Hands On With the N95

Our full review is still a few days off, but we've spent some quality time with the N95. Read on for more details, and a shedload of photos of this interesting new cell phone. Click on any of the images to view a larger version.

The front of the N95 is dominated by the large, 2.6-inch QVGA (240 by 320 pixel) screen

Sliding the top in one direction reveals the music controls

A close-up of the music controls
 
Sliding the top of the phone in the other direction reveals the keypad. The slider mechanism feels pretty robust, but the case
itself is a little plasticky.

A phone in the hand is worth two in the bush: the N95 not a small phone.

On the right hand side of the phone are volume controls, the shutter button and the playback button, rather like a dedicated digital still camera.


On the left are a small speaker, the headset/headphone socket (a 3.5-mm socket that supports standard headphones), an IRDA port and the cover for the MicroSD socket
.

On the bottom is the power socket and the USB port.

On the top is a single button that releases the battery cover.

The back of the camera is home to main lens, below the lens (or to the left in this photo) is a small LED flash
.
A close-up photo of the lens, which is carl zeiss branded. The slider above the lens opens or closes the lens cover. This cover only covers the lens itself; the flash is left exposed and could get scratched if you don't use a case.

The camera view of the N95. The live preview of the images loked clear and sharp, with no obvious jittering and smooth motion when we panned the phone.

The main menu of the N95, showing the major features; contacts, messaging, calendar, music, galley, maps, search, webb rowisng, downlaoding , tools, applications and the built-in office applications.
 
The GPS application in action. In our limited testing outdoors, we found that it locked onto our location pretty quickly. However, finding routes and landmarks was pretty slow; it took about a minute to calculate a route of jsut a few blocks.


The landmarks application of the GPS lets you search for things like restaurants, toursit spots, hotels, etc. Useful if you find yourself as a stranger in a strange land.

The music player in action. No comments on the musical taste of the owner, please.

The calendar application in action. Our schedule is just packed...

As well as the 5 megapixel camera on the back, there is a small camera on the front for self portraits. Nokia idn't specify the resolution of this secondary camera.


The web browser does a pretty good job of rendering web pages designed for desktop use.

It also supports multiple windows; you can have several web pages opena t once and move between them.

The text messaging application in action.

The gallery application shows your photos and videos in a rather cool way; they are shown in the order they were taken, and you can scroll through them in order.
 
The Video center holds the videos you have uploaded to it, plus a number of applications for acessing online videos. There is a YouTube application, but it crashed every time we tried it.

Another shot of the N95 from the side. As you can see, it is not the smallest or thinnest of phones, but it does pack a lot of features into the case.
 

One of the built-in applications from the office section of the menu is a text file reader. Here, we are trying to catch up with our classic literature.
 
A barcode reader program is also included. We weren't able to get this to work in our limited testing, though.