digital game camera test
NOKIA N95
Having had the phone for a good month now, I finally feel qualified to review many features of this phone and the low below give some of the more esoteric features of this amazing little kit.
Phone basics
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In short, call quality is great, contact management is sensible, but detailed and menus and general presentation in the very vein we expect from Nokia. Battery life is very dependent on what you use your phone, but you can manage about 2 hours max one days with moderate use application. This may improve if the screen dimming, switching 3g etc, but frankly, as a magical toy, who would really want to do? My advice, get a charger for the work to go with the one house. I like a few one thousand minutes per month to the phone spend, I find that I quickly identified annoyances with basic functions, and so far have had nothing to do with the N95. The Symbian-element means that it is relatively easy to produce beautiful things to do as a photo of a contact or calendar entry or even log into a Web page, while all mid call! The screen is one of the best I've seen on a handheld, and the form factor of the phone is slightly smaller than my old N80, and very sexy (my wife, ever the style junkie once). In fact, picking up my old N80 last night felt like I step back 5 years.
Texting is predictably good, Nokia dictionary is easy to add, can be switched input styles, symbols (including a new line character finally!) inserted etc. I was very impressed to see whether you choose input language as "French" for example has a French dictionary associated and correctly accented letters. Perhaps this is a common feature of modern phones, I had never noticed before.
There are also some refinements over the N80 in shape, like a slightly sprung slider. The key lock feature is a big improvement on previous slide and seems to keep my phone to call any friends.
More advanced "basics", the video call works fine, working first with my wife's k800i. In fact, one of the most subtle impressions I've had the phone is that most everything just works, first time.
Contacts are standard, supporting business cards (though still difficulties in receiving communication from Sony Ericsson formatted business cards). All contacts have a voice tag automatically associated with them, in fact, a computer voice that tries to say that the name you have in your contact. This is used to let you voice-activate of a contact without actually having to record a sound and then associate with a contact. It works for the most part, pretty good. Sometimes the name of your contact is odd, (eg Schleicher!) Can you phonetically better to say because it will not always get the pronunciation right.
Camera
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5 megapixels is a respectable resolution for a camera phone, and I think Nokia have done well in answering the obvious criticisms of earlier phones, ie, they have performed autofocus (although slow enough to hurt), and they have recorded a very durable cover switch (so your lens does not break). Add to that a few higher-end photo features, such as white balance, scene modes (portrait mode, etc.), the obligatory Carl Zeiss lens and I think she a winner in the camera phone category. The flash is a waste of time, however, and the speed of the reaction between the shooting certainly feel awkward, but compared to all the cheapest real-world digital cameras. Apparently the latest firmware improves this slightly, but overall I think it is a mission to camera-phone world rather than be promoted to replace digital camera!
Video
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Frankly I found this to be extremely impressive than the camera-the reality is that a 640x480 video clip and 30 frames per second makes absolutely stunning video quality miles better than the old VHS cameras and certainly only very slightly worse than a good digital camera. Certainly good enough for a normal TV screen, and good enough to make friends dropped my jaw when I plugged in my set one evening. The sound quality during recording is also excellent, very clear and very useful. I'm considering putting together a for-fun music video because it is very "mobile" camera so special effects should not be difficult to achieve! Fantastic.
GPS
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This feature was clearly one of the features that excited me the most in obtaining the phone. After the navigation sense of a dead tie, I had visions of myself sat-navving my way around the streets of London on foot, never getting lost again. I have found that the length of time to connect to satellites (sometimes up to 10 minutes) is impractical for the free ad-hoc short navigation. Google Maps (installable app) is much better. Happy, 2 weekends back, decided to buy a kitten in Reading and got a chance to try it in anger. My wife is a techno-skeptic and forced me to print a map from AA, but we ultimately not used. The volume on the phone is more than enough to be heard in a car, and the navigation was good, when we went properly identify and monitor the adjustment of the route accordingly. There was a disturbance at a roundabout (it has failed to tell which exit to leave out), but may be the fact that the dynamic loading folder on 3G. I would recommend downloading maps in your phone.
You need the phone slide open when the GPS receiver is the "#" key, which is a shame, but not a train smash. This is perhaps annoying if you plan to mount it on your dashboard.
Overall, except the slightly longer time satellite (which is thinking of older tom-toms), the experience was very positive, especially about my wife. We paid £ 4.50 for one weeks of navigation and activated via SMS so very easy. I think it is something of £ 47.50 for 3 years of navigation. If I had a car fixed, I would certainly activate. You could calculate routes and see the enlarged maps without paying for navigation functions. It just will not track you on the ground.
The GPS itself all other bells and whistles, including street-level view, a sharp female English voice, and a nice bright display that works as you would expect. A reservation, get a car charger because the phone battery dry in about one hours and half sucked (although I think that was still pretty impressive).
Music
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Wow, another MP3-playing phone, big deal anyway? Well, I'm thoroughly enjoying, in the first place and found a site online that sold me a 2GB card ... £ 7 (?!) Great. That is 35-40 CDs on my phone. The next step was to see how music could get on. I whooped for joy when I discovered Nokia supports MTP and thus Napster. For the uninitiated, Napster service, which recently paid for a £ 14.95 per month can a music subscription, which you can download unlimited number of tracks and use them as long as you keep paying. As I am a serious music consumer, I think it's fair price (you can pay others disagree), and it is possible up to 3 mobile devices with Napster that you can use "loose". They call it Napster-to-go, which effectively means I can keep topping my Nokia with some new CD's take my imagination, legally, for the fixed fee of € 15 per Mon
The player itself is well-featured the can show a little picture of the album, has a graphic equalizer so you can tweak the bass up or knock-out of the treble, so unexpected a White Stripes song not puncture your eardrums. You can create playlists, shuffle and repeat and even show a little graphic visual oscilloscope if you prefer. There are two built-in effects "stereo widening" and "Loudness" I personally do not need, but that Nokia still have that little extra effort.
And the bright sparks at Nokia brilliant yet a normal headphone jack on the phone so you can finally get your Bose headphones (cheap or old favorites) to the phone without any adapter purchase. The ergonomics of the socket is not ideal, because on the side, but not too much of a problem. Sound quality is excellent (although depending on the choice of headphones, bitrate of MP3's etc etc).
Menu
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Everything is customizable, from the normal Nokia menu, the slick visual slidey menu (icons on a type curve, with a rotating lens and You slide between them). The front has a useful set of menu shortcuts that can start downloaded applications (Gmail, so I've attached one of them) and is generally very useful. You can also assign shortcuts to the directional button.
Refinement
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The theme of this phone, beyond all the techno gadgets refinement, refinement, refinement.
In no particular order, here are some of the things that really impressed me.
A magnificent charger form-factor that will never interfere in neighboring countries such as plugs the older chunkier adapters did. It is small and, more importantly, quiet. Some older chargers had an almost inaudible high pitched squeal, that annoys the hell out of my bionic woman.
-You can see in your menu screen, as in the background, because it draws a little spinning circle icon next to the well-if you accidentally let the battery run heavy application crash.
-An excellent alarm that multiple alarms quickly and easily they rely only on weekdays, or specific dates
-When receiving a call and set up your profile to have an audible ringtone, a button on the screen, titled "silence" which is fantastic for silencing a phone quickly without hanging up on you caller. So helpful!
-I have always hated joysticks (aka Sony Ericssons) they die quickly and be annoying. I've also owned several Nokias, including the N80 and 6320 (a single directional button to be pressed in like a "pressure register" as opposed to a "direction" I have always found the ergonomics of the directional navigation to a little Shakey. The N95 has a central button (not directional) in the directional pad. This works perfectly, and I've had no problems whatsoever.
The web browser is one of the best I've ever used on a mobile device-it has a little cursor, easily maneuverable with the directional pad. It makes web pages perfect for the most part through 3G, and it is fast enough to actually usable. I have extensively to catch up with the (non-mobile) version of BBC News on the train to work. It has many additional features such as techno feel the ability to read syndicated news feeds (in fact the summary headlines referring to the main story), go back and forward, running javascript, dealing with pop-ups, handle encrypted pages, etc etc etc.
-They have a standard mini-USB cable to the (Hurray!) - We all have tons of standard digital camera cables in our homes these days, and the Nokia N95 uses one of these to connect, it means that you no longer bound to an (expensive) own cable, but take it a requirement if you lose yours for under a Fiver. Also, if you keep one connected to your PC for use with a different camera or MP3 player, you can use it as normal with the phone. This is a surprisingly big win in my opinion.
Gallery
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The gallery contains a very functional program that allows you to scroll through previews of photos, etc. or run a slideshow (such as linked to a TV) that is great. The slide show is very apple-mac, that is not only a static image after image, it starts slightly zoomed in and out slowly zooms or pans, which adds interest and makes it much more interesting to watch as it feels almost "manufactured". Also cross-fades photos that makes it all feel much more slick. You can even get one song to play, but it does the slide-show, slow to adjust and set the zoom / pan function on or off.
Office tools
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Here you Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations even, but of course it is justifiable as the usefulness when dealing with large documents or spreadsheets. I have not played with this much (as I am not a salesman)! The phone also opens
PDF useful could assist in the surf to a site that only a PDF of something you need to read. There is also a flash player that plays back most static but animated interactivity seems fox.
Useful bits'n'bobs
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There is a great little unit converter, mass, weight, etc., very useful. A "barcode" reader, although not barcodes as we know them, but rather "semacodes, which are a kind of array of black and white blocks that you can find on web pages, often with a code "link". Kind weird, you can point the camera phone on the page on the screen, and it will read the Semapedia and show you the address and let you surf on the the phone. Not sure what this is, but ideas are touted as a Semapedia put things on a tourist place that Wikipedia contains a link to additional information. Can interesting but maybe a little .. I do not know, pointless?
Applications
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There are some fairly compelling application to the phone. Also do this review, I am discovering new things all the time on this phone.
Video Center:
For example, a service called "Video Center" you can download few video clips of Reuters news on your phone in the background and watch when downloaded. The video clips are little predictable, but it seems that the infrastructure for some very interesting technology.
Life blog:
Okay, not strictly an N95 only app, I decided to activate a blog for my (mikeanddan.typepad.com) I use a little bit, for testing purposes. The possibility of a photo, and upload directly via the 3G blog is frankly astonishing. If I am a twitter addict, I think I could blog every message I sent (for Life Blog keeps a list of everything you've done on the phone in one days and you can call, text upload photos etc., as you go), but I think the mundanity element prevents me ... still great in theory. A major drawback is that too much time fiddling with that type of application inevitably means that when you see that spontaneous surprise morris dancing, or someone with a stupid hat, your battery is empty before clicking "upload". Perhaps better from a legal perspective Ahem anyway.
Radio:
A very decent radio (which is unfortunately headphones connected to the reception to receive, download all the settings for local radio stations, no tuning or other nonsense, it's all automatic (although you can manually tune if desired).
Games:
Probably the least bit exciting, 3D Snake and a demo SRE called 3D that is very flashy but overall boring and unplayable, fortunately there are other things on the N95 to entertain and I would say it's easy enough to download games, N95 or through the catalog or the Web in general.
I've also managed to own apps, including Gmail tax, fring (Skype mostly for mobile, and can call via the wireless connection), a business card reader (take a picture of a business card and the application reads all the details and plug in a contact in 1 easy step!) and have no problems - it really feels when the phone is matured with this little lady.
Connectivity
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UMTS, GSM, Wifi, Bluetooth, this has it all, although more of these you use, the faster you lose your battery. Wi-Fi works very well, and with a wifi connection at home, check gmail for example is often easier over the phone then run on a computer, log etc etc. The phone keeps on wifi, and it makes surfing the web or internet enabled applications to use a wind-detecting networks quickly and easily.
You can also connect to a PC via USB cable, as mentioned earlier, and that you can transfer music, backup / restore, use the phone as a modem when you are on the run is not connected to a laptop (although Bluetooth is better!), use the phone memory and mass storage USB key alias.
Nokia Software
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Man, this software has a long way away, the days of clumsy and dated options and interfaces that work intermittently even upgrade the firmware of the phone (something I took night) worked perfectly first time, with the mandatory backup all my phone data first and then recover (though I did not know I applications installed, I would lose, but that's no big deal). Updating firmware, for the uninitiated means in fact the software of the phone again, so for those afraid of buggy phones, do not worry, making Nokia fairly frequent updates to fix bugs, and now you can complete the phone from home (no account with service centers and sit with courteousy phones longer!).
Conclusion
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Techno-skeptic as my wife is impressed by the huge range of things this phone can do, and I found myself surprised on more than one occasion to uncover some new feature. Common with the sole exception of the battery life, I am extremely pleased with the phone, and have tried in anger at least 90% of functions, and still find something not working, as I would expect out of the box. Add to that a 2gb memory card (although I hear is 4gb and now works with the phone, they at a much heftier price tag) and I think you once the phone is really a winner. Without doubt, the best phone I ever owned a very very long margin!
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