New firmware benefits Nokia N95

An exciting firmware update for the original Nokia N95-1 saw light recently. After few days of testing it out, we can now confirm that it has really improved the performance of one of the top multimedia devices on the market. Here is a short summary of what we've found to be the most important upgrades that are introduced with it.

The actual firmware updating of the device is really simple. All you have to do is download the Nokia Software Updater from the Finnish company's website, install it, and then run with the phone connected to your PC via the USB cable. For the purpose of software updating, you should use the "USB PC Suite profile" for connecting to the PC. After that all you need to do is follow the really simple instructions of the software updater application and you will end up having a Nokia N95 with brand new 20.0.015 software.

After the update is done, the first change you will see is the added line for the search application on the active stand-by screen. The next thing you'll see is the rearranged menu plus the added N-Gage icon for accessing the games for the platform. Finally, the music shop kicks in, allowing quick and convenient purchasing of your favorite tracks. But this is just a small part of all the niceties the new firmware brings.

The On Demand Paging is also included meaning that now only the most essential parts of the programs are loaded in the RAM memory with the rest of them remaining on the phone's memory. This leads to more free RAM and better battery life at the same time.

The final significant improvement over the previous 12.0.013 firmware is the updated Maps application that also comes with a three-day free voice navigation trial version. But it's freely downloadable from Nokia's website, of course. We also need to mention that the startup time has greatly improved and it is now about three seconds faster than the Nokia N95 8GB's. The camera start up speed and shot-to-shot time has also seen some changes and now they are about the same as the faster N95 8GB as well as Sony Ericsson K850.

The new firmware version also brings a whole bunch of other stability improvements and features, but not all of them are readily noticeable and most pose no interest to the regular user.