N95 8GB

The Nokia N95 8GB is more than just a N95 with a paint job and a hard drive, it has a number of new features that sets it apart. The N95 8GB has a larger screen and enhanced GPS, plus N-Gage gaming. The new color scheme on the N95 8GB is great, not that the plum and silver color scheme on the N95 was bad! In terms of size and weight, the two phones are identical, except that the N95 8GB is a few grams heavier.

On the front, the display screen has been upgraded to from a 2.6″ QVGA display screen to an even larger 2.8″ screen, which is the same size as the display screen on the HTC TyTN II! The display screen on the N95 8GB is also brighter and clearer than on the N95 but it still doesn’t support a touch screen user interface. The navigational buttons are slightly smaller to accommodate the larger screen and the sliding mechanism is more secure. The multimedia buttons are also raised on the N95 8GB for better input by touch.

In terms of multimedia, the N95 8GB supports the same features and the N95 and can play MP3, AAC, M4A and WMA audio files, as well as mp4 H.264/AVC, H.263/3GPP, and RealVideo 8, 9 and 10 video clips. Then there’s an FM radio too. The camera is one of the N95 8GB is also the same 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss optics that the N95 sports. But the N95 8GB now also supports the N-Gage Arena gaming service!

In terms of productivity features, the N95 8GB supports the same applications as the N95. There’s a web browser, email client and set of personal information management applications on both phones, as well as Microsoft Office and PDF readers.

In terms of connectivity, the two phones are the same, though N95 8GB differs from the original N95 that did not support U.S. 3G networks. Now both phones support 3G with HSDPA high-speed data, quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE, WiFi, stereo Bluetooth, infra-red and USB connectivity, as well as GPS. The N95 8GB also supports A-GPS.

The key difference between the two phones is the 8GB internal flash memory supported on the Nokia N95 8GB. The flash memory is located where the memory slot in the original N95 was located, and thus it’d not possible to add a memory card to the N95 8GB. But with 8GB flash memory, who needs a additional memory slot? Especially as the 8GB flash memory can hold up to 6000 songs or 20 hours of videos!

The other area that has been improved, though this has also been implemented in the newer N95s, is the battery life and talktime. Maximum talktime is now around 3.5 hours on 3G and 5 hours on GSM while the standby time is up to 11 days.

If you use the full multimedia capabilities of the N95, I’d opt for the N95 8GB as it can support more music and videos than the 2GB memory card on the N95. Also, video recording is limited by the available free memory, so more memory equals more recording time!

Nokia announced several upgrades to its Symbian Series 60 software at the Symbian Smartphone Show yesterday. There are several software upgrades, but the one that most interests us is a touch screen user interface (UI). Though Nokia is still working towards multi-touch input – one of the key features of the iPhone UI – a touch screen is exactly what’s missing from the Nokia N95 and Nokia N95 8GB smart phones!. The touch screen will support tactile feedback, which means that the user will feel a physical pulse and feedback when he or she taps on the screen! The touch screen will be used on new devices with or without keypads! Reports suggest that the existing S60 3rd Edition applications will be able to run on touch enabled devices without modifications while tools will be made available for developers to integrate the touch experience of their applications. Now Nokia will have to make their screens more smudge resistant!

Another software upgrade that is interesting is the added support for FlashLite 3. For those that don’t know, FlashLite 3 allows users to use web-based video in the same way as they do on a computer. Thus access and displaying YouTube videos directly from your phone will now be possible. Hopefully this upgrade will be made available for the N95 so that getting video on your N95 will be much easier!

Other software upgrades include support for a variety of sensors to support the touch screen UI, a ‘UI accelerator toolkit’ to enable flashier graphics.

I recently bought the Nokia N95 at T Mobile and was quite impressed with it for about two weeks, and then Nokia announced the N95 8GB! I hate it when that happens. You buy a phone like the N95 because it’s the best phone available and then a few weeks later an even better version is announced. It’s got all the great features of the N95 – the 5-megapixel camera, the integrated GPS, the media controls, but with twice the built-in memory, 8GB flash memory and a bigger screen! Sure, it costs a couple of quid more, but look at what you get - an 8GB multimedia smart phone! If only I knew they were going to bring out a better N95, I would have waited. Now I wish I could trade my N95 in for a N95 8GB!

The ICC T20 (tenty-20) World Cup is currently being held in South Africa and local broadcasters M-Net are running a competition at each match with the prize being not one, but two free Nokia N95 phones! Winning it is a bit tough though, there’s none of the usual silly questions like ‘Who’s the captain of the Indian team?’, it’s more like a prediction: ‘Who will take the last catch in the forth coming match?’. Answers by SMS. Yes, you need a mobile phone to win a mobile phone! I wonder if anyone would care to record some of those big 6s on their N95 and send it over to us?

Strange thing is they value the N95 at R 8,000, which is equivalent to $ 1,150 or £ 550! The competition line is “Win a free Nokia N95 worth R 8000″ - mighty expensive down in SA!

As for the T20 World cup, Australia are the favorites, despite loosing their opening match to Zimbabwe! Of the top teams, only West Indies failed to progress to the Super 8 stage, having been beaten by South Africa and Bangladesh.

The Nokia N95 is great as a digital camera, and its just as good at video recording. The video specifications from the built-in camera are quite impressive. With the Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar optics the N95 can record mp-4 video at a maximum VGA resolution and 30 frames per second (fps). It also records in 3gp for multimedia messages but mp4 is the default format. The N95’s video recording uses a single standard quality phone microphone directed towards the video subject. This is a major improvement on the N93i that has a pair of microphones that were directed upwards, but it’ not as good as the N93 has proper stereo microphones, directed towards the video subject and separated by the width of the phone. However, the N95 has automatic gain control with the level being sampled several times a second and automatically adjusted. This allows the N95 to record an audible and non-distorted soundtrack for everything from normal speech to loud music concerts.

There are also automatic and night shooting modes; as well as several white balance settings, including automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, and fluorescent; and color tone settings, including normal, sepia, black & white, negative, and vivid. In addition, the N95 has a digital video stabilization feature to reduce camera shake while you’re recording video. For a phone, video quality was also quite good and does not have any of the graininess that is on some video clips shot by camera phones. Video quality on the N95 is roughly comparable to that of the N93 and N93i, but is much better than older Nseries phones which capture video at 352 x 288 pixels and at 15 fps. However, it’s very average when compared to a budget home camcorder. Nonetheless, video playback is excellent both on the N95’s 26″ screen, and on TV/DVD/Monitor via the TV out port. Then there’s also Video editor and Movie director software that you can use to edit and enhance your video clips. Video clip length is only limited by available free memory.