New Nokia N95 Battery Life Using EDGE: Over 9 hours
Added on 2007-10-10 09:13:00
by Richard Baguley
 We are continuing our investigations into the battery life of the new version of the Nokia N95 (the one that supports US 3G data), and the next test we have run is web browsing, but using the EDGE connection instead of the 3G one. In this test, the new N95 lasted an impressive 9 hours 14 minutes.
This contrasts with the 6 hours and 12 minutes that the same phone lasted browsing over a 3G data connection. This shows what a drain 3G data connections can be: they may be faster, but they have a huge impact on battery life. In this case, the battery life is extended by nearly 50 percent by using the slower (but less power hungry) EDGE connection. This is definitely worth remembering if you are only sending email or browsing very occasionally; both of these can be achieved on EDGE connections, and the battery will last longer.
How much longer depends on how much emailing and browsing you do, but there will definitely be a difference, and we would strongly recommend switching to EDGE if you are looking to extend the battery life. You do this by going to Tools>Settings>Phone>Network and selecting network mode. Setting this to GSM will restrict the N95 to using an EDGE connection only; putting it back to Dual Mode will set it to use the fastest network it can find (3G if available, EDGE if not).
This also underlines what a difference the bigger battery of the new N95 makes; the previous model lasted 7 hours and 15 minutes in the same test, so the bigger battery adds just under two more hours of browsing time. That's a significant improvement.
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Nokia N95 with 3G Battery Tests: Talk Time
Added on 2007-10-05 09:16:00
by Alfredo Padilla
 As you know we got our hands on the new Nokia N95 with 3G a couple of days ago and we've been running it through our usual set of battery life tests to see how the combination of battery hungry 3G connectivity and a higher capacity battery are affecting the phone's performance. Yesterday we found that when browsing the web the N95 with 3G performed about an hour worse than the older N95 that lacks North American 3G and instead uses an EDGE connection. Last night we ran our call time test and found a similar effect. See all our results after the jump.
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Nokia N95 with 3G Battery Tests: First Results
Added on 2007-10-04 09:07:00
by Richard Baguley
 We just got our first set of battery life test results for the N95 with US 3G support: in our Web browsing test, the new version of the N95 was able to keep browsing over a 3G network for 6 hours 12 minutes. Under exactly the same conditions, the old N95 (using an EDGE connection) was able to keep on browsin' for 7 hours 15 minutes. So, adding the 3G radio to the N95 has a penalty in terms of battery life, but it's not as bad as we thought it might be.
A browsing time of 6 hours and 12 minutes on a 3G network is very good: most of the other 3G phones we have tested run out of juice after 3 or 4 hours. The Treo 750, for instance, gave up the ghost after just 3 hours and 3 minutes, while the RAZR2 V9m on Verizon lasted 4 hours 45 minutes. So the N95-3 definitely looks like a strong candidate for having the longest 3G browsing battery life that we've seen so far. However, remember that this is just a first test: we run battery test several times to make sure that we are getting accurate results. We'll publish these results as the tests are done.
One thing to bear in mind; the N95 with US 3G support has a 1200mAh battery, which is significantly bigger than the 950mAh battery in the older, non-3G N95. So the 3G radio is definitely adversely affecting the battery life, but the bigger battery is doing a lot to compensate for that. And eagle-eyed readers may notice that the browsing time for the old N95 differs from the one in our original review; that's because Nokia has issued a firmware update since then that improves the Web browser.
UPDATE: Nokia asked us to clarify the naming of this phone; it is just (and somewhat confusingly) called the N95. So, to differentiate it from the previous N95, we've updated this post to call it the N95 with US 3G support. So if we just say N95, we are referrign to the older model, but if we say N95 with US 3G support, we're talking about the newer one.
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First Call: Nokia N95-3
Added on 2007-10-03 13:46:00
by Alfredo Padilla
 Lookie what just came calling, so to speak, the updated version of the Nokia N95. The N95 of course has been one of the most widely admired smart phones out there, and did fairly well in our own review of it, but that doesn't mean it couldn't use some improvements. Thankfully Nokia thought so too and so has graced us with this slightly updated version that sports US 3G, 128 MB of RAM and a slightly thicker case that accommodates a larger battery. We have to say that we like what we've seen of the handset so far. More of our thoughts and some direct comparisons to the older N95 after the jump.
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