Design and Looks
The N95 8GB is also called the N95-2, N95-1 obviously being the earlier version. One of the most visible upgrades on the N95-2 is quite fittingly the larger display screen. Although it is bigger by only 0.2 inches, the effect is noticeable almost immediately. Among other improvements are doubled RAM, better battery life and the demand paging feature.
The demand paging feature is truly a novel inclusion that only loads onto the RAM the core files of any running application, while those portions of the application that are not required right away are stored temporarily in the phone's mass memory until it's number is up. Not that user's will have problems overloading the RAM because 128MB of it is more than sufficient to run multiple applications at a time.
The construction of the phone is pretty much the same as on the first version of the N95. The changes are seen in the D-pad which is now much more compact but still just as comfortable as the D-pad on the original model. This reconstruction must have been done to afford more space for the larger screen.
The phone slides two ways; sliding up reveals the regular keypad and sliding down reveals the dedicated music keys just at the top and behind the screen. They are far better than the music keys on the original model and offer better tactile feedback. The regular keypad itself sees no changes which is not much of a problem because the original keypad itself was simply fabulous.
What is strange about the construction is that the slider mechanism is absolutely flawless, which is certainly rare for a Nokia phone.
The deletions from the original model include the lens and the card slot. While we can live with the lack of a card slot, the missing lens cover is definitely a bother.
The camera is the same as the one on the original model but the LED flashlight could have been worked upon seeing that it's helpful only at short-distance, low-light photography.
For connectivity you have support for almost any mode of data transfer. The phone is feature rich with many pre-installed applications; among them you have Quickoffice, ZIP manager, PDF viewer in addition to media players for music and video. Sadly though the pre-installed Quickoffice feature does not let one edit documents, however the entire application is available on download at Nokia Download center.
Then there's the built-in GPS that's great but does not support third party applications. As usual it takes a lot of time to get the GPS going but there's the A-GPS functionality to quicken things up.
The Nokia N95 8GB is every phone-o-phile's dream come true. It does a lot and everything it does, it does well leaving little to complain about. What's even stranger is that it beats even dedicated camera phones and dedicated multimedia phones at their own game, all the while boasting of versatile functionality, which is a modest proclamation by the way.
Features
- 2.8” 16 million colour QVGA display
- 5MP camera with auto focus and Carl Zeiss optics
- 8GB internal memory
- Built in GPS with A-GPS functionality
- Dual slide with dedicated multimedia keys
- Wide range of connectivity options including TV-out functionality
- 128MB RAM with demand paging feature
Accessories
- Nokia travel Charger AC-5 (available with phone)
- Nokia Music Headset HS-45, AD-54 (available with phone)
- Nokia Video Connectivity Cable CA-75U (available with phone)
- Nokia Mini Speakers MD-4
- Nokia Multimedia car Kit CK-20W
