Nokia N95

Cutting edge dual slider ...

The Nokia N95 was first announced in September 2006 at the Nokia Open Studio event in New York. The N95 has just landed in UK shops this month and has created quite a storm of interest in our 3G Forum. We are convinced the N95 will be remembered as the 3G handset that took us to somewhere new.

Of course, the Nokia Nseries is aimed at users looking to pack as many features as possible into one device.The full title for the N95 is the N95 Nseries Multimedia Computer.

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Even before it had started shipping it had won an award ! This was from Popular Science magazine's "Best of What's New" Award in the publication's annual search for the top 100 technology innovations of the year.

The Nokia N95 offers a unique dual-slider device, including integrated GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, digital music player, full PIM functionality and support for 3G and HSDPA networks. Oh, and a full suite of N-series applications and an excellent Web browser (with Wi-Fi support).

Can the N95 weighing only 120 grams and with a maximum thickness of 21 mm really deliver all that Nokia claims. Well lets dig deeper.

It runs the latest version of the S60 software platform ( S60 3rd Edition P1 ). This means a new version of the S60 browser, a better RSS application, Flash Lite and more. It's all powered by a thumping ARM11 OMAP 2420 processor running at 330 MHz.

The unique two-way sliding design works as follows. Slide up to reveal the keypad and slide down to reveal the touch sensitive media player controls. With the player controls viewable, the screen powers into landscape mode. The player controls include forward, back, stop and pause play for the Music Player.

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This is a reasonably light handset for a multimedia computer and the Nokia design team must be congratulated. With the phone closed the menu and normal key functions are accessible. The primary camera is at rearside along with a LED light / cover. For video calls, the secondary camera is located top front.

The Nokia N95 offers a powerful 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/5.6 mm lens, auto focus and flash. Pictures are shown on the impressive 2.6 inch display. You can upload your photos directly from your camera phone to the Flickr online photo community. At 30 frames per second, you can easily capture moving objects.

The ring slider opens and closes the shutter. The camera switches on when the shutter is in the "ON" position. The screen is used as the viewfinder with the phone held horizontally. If you can use a digital camera phone, the N95 is similar to operate.

The result is a camera phone that produces results close to digital camera quality but with some limitations. The main observation would be limited sharpness / blurry results. However, unless you closely examine the results you may never notice anything adverse.

The full technical specification of the camera is is as follows :

Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/5.6 mm lens with auto focus

5 mega pixel (2595 x 1944 pixels) CMOS sensor

5.6 mm focal length corresponds to a 35 mm frame

Mechanical shutter with 1/1000 to 1/3 seconds

20x digital zoom

Focusing range: 10 cm (macro) to infinite

Macro range: 10 cm to 50 cm

Integrated LED flash, range up to 1.5 m

Flash modes: on, off, automatic

Capture modes: standard, series, self timer, video

Subjects: landscape, portrait, night, sport, macro, night portrait

White balance: automatic, sunny, cloudy, lamps, fluorescing

Color tones: normal, sepia, black & white, color saturation, negative

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