Hands-on with Nokia's satnav superphone

Posted by T3 Online on Fri 29 Sep 2006

T3 gets touchy feely with Nokia's all singing, all dancing N95 .

Update: See the N95 in action here.

We recently got to spend some quality time with Nokia's new N95 and we can confirm that this is definitely the best device the company has ever produced.

The first thing you notice is the weight. For a device with so much on-board, it feels really light. That's an achievement in itself. But it's the range of functionality which really impresses. Here's the lowdown.

First up, the five-megapixel camera. Whilst a massive improvement in on-board camera technology, it still lags way behind regular compact cams, so don't throw yours out just yet. Images we saw certainly looked good though, and even shots taken indoors turned out pretty decent, with minimal noise. The LED flash is useful, rather than brilliant; auto-exposure works quite well and there are eight scene modes available, covering most circumstances (but you can also create your own).

The 2.6" screen works well as a viewfinder and the shutter button is exactly where you'd expect it. The zoom buttons on the other hand are a touch awkward to reach and should really be better placed.

The lens is protected by a cover which, when you slide it back, automatically switches the phone to camera mode.

You can also record video at 30fps which is, apparently, good enough to watch on TV. We can't verify that yet though, as Nokia didn't have any footage to show us, and wouldn't allow us to create any. Mmm.

Footage played back on the phone looked pretty good, and you can feed the video player directly from Google video or from your PC, with six hours of encoded video taking up 2-gig of memory. Nokia's also working on support for YouTube, and it may even be ready by the time the phone launches in the new year.

In the US the device is supported by TiVo desktop, but Nokia refused to comment on whether we might see the same functionality for something like Sky+. We got the impression it could be on the cards though.

As the screen is only 4:3 it means lots of letterboxing - not so good. Still, it should be sufficient for some of the mobile-specific content Nokia reckons will be heading our way in the New Year.

The music player interface is pretty slick, with all the expected features in place. Playlists can be created, and searching by artist, album or genre is all present and correct. It still lags behind iPod's new search facilities though.

Music can be transferred to the device using Nokia's music software, or you can drag and drop selected tracks.

Nokia has also launched its own web browser for the phone, based on Mozilla. Integrated browsing means you can dial a phone number directly from a web page, and a cool overlay springs to life when you're 'fast-scrolling' through a page, letting you see where you are on a thumbnailed version of the page. You can also view pages in portrait or landscape mode.

The N95's killer feature has to be Satnav. Nokia's inclusion is really clever and stores maps on a central server. This means there's access to over 100 countries and 15million points of interest from the word go, and they're updated regularly too.

You don't have to be connected to the server all the time, but it does help. Routes are cached on the device, but you'll need to access the server if you want to change direction or take a detour.

All the usual satnav functionality is on board, but you'll have to pay extra for voice navigation and auto-rerouting. Nokia says you can buy the extra functionality by the week, month, year or three years. It's also available by country or continent. Pricing starts at about �3 for 1 week in 1 country, up to �99 for three years and a whole continent.

You can also download city guides for major cities. Again, these cost extra and are supplied by companies such as W Guide.

Standard points of interest include restaurants, bars and shops, but full phone integration makes the system really smart. If you select a point of interest you can do a number of things. If there's a phone number you can dial it. You can also send the point of interest to your friends. Say you want to meet in a bar, select the bar, send it to your mates and their N95s will automatically route them to the venue. Pretty cool. Like web pages, the phone's Satnav mode can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode.

The only thing we didn't try? Making a call. Apparently it does that too.