Nokia N95 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

Alfredo Padilla
Published on May 08, 2007 Comment on this

Accessing Music Software (1.69)

To test how easy it is to access the music software we time how long it takes to go from the home screen to the music player with a song playing. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Nokia N95 took an average of 11.82 seconds to get a song playing. This is an extremely slow time for a phone, almost three times slower than the Nokia N73's 4.34 seconds and almost twice as long as the Sprint Upstage's 6.54 seconds. Unlike the Nokia N73 the N95 does not have a shortcut for the music player on the active standby screen. Instead you have to launch the multimedia menu by hitting the multimedia key or revealing the music keys. It takes several seconds to launch the multimedia menu, and then several more seconds to launch the music player. Once the music player is active it's easier to access it via the active standby screen plugin. For a phone that purports to be a music oriented device, the amount of time it takes to get a song playing is frankly unnacceptable.

Dedicated Music Controls (8.0)
The Nokia N73 has four dedicated music controls that can be accessed by pushing the screen down. This immediately launches the multimedia menu and reveals play/pause, stop, next and previous track buttons. The nice thing about these buttons is that they allow you to control the music in the background no matter what program you are. This means that when music is actually playing revealing the buttons will not switch you to the multimedia menu if you are in another application. This may be a bit confusing at first, but is actually very handy in use. When you do use the music controls a small pop up window will appear showing you what the new track is if you switched tracks, or what the current one is if you hit the play/pause button. You cannot reassign the keys.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (8.8)

The music player on the Nokia N95 is slightly updated from previous versions of Series 60. The basic functionality is the same, with the ability to create and edit playlists on the device. It recognized the tags on our test WMA and Mp3 files, just as the N73 did, but unlike the N73 it also recognized the tags on our test AAC file. The music library allows you to find and add music files on your phone or memory card, and it allows you to sort music by title, artist, album, genres and composers. As always you can search through music using multi-tap, which is a great feature. Although the phone should be able to recognize album art, it did not recognize album art for our test files. Unlike the N73 you can display visualizations. Background play is supported, however there is no support for rating your music. The Equalizer is very fully featured with several presets, the ability to edit each one or create your own.

The only other significant change comes in the music controls. Instead of the list of controls that you navigate by using up/down on the directional pad as found on the N73, the N95 has a more straightforward system where the directional pad is used for music control. The center select key acts as a play/pause, left and right skps to the next or previous tracks, or if held down fast forward and rewind, and down is assigned to stop. We find this approach easier to use than the traditional Series 60 music player and we were happy to see this change. We have always liked the music player included in Series 60 devices and we find the updated made to the version only improves an already good piece of software.

Online Song Downloading (0.0)
Another new feature found on the N95 that we did not see on the N73 is the addition of a music shop to the music software. Unfortunately there is no partnering service in the United States so we were unable to use this service. As such we awarded no points for this section.

Streaming (0.0)
We were disappointed to see that one item the N95 did not update over previous Series 60 devices was the ability to play streaming music. As with the N73, it was unable to play streaming Mp3, WMA or Real audio from our test web site. We continue to be disappointed by this lack of functionality as Windows Mobile devices easily allow you to stream WMA content over the network.

Podcast Support (0.0)

Although the N95 does not include Nokia's excellent podcasting client pre-installed they do include a link to the client in the Download! application on the phone. We do not award points for software that is not installed on the phone by default, but we do encourage users that enjoy podcasts to try the application out as it is one of the best we have seen on a mobile device.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The Nokia N95 ships with PC Suite, which allows you to synchronize music on your phone with Windows Media Player on your PC, much as you would with any other Windows Media Player compliant device. You can choose to connect the N95 via PC Suite and use the built in synchronization client or you can connect as a mass storage device and use Windows Media Player to synchronize your music. There is no support for direct synchronization with iTunes or any other media management software.

Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The Nokia N95 supports AAC, MP3 and WMA music. It also supports the AAC variants AAC+ and eAAC+. The N95 supports Windows Media DRM as well as the OMA DRM 1.0 and 2.0 standards. This is an upgrade over the N73, which did not support Windows Media DRM. This means that you can use the N95 with Windows Mobile DRM compliant services like Rhapsody or Napster.

Music Interruption (10.0)
As with all Series 60 devices the N95 does a good job of pausing your music when a call comes in. When your call is complete the music starts playing again automatically from the point at which it was paused.

Video

Video Software Access (1.96)
Like all Series 60 devices the Nokia N95 uses Real Player for video playback. To test how easy this software is to access we time how long it takes to go from the home screen until we get a video clip playing in Real Player. On the Nokia N95 this took an average of 10.22 seconds. This is slightly slower than the Nokia N73's 9.74 seconds, and is a poor score for a phone. The T-Mobile Dash by contrast took an average of 4.83 seconds, while the Treo 700p took 5 seconds. As with all the Series 60 phones that use Realplayer the Nokia N95 is hurt by the fact that the software is buried in the menu system and that you then have to navigate your folder system to get to your video file as there is no library support. Some might argue that you could use the gallery to access the video file instead, as perhaps Nokia intended, but this takes even longer, up to 20 seconds in our tests. However you cut it, getting to a video file on the Nokia N95 is not quick.

Video Controls (4.0)
The interface of Real Player on the Nokia N95 is no different from that on any Series 60 device. The center select key on the device acts as a play/pause button. For some strange reason pause is also assigned to the left soft key, while the right soft key is assigned to stop. Up on the directional pad will fast forward your clip, while down will rewind it. The volume rocker keys on the right side of the device will of course control volume. Because there are no library management features you cannot skip to the next or previous track. These controls are not customizable.

Video Software & Organization (1.0)
Real Player on the Nokia N95 has no library support and does not allow you to rate your videos. You can view videos in full screen, however to access this option you will need to first pause the clip and then choose the continue in full screen option from the left soft key menu. Frankly Real Player on the Series 60 platform is a poor excuse for a video player on a modern smart phone and we recommend that you look at alternatives if you want to use the N95 as a mobile video playback device.

As with previous Series 60 devices there is no support in Real Player for library management. This means you can't organize video clips by type, series (for tv), or any other feature. You can create folders either on the device or in gallery to organize your video, but these are not nearly as handy. Given that the N95 is supposed to be an advanced smart phone this is unfortunate.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
PC Suite does not support synchronization of video to your phone from within the application, however you can connect the N95 to your computer as a USB mass storage device and use Windows Media Player to move video files back and forth. There is no support for synchronization with iTunes.

Video Formats (5.0)
We were pleased to see that the Nokia N95 did better than the N73 in terms of video formats. It was able to handle all three of our 3GP encoded video files, including the one encoded with the mpeg-4. It was also able to handle our sample .mp4 file encoded in H264. This file caused the N73 to crash. Of course we were also able to play our test Real Media file. There was no support for Windows Media, Flash or Quicktime. We were happy that Nokia did a better job handling video codecs in the N95 than it has in previous Series 60 devices.

Video DRM (0.0)
The Nokia N95 does not support any video DRM standards.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
To test video playback smoothness we play back five 3GP video files at increasing bit rates. The Nokia N95 was able to play back each of our test files without problems, which we expected given the N95 has dedicated video processing, a feature that most phones do not.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Nokia N95 does not support video download services with premium content. It does allow you to download a few small clips from Nokia, but we did not award any points for this services as it is extremely limited.

Video Streaming unscored
Because online streaming video is not standardized we do not award points for this section. We do however test a couple of web sites to see if the phone supports them. Unfortunately this is one place where the N95 seems to take a step back when compared to the N73 as it was unable to play streaming 3GP video from www.zoovision.com, something the N73 was able to. Like the N73 we were unable to stream Windows Media video from windowsmedia.com.

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