Camera Phones Plaza

Nokia N95 is one of the most equipped phones of the moment. They even compared it with a mobile PC, because it has rich functions. The most important functions are the 5 megapixel camera, the GPS module, HSDPA speed and the output audio / video through the 3.5 mm jack.

However, having so many functions, Nokia N95 presents some disadvantages: the software does not work very fast and the battery is consumed quickly if the phone is used often.

N95 comes in a box large enough, that contains many accessories. Besides the manual, the charger and the software software CD, in the box we find a USB cable, a memory card, the headphones and a TV Out cable. The size of the memory card may vary. From what I heard, it can be between 128 and 512 MB.

Besides the usual buttons for a phone like this (the camera and the volume buttons), Nokia N95 has a side button to the right, which can go directly into the photo gallery. The phone has two stereo speakers, on / off button, infrared sensors, memory slot and an audio / video 3.5 mm jack. This jack can work with some regular headphones, a hands-free or it can be used for TV Out. On the bottom, the phone has the connectors for the charger and for the miniUSB port, used for data transfer. Too bad you cannot use the miniUSB port for recharging, because you often have a laptop around, but not always an outlet.

The screen is large and has a very good quality. This helps all the multimedia functions so much. The images can be seen very well; the same with the videos. Web browsing is a delight, the screen fits enough info that you easily understand what's on that page and get an idea of how it looks on a computer. Obviously, it will take longer until browsing will be as enjoyable as on the PC, but the screen size is sufficiently good that you can get on the Internet from your phone anytime you need.

For a more pleasant use, N95's screen can be used in two modes: portrait or landscape. It is clear what each mode does, but Nokia made a very easy and intuitive transition between the two. The change is done most easily with help from the slide. If the slide opens up, to see the number keys, the screen is in portrait mode. If you open the slide down to see the control keys for movies, the screen goes to landscape mode. If you close the slide, the last mode will remain selected (either portrait or landscape). Moreover, the web browser has a function in the menu for the screen that can be changed from portrait to landscape and vice versa, regardless of the position of the slide. For Web browsing and viewing photos and movies, the landscape mode is more appropriate. It simply fits more information on the screen.

The phone excels in the multimedia chapter. The large, high quality screen makes pictures and movies look really good and very clear. The 5 megapixel camera takes good pictures. I downloaded some of them on the computer; they look good enough for some camera phone photos. We published some of them on photo paper; the quality is reasonable for a cell phone.

Real Player is the best movie player. However, you can install other programs, free or not, if you want to play movies with subtitles or if you want to have more features. I have not felt the need to install anything. The audio player is pretty simple. It does a good job, but it's hard to work with it if you want to create multiple playlists. The FM radio is a useful supplement when you have headphones on you, but you do not have music on your phone.

Two applications are already installed on the phone, which I have not used for some time. But when I looked over them, I found that they are very interesting. The first is called Podcasting and lets you subscribe to a series of podcasts to download episodes and listen to them. I guess signing up is through some kind of XML feed, so that it will tell you when an episode occurred again. I have not entered the feed manually, but I subscribed to some of the dozens of podcasts built into the application. It is a very good application; I found podcasts about history, about the IT & C, about management. The second application that I liked is Video Center. It does the same thing as podcasting, but with video files instead of audio. We appreciated the high quality of the films that I found on Video Center, the resolution is higher than the usual sites for mobile video streaming.

The strength of Nokia N95 is the connectivity. It is one of the first HSDPA mobile. If your operator has a HSDPA network, you can download up to 3.6 Mbps. The difference to a 3G, not to say over GPRS, is enormous. This difference is more visible to those of you that connect to the Internet from your PC using your phone as a modem. HSDPA is a stable broadband connection, while GPRS is a kind of dialup.

Moreover, the phone knows WiFi. Many restaurants put their wireless network for customer use, so there are a lot of places you can surf the Internet free through such a network. Moreover, many private WiFi networks are insecure, so walking through the city, I could connect to the Internet in some places through apartment networks. It is said that in New York we find a free WiFi network almost anywhere in town, so this function seems very important. Especially since we have many home wireless networks, the phone can connect to it and can easily navigate at high speed. WiFi connectivity has an advantage: VoIP. There are all sorts of applications that can call free or cheaper on the Internet. One of the most popular is the Fringe, which can call using Skype, Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger.

The browser of this phone is one of the best of what we have seen before. It acts well, including with pages fully loaded or with more Javascript. It is true that a page will block if it is too complex, but in most cases you will not have problems. The browser has a cursor similar to the mouse cursor on the computer, so you can navigate on the pages very easy. When the cursor is near a link, it will automatically position on it, so you can click faster. When you scroll quickly in the page, the browser has a preview in the upper right corner, to get an idea how big is the page and what you will find in it. N95 has Bluetooth and infrared port. I did expect it to have Bluetooth support, but the infrared sensor is a pleasant surprise, because it is found in a few new phones.

Besides the fact that the phone comes with many applications already installed, you can install others and you have a wide range from which to choose. The most appreciated feature of N95 is the GPS. It is one of the first handsets with integrated GPS. The phone comes with Nokia Maps, a good navigation software with many functions.

Nokia N95 is a great phone, with which you can do about anything. If you like to use the multimedia and the Internet often, Nokia N95 will not disappoint you. It is not just a business phone, but it can be used successfully in this role.