Nokia N95 is indisputably the most hyped novelty of this season and sets off to be its segment’s one of the most popular offerings. That is why we are now stepping aside from our usual review structure and instead taking a closer look at the major constituents of the handset, and today we are kicking off with the music department.
Music department. It may be safely said that Nokia N95 is among the music-minded smartphones by Nokia, even though the manufacturer itself does not deliberately spotlight that, preferring to push all features of the device. The package the N95 comes in indicates that this solution will cater for music lovers as well as everybody else.
The left-hand side houses a 3,5 mm audio jack, used for plugging in custom earphones, i.e. those you have grown fond of. The bundled headphones simply radiate style, with the armored cable in transparent braiding. There is a plastic clip on the wire, so that you can always shorten the cord by hooking the cable with it. The headphones that come boxed with the N95 are not in the running for the best-sounding earphones around, being inferior both to those coming with Nokia 3250 and Nokia N91. If you want to make the most of this device, you should better have custom headphones plugged in.
The remote control comes packaged with the phone and bears strong resemblance to that of Nokia N91 – with its help you can manage playback by rewinding, pausing, playing tracks and also answer a call with the dedicated button. The sides are loaded with volume rocker and Hold slider respectively. As someone would say, it lives up to what we have come to expect from the company, and on top of all that, the front fascia of the remote is made of metal. Clipping the remote on your clothes was never an issue.
should emphasize it again, that the handset’s big attraction is the 3,5 mm audio jack placed on the casing and on the remote, which enables you to go for either of the jacks. However, when plugging headphones into the shell-mounted socket, the N95 fails to identify them automatically, asking you what gadget you have just connected and offering the following options: TV-Out cable, headphones or Music Stand. Although since you have to select only once, this is not annoying.
List of supported formats: AAC, AAC+, eAAC, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, M4A, WMA, Mobile XMF, SP-MIDI, AMR (NB-AMR), MIDI Tones (poly 64), RealAudio 7,8,10, True tones (WB-AMR), WAV. MP3-files with various bit rates, including VBR, are seamlessly played back by the N95. On synchronization with Windows Media Player 11 and higher, you can take advantage of protected DRM-files (Janus DRM).
Player interface found in the N95 sports run-of-the-mill design, but still we feel like dwelling upon it a little more. First, it boasts full-fledged support for Album Arts, thumbnails of images shown on the display are quite large; then you can turn on one of the two visual effects, though if that’s the case, the N95 will initiate the visualization you’ve picked in full-screen mode. It makes no sense at all, though, and more importantly constantly working backlighting knocks the battery life down
Track title and artist are displayed, as well as player controls. Progressive fast-forward is enabled. Generally speaking, music playback may be managed via the remote control, dedicated player keys and the navigation pad – you are free to choose any way you like and that’s just great. You don’t like the remote, then put hands on dedicated controls and so on.
Equalizers. As equalizer settings are modified, the sonic experience varies considerably. Every of the 6 pre-installed equalizers features 8 bands and is fully user-manageable, saving for the default settings. The list of presets is as follows - Bass Booster, Classical, Jazz, Pop, Rock. In the Sound Settings you can adjust balance, Stereo Widening and Loudness.
Memory cards accepted by the N95 are microSD, some package variations include 1 Gb memory card by default (only for selected markets). At present the biggest card you can get in the market carries 2 Gb onboard and easily gets along with the N95. As more capacious units are arriving in the market, the handset won’t have any problems with handling them either.
Synchronization with PC. Music can be gotten onto the device by the means of Bluetooth, which, as a rule, is not convenient, WiFi, which can be hard to get in every given place. So the second best way to upload music is copying tracks onto the memory card via card-reader, as miniUSB-powered data transfer (the socket is mounted on the casing) is the easiest way to keep the N95 up on the state of your music library. In the latter case you can pick one of the four modes:
Data Transfer (Mass Storage USB) – both the handset’s memory and the memory card are visible, no drives are required, and your operating system automatically recognizes the phone. Data transfer speed tops out at 950 Kb/s (USB 2.0).
PC Suite – used for working with Nokia PC Suite, allows access to all functions of the handsets, as well as data backup and so on;
Image Print – self-explanatory item;
Media Player (MTP protocol) – synchronizes data with Windows Media Player
Everything is straightforward here, in settings you can enable pop up windows asking you which connection type you’d like to use every time or just set one mode as the default option. A stand-alone application is Nokia’s very own application allowing you to synchronize you music library with the handset, I experienced no hardships with running it.
Sonic experience. Probably the most subjective and hardest aspect to rate. Everyone has his own vision of the world, thus it is inevitable that some find even excessively loud music very tuneful, whereas the others seek average volume and adequate reproduction of all frequencies. So as not to sway towards subjective assessments, we carried out instrumental measurements, yet the result will be presented to our readers a bit later. And for now we are facing off Nokia N95 against other smartphones by the company - Nokia 3250, Nokia N80, Nokia N91, in all cases we used one and the same headset plugged in the default remote or adapter (for the N80).
The sonic experience delivered by Nokia N95 loses to that of Nokia N91 and loses by a mile. They don’t even stay close to each other – Nokia N91 outputs much sweeter sounding. Subjectively, Nokia N95 seems somewhat better than Nokia 3250, Nokia N80, but the difference is quite subtle. The volume level is good, especially when used with custom headphones. All in all, the N95 provides average sonic experience for Nokia’s solutions, but how the things stand when it is put head to head with stand-alone mp3 players? We picked Sony Walkman NW-S203F for the test, which is not the company’s best offerings, being a typical middling solution at all points.
Then we uploaded the same albums onto both gadgets and started playback (identical headphones, for Nokia N95 plugged in the shell-mounted jack). And the first thing we came across was the volume level, which was 20-25 percent higher on the player., even though it has quite sub-standard maximum volume settings.
It turns out that a stand-alone music player puts up higher volume and better sonic experience, keeping the sound similarly penetrating on all volume settings. At the same time at full blast Nokia N95 gave us metallic tones, being unable to cope with the overload.
Playback time. At maximum volume settings and random playback with default headphones and remote control used, the handset lasted for about 8,5 hours. In real life situations, 2-3 hours of music playback won’t have any significant impact on the N95’s battery life, which still gives us 1 day of operation.
Bluetooth.
The smartphone retains EDR-enabled Bluetooth 2.0. The handset supports the following profiles:
A2DP
AVCRP
BIP-ImagePush;
DUN-GW;
FT-Server;
HandsFree-AG (1.0);
Headset-AG;
OBEX;
OPP-Client;
OPP-Server;
SIM Access-Server.
Visual Radio – online radio that allows not only listening to music, but also viewing corresponding images and lyrics on the phone’s display.
FM radio – this application sports standard interface, with the ability to save up to 20 stations. When tested in city, the radio worked in its usual way.
Stereo-speakers
The handset houses two stereo-speakers placed on either side of the casing. The volume they put up is slightly above average, but in terms of sound quality they are far behind Nokia 6233, and don’t sound too loud, being a tad quieter than those on Nokia N73. Even though you may give it a go and use the phone as a pocketable juke box, it won’t make much sense, as with volume turned full blast you will surely notice sound distortions.
camera
Whereas in the first installment of the review our only focus was the music department, now we are examining the handset’s imaging capabilities, thankfully there is a credible reason for that, for the N95 is one of the first popular phone sporting a 5 Mpix camera unit onboard. The LG’s offering, as well as others akin to it, are not the options due to poor prevalence. As a matter of fact, we could even say that Nokia N95 shows the way the forthcoming handsets will look – over at Nokia they call it a convergent device, although we would rather call it a cross.
Specifications of the camera are as follows:
Maximum resolution: 2592 x 1944
Matrix: CMOS 5.0 Megapixels
Focal length 5.6 mmF-Stop/Aperture f/2.8
Focus range: 10 cm ~ infinity
Optics: Carl ZeissAuto focus
Resolution. Maximum resolution available with the N95 is Print 5M – Large, which stands for 2592x1944 pixels, in this resolution a snap takes up from 700 Kb to 2 Mb; also the user is enabled to pick one of the following resolutions:
Print 3M – Medium (2048x1536 pixels)
Print 2 M- Medium (1600x1200 pixels)
E-mail 0.8 M – Med. (1024x768 pixels)
MMS 0.3 M – Small (640x480 pixels)
Video
The handset is capable of shooting video in a number of quality modes, with the best one putting up 30 frames per second at 640x480 (VGA resolution). But you always can reduce the FPS rate to 15 or get the resolution lower. All clips are captured in MPEG4, at that you can record sound simultaneously. The default storage place for video clips is the memory card, though you can easily switch it to the handset’s own memory. Any clip can’t run longer than 60 minutes, but in truth before the battery goes down, you will be able to record from 40 to 50 minutes of video, as in video mode Nokia N95 is extremely power-hungry. While shooting you can take advantage of digital zoom (x8), and disable sound, in case you don’t need it.
Similarly to stills, here you can setup white balance, apply color effects, though the available scene modes form a list with two options – auto and night mode.
Now on to the video samples we took in maximum quality – they are good enough for a mobile device and as of today remain unrivaled. Quality sound recording is worse than that on Nokia N93, yet matches Nokia N93i.
Video sample 1 (mp4, 8.6 Mb)>>>
Video sample 2 (mp4, 3.8 Mb)>>>
Video sample 3 (mp4, 5.8 Mb)>>>
Video sample 4 (mp4, 6.9 Mb)>>>
Nokia N95 faced off against Walkman range by Sony Ericsson
When it comes to comparing products, then the market’s best solutions should serve as the benchmark, and as of today, Sony Ericsson branded offerings top the music market. It is important to understand that Nokia is a runner-up on the music front, but has managed to make a major leap up in a short time span. See for yourself:
Various ways of plugging in headphones – jacks on casings and remote controls. Though Sony Ericsson allows for connecting custom earphones only via the headset. In future more 3,5 jacks in Nokia’s products will make the things look much worse for Sony Ericsson.
It’s a draw when it comes to PC software - Windows Media Player is supported by both companies, as well as extra original applications for getting music onto phones.
Comparable number of equalizes and settings.
Album Arts and visualization support in both cases
Categorization by artists, genres, etc.
Support for miniUSB in Nokia N95, which is a big plus. Proprietary cables are not always handy, since not just about everybody owns one
A2DP implementation is a touch superior on Sony Ericsson’ offerings, more accessories work without any malfunctions
Bundled headphones are better in Sony Ericsson’s packages
Number of extra accessories is even, both companies offer Music Stand
Sonic experience – the centerpiece, where Sony Ericsson branded products are dominating. Regrettably, Nokia N95 puts up average sound quality, aimed at unsophisticated users.
On the face of it, Nokia N95 is handier as a music-minded device, proposing a tad more abilities (miniUSB, 3.5 mm jack). But on the other hand, such very vital detail as sonic experience, that outweighs all these draws, is not on Nokia N95’s side. So it turns out that creating a convergent solution the manufacturer has intentionally given up on enhancing the sound quality by leaving it on the platform’s default level, without getting it in line even with Nokia N91.
General impressions
Speaking of handsets, Nokia N95’s camera is getting a counterpart only in September with the release of the Sofia by Sony Ericsson. Similarly-sized casing packs a number of improvements upon the previous CyberShot solutions and a big focus on music (Walkman 3.0 and this won’t be a smartphone). The two products are separated by a huge time gap, thus even in future there won’t be much sense in putting them face to face due to different positioning, price and abilities. Sony Ericsson’s solution won’t be that expensive, though it is slotted only for now-too-far-off September. There is no surprise that the magic of 5 Mpix will force most portals to figure out which one is the best snap-taker, but as to me, this will be of almost no real use.
It is important to realize that much like Nokia 7650 in its time, this Nokia’s solution is only first of the kind. The second wave will sport a couple of offerings with 5 Mpix camera units onboard and some downgraded specifications. In a year’s time we will see the third wave comprising handsets with exactly the same modules as that found in Nokia N95. As of today, the camera built in Nokia N95 is the mass market’s best proposal (leaving out all exotic devices). Though there is no point in going for it just for the sake of its camera, as a digital compact will be a smarter choice. But if camera is one of the items on your lengthy wish list, then you definitely should read the next part of the review that should be released shortly.
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