Hi-Mobile.net was ultra-gracious this month to send us over the Nokia N95, the most advanced multimedia smartphone Nokia ever released. Read on for more information in our review, with plenty of pictures and screenshots.
The N95 is quad-band GSM/EDGE worldphone with HSDPA support for everywhere except USA. It features a 2.6″ 240×320 16mil color TFT screen, a microSD hot-swap slot up to 2 GBs, 256 MB internal flash memory (160 MBs free), Bluetooth 2.0, IrDA support, mini USB 2.0 for communications, Nokia’s proprietary 2mm charging mini-connector, WiFi 802.11 b/g with UPnP support, built-in GPS hardware support, 3.5mm audio output jack, stereo/visual FM radio, PTT (everywhere except USA), TV-out support, 5 MP autofocus camera with flash and a protective cap, 320×240 QVGA front-camera for video-calls, stereo speakers, 950 mAh battery, 3D graphics accelerator in hardware, 64 MB RAM and a 332 Mhz ARM11 CPU.
The device weighs just 120 gr, which is amazing for a phone that has so many features in it. In the box we also found a TV A/V cable, a leather case, a 3.5mm headset (which had very good sound quality), a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm adapter with push-talk/volume buttons on it, a USB cable, a CDROM, manuals, a screen protector, a 1 GB microSD card and a travel charger. We also tested the phone with a 2 GB Sandisk card kindly provided by Geeks.com which proved to be faster than the bundled one. Special thanks to SHAPE Services as well for sponsoring us with a copy of their IM+ instant messaging application that helped us test third party application compatibility in the N95.
The Nokia N95 comes with Symbian base OS v9.2 and the front-end of S60 v3.1. There are some security and stability fixes on Symbian kernel’s new version, but the S60 v3.1 adds a few new features too, like h.264 support, automatic keylock, the WebKit browser can now also render WML among other, mostly visual enhancements.
The phone features all the normal keys on the front as you would expect from a S60 device plus a video call camera and an LED light for new messages. On the left it also has a “multimedia” button which loads the “Gallery” application, a camera button that only works if you have your camera cap open, volume buttons up and down and the right speaker. On the other side you will find the IrDA, the 3.5mm jack, the microSD slot and the left speaker. On the top of the device there is the on/off button that also serves as a profile switcher, while at the bottom of the N95 you will find the charger port and the USB mini-connector (does not charge the device).
The N95 is a slider, and so sliding the device up exposes the numeric keypad. I like the keypad as it is easy and fast to tap precisely at the right keys. When you slide the device down the other way, a second set of keys are exposed that have multimedia purposes (play, pause, forward, back etc). I found myself not using this gimmick much though, in fact I found it annoying. However, a real problem is the build quality of the phone: it is not a sturdy phone. When the phone is slided up, you can easily grab the two sides next to the numpad and break the cover by exercising very little strength (even a 2 year old could break that).
The N95 is a classic S60 device. It comes with a calendar, alarms, tasks, contact list, call log etc. In addition to these standard applications you will find a refined music player that now has a menu structure more like the iPod’s, the “Gallery” application that shows images and videos in a pretty impressive visual way, the Lifeblog, a voice recorder, IM (requires GSM operator support, won’t work via WiFi and Yamigo), FM radio app (which unfortunately does not download the Visual Guide via Wifi but again it requires a GSM internet connection), a QuickOffice viewer, the Search application that supports Yahoo! and Windows Live as sources, Adobe PDF, a Zip app, a barcode reader, two 3D games and of course, the also 3D-based OpenGL maps application licensed from NavTeq.
I found the 3D processor in the phone very impressive! The graphics looked really good and the two included games that support that graphics processor were running real fast!
My favorite features on the phone is the addition of A2DP/AVRCP under Bluetooth 2.0. OBEX transfers maxed out at about 110 KB/sec. Unfortunately, Bluetooth seems to have major incompatibilities with some Bluetooth headsets (including our own and reportedly, some Sony Ericsson ones). It would pair, but it wouldn’t connect. Thankfully, it did work with our second headset. Other than the incompatibility with some headsets (which is a bug appearing on some other Symbian phones too), Bluetooth worked fine with A2DP and OBEX transfers.
You can capture 5MP (or smaller) pictures using the back camera and QVGA pictures using the front one. You can record videos up to 640×480 in MP4 (sample recorded video) or 176×144 in 3GP format. One thing I did not like was that the phone creates 3-4 hidden thumbnails for each picture or video you take. This means about an extra 20 KBs of space needed for each media you snapshot. Manually deleting these files (while in USB storage mode via Windows XP), it takes suspiciously long time to get rid of them. Deleting your pictures via the file manager or the camera app does NOT delete these thumbnails which means that after a while, your transflash card will be filled up with garbage.
The most involving application in the phone besides the GPS Maps, seems to be the newly redesigned Camera application. There is support to modify zoom, scenes (auto, user defined, portrait, macro, landscape, sports, night, night portrait), flash (red eye reduction, on, off, auto), contrast, exposure, brightness, exposure compensation, self timer, sequence mode, color tone, white balance, light sensitivity and sharpness. We found the quality of the images snapped good-enough for a cellphone, but it can’t compete with a real 5MP camera. However, the photos are good enough to print small pictures out of them and to rescale down for web usage.
h.264 support was added in S60 3.1 and indeed it played back perfectly a 230 MB QVGA h.264 file we had around, although the phone seems to reject valid videos that their dimensions are not multiples of 4 or 16 (e.g. a valid mp4 320×181 won’t play but chances are that 320×176 will). The good thing is though that there is a proper full screen mode and that the phone can switch all of its UI (not just video) to landscape in less than 1 second (which is significantly faster than E70’s 3 second switch delay last year). TV-out was great too, videos looked very impressive in our HDTV.
We found that the device has an audio hissing problem. If you listen to music with few instruments, or solos, you can clearly listen to all the hhhhhhh in the background. This is very unfortunate for a device which is multimedia through and through. You gotta be listening to lots of heavy metal to not be able to notice the hissing. The hissing is also audible while using the FM Radio (even when reception was perfect) or the video player. I will take a leap of expectation here and say that Apple’s iPhone won’t have such a problem.
Call quality was excellent, loud and clear, both ways. GSM reception was top notch, always showing 6-7 bars. Battery life is controversial though. We maxed out at 4 hours of talk time, but only 4 days of standby time (the phone supposedly can do 9 days). It seems that if you turn ON GPS or FM or Bluetooth or Wifi during a usage session, the hardware never turns off completely after leaving an application and so there is some “leak” of battery life that way. Possibly this can be fixed in the future via software. Stability-wise the phone is now performing well after we upgraded the firmware. With the original firmware we stumbled into random resets and “out of memory” errors once or twice, but these seem to be things of the past now.
Speaking of GPS, it was a disaster for us. Not once we were able to lock on a satellite. We waited for 10 minutes out in the sun (twice), but the phone’s GPS antenna only established connection with 2 satellites (most of the time with only one) and never really got “locked” into them. Hence, we were unable to fully test the GPS application. The GPS app allows you to download maps for any region of the world you want, and also has route planning and city-guide support. Or so they say.
Other problems included WiFi getting disconnected every so often, and so Gizmo VoIP was getting disconnecting too. After upgrading the firmware the situation got a bit better, but not perfect. For example, instead of losing WiFi connection every 10 minutes, we now lose it every 40-45 minutes, again at completely random times, or mostly when using the web browser. Another curious thing was that while Nokia supports the Gizmo network (they test with it), when friends were calling me from the Gizmo Windows client I could not hear them at all (but they could) and only when I was calling them things actually worked both ways. Other than that, the VoIP in-call experience was as good as normal calls (with the phone getting really hot after 20 minutes on a call)…
In our opinion, the N95 is a powerful smartphone released 2 months too early. We are sure that most of the bugs will get ironed out in future firmware releases (there should be at least 2-3 more new firmware versions coming out before the end of the year), which is why we still have hope for this model and we would recommend it to power users. But as it is right now, you might or might not, get annoyed by some of the bugs still found in S60 3.1 and the problematic GPS antenna.
Pros:
* GPS
* FM Radio
* WiFi, VoIP
* Standard USB, audio ports
* Lovely 32bit color screen
* A2DP/AVRCP support
* 3D hardware support
* h.264/AVC support
* 5 MP camera
* VGA video recording
* TV-out
Cons:
* Extremely slow deletion of microSD files in mass storage mode via XP
* WiFi gets disconnected out of the blue (impact on VoIP)
* Incompatibilities with some Bluetooth headsets
* Mediocre build quality
* GPS wouldn’t lock-in
* Audio hissing
Rating: 7/10
The HSDPA on the N95 works everywhere except north america (so it’s not just operational in Europe)
Edited 2007-05-03 20:06
Nice review.
So many details and real use experience. =]
Also, note that the US model doesn’t include the smaller (second, on the front) camera.
About the device, the camera, even if it’s a 5MP, has too many filtering. I would prefer a 3 or 4 MP camera with better quality.
About the review… how about a photo of the device showing its height… in your hand, comparing with something else. I know it’s not really “slim”, but photos are always good to make comparatives…
…and how the price isn’t listed in “the bad”?! ;]
>Also, note that the US model doesn’t include the smaller (second, on the front) camera.
Hi-Mobile sells Asian-imported models, so they are the full versions.
>how about a photo of the device showing its height.
There are some here: http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Page=1&Id=3283
>…and how the price isn’t listed in “the bad”?! ;]
Well, the price is not too high compared to similar smartphones with similar features, e.g. some HTC devices.
Edited 2007-05-03 20:27
Weird that you had GPS problems, I’ve heard quite the opposite review of the GPS reception – http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/2007/04/nokia-n95-tracking-from-sa…
and
http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/2007/04/nokia-n95-gps-google-earth…
Probably free advertising, but i’m not affiliated with that site
I’ve had my eye on this phone for a while, and will be probably replacing my p910i with it.
Oh, was meaning to ask:
“the Search application that supports Yahoo! and Windows Live as sources”, does that mean no Google option?
No Google in the Search app, no. The Search app is more than a search engine, it’s a directory of things and services, and Google does not offer all that AFAIK. So they went with Y! and Live instead.
I went out to test GPS twice, on two different days. Both days with no clouds in the sky, here in the San Mateo area. Both times I could not lock in to the satellites. It would “see” 1 or 2 satellites (and then lose connection with 1 of them) but it wouldn’t ultimately lock in. The device still thinks I am in Helsinki or something. I waited for over 10 minutes on each time.
Thing is, my Bluetooth GPS dongle did not have any such problem when I tested it a few months ago with my PocketPC phone.
ah, well, if it believes its in Helsinki, it’ll be looking for the wrong satellites
Would explain the few visible sats, its finding them on the horizon.
Beats me why else it shouldn’t work. From a cold start, my GPS can get 4 to 8 in a minute even in my densely wooded + hilly area.
> it’ll be looking for the wrong satellites
No this is not the case, it’s just that Europe is its default starting point location. But then, it does try to find satellites, it just doesn’t lock-in.
Yes, I quite understand that. My GPS can take ages if I don’t reset it and give it location + time, then it knows which sats might be where, and finds them quickly.
I just looked through the manual for the n95, couldn’t see anything about resetting the GPS. Maybe its related to the time / world clock (set as current city) options?
For cases where it just has to find the sats, it shouldn’t take more than 6 minutes.
Otherwise it’s broken or you’re blocking the signal.
>Otherwise it’s broken or you’re blocking the signal.
Actually, it can be as bad without the device be broken. Others had similar problems:
http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32055
I hear that the upcoming E90 Communicator is as “slow” to lockin.
Ah, thanks for the heads up
Just hoped it was user error and not the device, heh. Sorry.
Looks like i’ll get it and an external bluetooth GPS 😮
if the GPS ephemeris-data is too old, it may take up to 40+ minutes until a lock is acquired. this is a *normal* GPS behaviour.
Also, you must keep it steady until a lock is acquired.
Some devices with assisted GPS will lock fater but that is due to the fact that dat ais loaded into the device so that it knows what sattelite is in view.
Edited 2007-05-04 17:00
How’s battery life with casual usage? Is it possible to disable features to make battery last longer?
>How’s battery life with casual usage?
About 2-3 days.
>Is it possible to disable features to make battery last longer?
Yes, I put the display down to 25% brightness, and disabled 3G, Bluetooth. I try to not open the GPS apps so the hardware doesn’t get started. WiFi I do use while at home because of VoIP.
>So when are they going to release a smart phone that runs Maemo and that has a touch screen interface?
Possibly never. The N800 has enough problems and slowness as it is.
So when are they going to release a smart phone that runs Maemo and that has a touch screen interface?
I’m not really a fan of mobile phones, I’m one of the old fashioned type of guys that thinks that a phone should just simple take and receive calls, nothing more and nothing less. These new phones do everything, including washing the kitchen sink.
I’m glad you mentioned image quality as being average, and not able to compete with a DSLR (unlike a certain notorious cnet review that was recently done on this very camera). Mobile phone cameras will NEVER compete with DSLRs in terms of pure IQ (image quality) for a variety of technical reasons, but for the average snapper, they’re fine. Interestingly, whilst camera phones are becoming more common (and popular) more and more places are rightfully banning them imho.
Dave
PS Nice Canon EOS 5D 🙂
> and not able to compete with a DSLR
It is not able to compete with a non-dslr either. E.g. a $100 HP or Samsung 5MP camera will still yield better quality.
>PS Nice Canon EOS 5D 🙂
Thanks! It is my husband’s, he is a prosumer photographer in his free time (when he is not a engineer).
Edited 2007-05-04 03:57
[OT] Lucky him! I have an aging 1D and D60, but will be selling both of them for the 1D Mark III later on this year (as well as my eos1n film camera, which I can’t justify anymore). Link to any of his images (I’m curious)?
Dave
> Link to any of his images (I’m curious)?
http://pics.livejournal.com/jbq/gallery/00001z2d (newer)
http://www.geocities.com/jbqueru/ (older)
From every review and user testemonial I’ve seen here in Sweden, both GPS and WiFi are reported to work perfectly.
Are you sure that your users are using VoIP all the time? Wifi connects here too, there is no problem there. BUT, it disconnects out of the blue every 30-40 minutes. And if at some point try to browse something, chances are that it will again disconnect out of the blue too and it will need to reconnect. I even went as close as 2 meters from the router, but the problem remains. My E61 and N80 do NOT have this problem on the SAME network.
As for the GPS problem, check the link I gave earlier. There are many people where lock-in takes impossible time to complete. For me, it never did.
I don’t know about VoIP, but users in swedish forums haev used wlan for extensive browsing and our largest mobile magazine stated, after extensive testing, that the wifi support is excellent and stable.
A friend of mine got his N95 yesterday and walking around with the GPS outside, we managed to get repositioned every ten steps or so – very accurate in other words.
Since the US version doesn’t support 3G(!) or PTT I suppose it’s a slightly different phone. Maybe the WiFi and GPS issues are US-model specific?
I do NOT have the US version, I have the world version which is the same as the European one. My phone arrived from Hong-Kong and besides, I upgraded the firmware and made things a bit better already, just not perfect.
The fact that your phones worked does not mean that the bug does not exist. We don’t have the same routers. I use a Netgear with WEP 64bit (I use WEP because most of my PDAs don’t support WPA).
But as I said, create a Gizmo account and let your phone registered to VoIP. Then, time it as to how long before you hear the “beeeep” to tell you that it’s got disconnected. With the first firmware it was within 10 minutes. With the new firmware, it is between 30 and 45 minutes.
Have you disabled the WLAN power saving mode?
Settings -> Connection -> Wireless LAN -> Options -> Advanced Settings
Continue anyway – yes, disable automatic configuration and try with different parameters/power save disabled.
It atleast makes the WLAN speeds faster.
I’ve not had any problems in the SF downtown are to get a GPS satellite lock. Seems to hold the lock quite well even in between tall buildings. Keep the slider open when trying to get GPS to lock. After locking on I’ve been able to close the slider and keep the phone in pocket without losing GPS.
The Maps application is done by Nokia, only the maps are licensed.
N95 is able to playback video clips with resolution higher than QVGA, nice for playing them through TV-OUT.
>Have you disabled the WLAN power saving mode?
Yes, it has helped a bit. But it also disconnects after a while, AND, it eats battery like hell. I don’t want to use this feature all day.
And as I SAID, the E61 and N80IE do not have the problem on the SAME network. The bug is in the N95 S60 3.1, nowhere else.
Oh, and by the way – reports from SanDisk UK and german memory card previewers suggest that the N95 in fact supports the HC (High Capacity) standard. First generation HC sticks (4 GB) are coming out this month…
I’ve now scanned through two entire N95-threads in swedish forums, with over a thousand posts. No-one has had the problems you describe, and people have used both SIP, GPS and WEP.
Your phone is probably broken and at least in Sweden the kind of trouble you’ve had doesn’t seem to be very common.
My phone is NOT broken ealm. As I said, not everyone uses the same router. If it was broken, the firmware upgrade WOULD NOT make it work better. But it did. The bug exists.
Edited 2007-05-04 17:06
Slightly larger than Sony Ericsson’s W810i Walkman phone, compared to other slimmer phones on the market this is no size 0 model. The design is dominated by the 2.6-inch screen on the front of the model and this slides both up and down to reveal the controls.
Umm… your GPS doesn’t work at all, but still you’re capitalizing sure that your phone isn’t broken
Ok, if you say so…
I waited 10 mins for GPS to lock in. IT DID find satellites, so it is NOT broken. It just didn’t lock in. Maybe it needed more time than 10 minutes. Maybe there were no satellites directly above San Mateo and in conjunction to the GPS antenna not being very strong, the problem happened.
So no, my unit is not problematic. There are other factors to consider. If it was “broken” it wouldn’t work at all.
It very well could need more than 10 minutes. this *is* normal. Moving the unit negatively will affect the initial lock as well.
GPS on my Let’sTalk purchased (NOKUS) works a treat. Out of the box, it locked on to four satellites within two minutes. The same after a firmware upgrade. It will lock on upstairs in the house as well. Have you downloaded the California map from
http://www.smart2go.com/en/
?
WiFi works similarly. Using 256 bit WPA, I can surf until the battery drains without a hiccup. Maybe a hard reset is in order for your phone?
As far as the hardware goes, their is no US version of this phone. Nokia, realizing the popularity of the handset, has begun to offer the phone in the States (though they originally had no intention of doing so) with one change; a US honored warranty. Those who have purchased APAC or European ‘versions’ for use in the US will be SOL should some type of warranty work be… warranted. :^)
All the best-
BB