Nokia N95 8GB review: Return of the king

Recording DVD

The video recording of Nokia N95 8GB is widely advertised by the Finland-based manufacturer as having DVD-like quality. What they mean by DVD quality is immensely subjective but the videos recorded with this handset surely turn out great. The phone captures video at VGA resolution at 30 frames per second, which is way beyond the skills of the competitors except for the 5-megapixel LG KU990 Viewty. Videos are captured in MPEG-4 format and have automatic or manual white balance, according to the user's preferences. The other available features are night mode and color effects. The only thing you have to be careful about is not to run out of memory because videos of this quality fill up your free space much faster than you might guess - a minute of video capture takes about 20MB of memory. Still more than 6 hours of video can be recorded, provided that the mass memory of you Nokia N95 8GB is completely empty, which is quite a remarkable achievement if you ask us.

Nokia N95 8GB sample video

Connecting people

Transferring data is what Nokia N95 8GB really loves to do. Just name the data transfer medium and you can be certain that this handset supports it. USB v2.0 and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP profile support just start the count. All kinds of network connectivity are also supported - from HSCSD, through GPRS and EDGE to 3G with HSDPA support - Nokia N95 8GB has it all. To complete the wireless communication tally, Wi-Fi with UPnP support and an Infrared port are also on board. The only missing interface is the card slot, as we did mention. Anyway, we highly doubt it there will be a situation when you won't be able to transfer the needed data from or to your N95 8GB. Another side of the question is the speed at which data transfers occur. You will need a few hours if you want to fill up the entire storage at once.

Ultimate browsing experience

Browsing the internet with Nokia N95 8GB is a pleasure. No matter how elaborate the web page, it fits perfectly on the screen and looks almost exactly like on a PC. The virtual mouse cursor takes browsing another level up. It is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help navigating your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses.

Web browsing with Nokia N95 8GB is amazing

The doubled amount of RAM is surely one of the best things that could happen to the browser, as it is one of the most RAM-demanding applications indeed. Now, even if you load very heavy web pages and have a few applications running in the background, you are extremely unlikely to run out of RAM. Naturally, java objects are also handled with ease. The 2.8" display is also a very important feature when talking about web browsing as it makes even the smallest font readable. The web browsing experience is second only to the one of the Apple iPhone.

Organizer Extreme

The time-management skills of Nokia N95 8GB are really top-notch. Just name the application and you can count on it that the handset has it. We start the exploration of the large application package with the calendar. It has three different types of view - monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for setting up - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Every event has its own unique fields, some of which allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

Different calendar views and the events available

The Lifeblog application automatically collects your images, videos, texts and multimedia messages, sounds and blog posts in diary-like style. It then allows easy browsing, sharing, storing and searching of theses items.

Lifeblog application is an electronic interpretation of a diary

"...The video recording of Nokia N95 8GB is widely advertised by the Finland-based manufacturer as having DVD-like quality. What they mean by DVD quality is immensely subjective but the videos recorded with this handset surely turn out great..."

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The mobile office is also very well presented, with preinstalled applications able to open Word and Excel files seamlessly. Unluckily editing documents is not supported by the included version of the Quickoffice. If you would like to be able to edit these files you will have to purchase the complete application from the Nokia Download center. PDF reader is also included and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone.

Nokia N95 8GB comes with preinstalled document readers for .doc .xls and .pdf files

The other included organizing and time-management applications are: a state-of-the-art unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as a Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough.

Converter, calculator and voice recorder also at hand