied - FIFA 07 and Asphalt Street Rules 3 - look great and are addictively playable, but the resurrected N-Gage platform promises a lot more interactivity, social interaction and sampling before you buy.
With 3G HSDPA and Wi-Fi onboard, you can expect a good quality browsing experience on the Nokia N958GB. It comes with a full Nokia Web Browser, with Mini Maps overview of pages to help you navigate and scroll around, and Flash support has been added.
The N95 8GB has a wealth of applications pre-loaded to keep you busy, and more can be easily downloaded to this Symbian-powered smartphone to customise its features rundown. Push email is fully supported, plus Quickoffice and Adobe document reader apps allow you to read attachments or files in a range of standard formats sent or copied on to the phone.
Nokia, as usual, supplies this Nseries phone with quality personal information management software, including calendar, notes, to-do lists and a contacts list, which are sychronisable with PCs using Nokia Nseries PC Suite software. Stereo Bluetooth is naturally part of the spec, and there's a WLAN wizard with a quick link on the standby screen that makes logging on to a Wi-Fi network a breeze.
Nokia seems to have covered nearly all bases with the N95 8GB's feature rundown, giving it plenty of all round appeal to a variety of users. Although call quality often an overlooked item for multimedia smartphones, it's worth noting that the N95 8GB is excellent in this respect, with a faultless performance on voice calls.
Battery life on this upgraded N95 has been extended, with a larger capacity battery offering up to 5 hours talktime on regular GSM networks or 3.5 hours on 3G.Standby is quoted by Nokia at up to 280 hours.
These figures represent optimum performance without using the extensive features - an unlikely scenario with such a temptingly specified handset. Nonetheless, the benchmark battery life delivers up to 40 per cent more standby on 3G, and up to 25 per cent better talktime than that quoted for the original N95, so the new power pack gives the 8GB version a much welcome juice boost.
The Nokia N95 8GB undoubtedly packs in a heavyweight rundown of features that few smartphones can match; its hefty size is a reflection of what you get inside.
Far from being a superficial upgrade to the original N95 with more memory, Nokia has addressed some issues, refined the designed and significantly improved what was already a formidable smartphone. This is one superb multimedia mobile.