It’s almost a year now that I was waiting for
this magnificent piece of technology, I mean 5 megapixel camera, 3.5G, WLAN,
S60…what could you ask for more? Surely the N93 turned heads with its twisting
and turning but this baby did more than that.
So let’s see my first impression after I opened
the box…it looked exactly like those ads we see everyday on the highway or on
the internet, only smaller and better looking.
I saw a huge screen with QVGA resolution and 16
million colours, 13 main keys including a joy-pad, a stylishly placed camera
popping out of the housing, a speaker, and that infamous Nokia N sign.
On the right side of the phone I see something
that reminds me of the N73, not just the colour, but those blue backlighten
keys. Up and down, gallery, autofocus and camera buttons and also a “chrome”
speaker grill with 12 holes.
On the left side there is another speaker grill
and a special 3.5mm jack of which I will speak about later, it also has an
infrared cover and the microSD slot, very nicely built on the cover and easy to
remove.
On the back we obviously find that awesome Carl
Zeiss lens 5 megapixel camera with DVD recording and a powerful flash and even
a stylish shutter. You also find the battery cover, which contains a BL-5F 950
MaH battery, same as the N93.
The top part has simply a
The phone is very thick, 21mm. We can compare
it to the massive 7710 but its quite light for its kind, especially without the
battery. The weight is 120g, it’s 99mm long and 53mm wide.
The main keypad feels weird for people who are
used to Nokia’s soft keys. The soft keys are still there but they are made real
thin as there are Menu and Multimedia keys next to them, so if you’re not
careful, you will press the wrong buttons but eventually times cures
everything.
Time to slide the cover up and uncover an
ergonomic keypad. This keypad is rather small for such a big space, but it’s
not an issue, because the keys and modelled in such a 3D shape that it’s
actually comfortable and pleasant to play with them. There is a line dividing
the first row of keys from the rest, I don’t know why though. The GPS module is
under the # key and the lock slide sensor is in the middle of the first row of
keys. There is sort of a wall that looks like a cover of the phone: between the
keypad and the cover there is a big space and you can rest your fingers there,
quite nice and stylish I would say.
The keypad lightning is done very well, there
are lines of blue light coming between the keys when it’s dark and it gives the
phone that futuristic look. The lightning of the LCD is also done very well, a
very bright screen but still a perfect contrast.
This slider phone got something I’ve never seen
on a phone of its shape: the base is huge and the top slide is thin as a
needle. But moving on to the other slide, I notice that when opening the slide,
it makes an ugly and loud voice, oppposite of when closing the phone. Turning
the phone on the other way, activates the landscape mode. They multimedia keys
on the left side of the phone aren’t keys, they feel like a touchpad, you can’t
see them, they are flat, a stylish manouvre and an ergonomic choice, they are
also blue backlit. When turning the phone to landscape mode triggers the
multimedia menu which can be customized, and pressing the play button activates
the music player. The screen’s rotation is quite fast and it doesn’t usually
crash.
And then, there’s that camera shutter. Just
like in a proper camera, sliding the shutter down activates camera mode, even
if the keypad is locked, and only this way the right side keys will light up.
What to expect from this Symbian OS9.2S60 V3 with FP1? Oh well, looking from the
past this OS seemed to be advancing to an extreme, possibly outlining Windows
itself! But no…9.2 isnt that great unfortunately, perhaps I’m owner of a young
version of it, my phone has v10.0.0.18 on it, and it behaves quite well in
general, although no AGPS or FOTA on this version yet.
On the waiting screen we have that old S60 GUI with the active desktop, WLAN status, shortcuts, operator, signal, battery, clock and the selected profile. We head to the menu and see the 4x3 assembly with animated icons or the choice of list view. There are 3 folders: tools, applications and office. There is a little tool called Search and was built in conjunction with Windows Live, some marketing from the Microsoft guys I guess. There’s also a Maps application which I will talk about later.
When you enter Settings you can see everything
much more organised and clear, more functions, practicaly everything is
connected to the Settings program, even the Themes.
The GPS Data application tells you the
Latitude, Longitude, Precision, Altitude, Altitude Precision and Speed, and on
the other tab you can find averages and bearing (compass). Then there is the
actual maps application. You must have your country’s maps installed, as in
doesn’t come with every country, unfortunately most African countries aren’t
there which is bad for me as I’m somewhat an explorer. Another disadvantage is
that voice navigation is costly. You can see roads, petrol stations, define and
save places with the application. The search button doesn’t work well as my
searches always return no results, and the GPS takes quite long to startup. The
latest firmware version (12) offers Assisted-GPS but that will need some sort
of internet connection. The voice navigation cost 106$ for 3 years.
The web browser is very advanced, letting you
open different windows, offerring minimaps and a mouse cursor, quite lovely. It
also plays Javascript and flash animations.
The music player improved a lot, let’s you
search for music, shows album art and has fantastic visualizations. It has 6
predefined equalizers and you can change the settings on 5 of them. There is a
modern multi functional headset device of which I will talk about later on.
In the Office folder you can find a Zip
application, I wonder what does…There is also a Video Centre application which
streams/downloads videos from different sources like Reuters.
When it comes to connectivity, the N95 is king.
Starting with Bluetooth 2.0, transfers at full speed and up to 6 devices at the
same time. Followed by the old infrared system, and then the ever-growing Wireless
LAN, which let’s you easily access internet and join networks. Unfortunately
you cannot create networks with other phones.
Then there’s our lovely HSDPA or 3.5G. Fast
browsing and downloading at 1.8mbps, just awesome. If that doesn’t work,
there’s 3G, EDGE, and EGPRS which is an advanced class of GPRS.
There’s also a miniUSB port which when
connected with a cable provides Mass Storage, PC Suite, Media Player and Image
Print options. Of course Mass Storage won’t activate if you got a theme or an
application running from the memory card.
As I said before, I would like to especially
talk about that 3.5mm jack on steroids. Normal jacks offer just a two channel
input or output. This one has 3 channels, both input and output at the same
time, which is a wonderful connection by Nokia, I haven’t seen it or atlease
noticed it anywhere else, so for me, these small details count a lot. This
special jack helps with the audio controller and also makes way for TV-Out. It
can be used normally and connected to stereo systems.
Now it’s time for the camera, it offers 0.3mp,
0.8mp, 2mp, 3m and 5mp resolutions. There are options such as: capture mode;
flash option; timer; sequence mode; light compensator; white balance; colour
tone; ISO sensitivity; contrast; and sharpness.
Video mode at 640x480 30fps has options of
mode, white balance and colour tone.
What was really missing here is optical zoom as
its digital zoom is unfocused. The front CIF camera works poorly as it’s only
for video calls.
The flash is very powerful, in totally dark
situations, it looks like daylight, especially indoors.
The sound on this device is great, 3D Stereo
speakers offering a loud quality music output, even as a loudspeaker for calls
it behaves perfectly. Unfortunately the included stereo earphones are really
soft, so you might have to get a new pair. The memory card included should be
enough to store about 300 songs, it’s a 1GB. The music can be converted through
PC Suite, but this phone supports most music formats so it won’t be necessary unless
you wish to change the bitrate.
Now any phone has faults, and the N95 is no
exception: the lights on the multimedia keys off during music playback, not
nice if you are driving at night and want to pause the song as you won’t be
able to see the keys. The battery doesn’t last long, 950mah is very light, and
if the default screen saver isn’t set to an acceptable time range, the phone
will die very quicly as the screen consumes and extreme amount of electricity.
If you use the phone moderately, let’s say for internet and music, you will end
you charging it every night or so.
The top slide isn’t assembled properly, you can
see some cracks and openings on the sides, and white light escapes minimally,
this tells us that the phone is very fragile.
The sildes makes a huge noise as I said before,
this problem doesn’t exist on the competitors, and Nokia failed there.
If you have a third party 3D theme running the
phone will considerably slow down, especially on typing.
When playing Java built games, the phone’s battery
lasts long enough, but when playing SISX games that push the powerful Graphics
IC to its limit, the battery drains quite badly.
Java applications all drain the RAM very badly
and the phone crashes if you try to multitask, making me restart the phone, and
that can get irritating for heavy users like me, as you will have to restart 5+
times per day.
The phone comes with a good audio controller
for earphones or an external audio output. The controller features a
microphone, a 3.5mm stereo jack, a holder, a security key lock, volume up and
down, answer button, play, forward and backward buttons.
The provided earphones have an extremely short
left ear cable and a long right ear cable which is not very comfortable.
A TV-Out cable is also provided.
Advantages: 5mp Carl Zeiss camera with
Autofocus; DVD-like recording; Powerful flash; loud speakers; 3.5mm jack with 3
channels; HSDPA; GPS; S60 OS9.2
Disadvantages: Weak battery; GPS takes long to
startup; OS is still young in some aspects.
Rating: 9.8/10
