Nokia N95 (Camera review)

Nokia N95 camera review: High five

Camera interface, description of functions, sample pictures, comparison to a digital camera, and sample VGA videos.

Nokia N95 is among the first mobile phones on the European market to ever offer a 5-megapixel resolution. What’s more, its camera features a Carl Zeiss lens, automatic focus, and detailed user-configurable settings. Nevertheless, our experience tells us that on paper specs usually sound a lot more exciting than they are in reality. That is why we will put Nokia N95 to a detailed and extremely rigorous test.

Full-function camera

The camera is located on the rear side of the device; the lens is protected by a mechanical cover opened with an easy slide. Fortunately it’s not that easy to let the cover open spontaneously, for example in case of pulling the phone out of one’s pocket. The cover is active, that is, its opening activates the camera application. When you closed it, the keypad lock is activated automatically and vice versa – opening it unlocks the keypad.

Nokia N95

Both activation and deactivation of the camera application is accompanied by gradual l lighting up of the side functional keys backlighting, just like in Nokia N73. On the right side, under your right pointing finger you will find a large release button; right next to it is an instant-access key to the Gallery; there is also a dual zoom key located under your left finger. To sum up, taking pictures with the phone is as natural as with your common digital camera.

Lens is protected

On the front there is another camera for video calls, which can also be used for taking pictures. It creates images of up to 640 × 480 pixels and might be quite useful for portraits to go into the phonebook.

Inside the frame of the lens you will also see a powerful LED flash (not as powerful as a xenon flash, of course). Unfortunately, there is no setup option in the menu that would allow permanent activation of the flash so that this can be used as a torch, as seen in other Nokia phones. A special program providing such an option could probably be downloaded additionally, though.

Optics from Carl Zeiss

The QVGA display (2.6 inch) serves as a viewfinder of the 5-megapixel camera.

Camera keys are located on the right side of the phone • keys are illuminated gradually • shooting position

Camera settings

It takes 6 seconds to get the camera application running. If you manage to focus immediately, then your first shot will probably take you about 8 seconds, which is rather slow, especially considering the frequent use of photo mobiles as opportunist cameras for taking instant shots.

To take a shot, first half-press the release button until the focusing frame becomes green, and then press the release button fully; just like you would do with a standard digital camera. Available are 4 different shutter sounds, each of which can be silenced completely should the phone has been set to silent mode.

Camera viewfinder

The camera application is very user-friendly and easy to manage. Function icons are displayed on the right and switched between by using the vertical ways of the navigation key. The horizontal ways duplicate the zoom function, also available on the phone side. When a function is selected, an additional menu pops out. The upper context key closes functions, while the bottom one opens the option menu.

Camera menu and setup options

Among other options here you will find camera resolution settings, automatic insertion of images into albums, shutter sound setup, or default storage. Once you have set up all above mentioned features, they remain saved even if the camera application has been restarted. However, the same does not hold true for the functions displayed in the right menu column, which load their default settings each time the camera is activated.

ISO setup from phone

Let’s now have a closer look at the camera functions displayed in the right menu column:

The camera/video mode switcher is on first position.
Shooting mode – you help the camera focus and provide exposure setup. Available are: macro, portrait, landscape, sport, night, night portrait, automatic mode, and even a user setup option. The latter allows custom settings for focus, flash, exposure compensation, white balance, color nuances, sharpness, and contrast. Automatic mode is rather reliable; macro would be better if setup manually.
Flash – automatic, user-configurable, or deactivated. Red-eye reduction is available, too.
Self-timer – off, 2, 10, or 20 seconds
Sequence mode – single shot or consequent shots with a user-configurable time interval of up to 15 minutes.
Exposure compensation – setup in a ± 2EV range; 0,5 EV step
White balance – automatic mode works rather well, white color reception under artificial light is possible to setup, too.
Color nuances – a standard set: standard, sepia, black & white, negative, and an additional vivid color mode.
Light sensitivity (ISO) – you can set it low in order to eliminate noise; this way, however, the shutter speed is lower; or vice versa. Available are three sensitivity levels and an automatic mode. Setting the ISO manually is a good step forward, but it works best only when combined with manual exposure setting, which Nokia N95 lacks. If you hold the phone still, switch on the self-timer, and set up a low sensitivity level expecting a nice night shot, you will only get a dark photo. The automatic mode does not allow you to extend shooting time too much preventing the image from getting blurred. In other words, manual exposure settings in photo mobiles remain a matter of future solutions that are still to come.
Contrast – suitable in case of a dull scene; it makes colors more vivid. Since Nokia N95 creates images of rather high contrast, this function is likely to be used rather seldom. Sometimes it may even require you to lower the contrast levels.
Sharpness – the phone software can make contours more pronounced or, on the contrary, blur them a little bit. Whether you should use this option or not is up to your

Zoom: the zoom is managed through its own control elements, so it is not available in the menu. The phone zooms digitally, that is, the image gets cropped. The result is a less sharp, interpolated image. The digital zoom achieves good results when shooting in lower resolution.

The big thumbnails a linked to sample pictures in full resolution ( 1-1.5MB), the small ones point to resampled photos to 800 × 600 pixels.

Sample pictures using zoom:

Running for first prize

Picture quality is very good. As you’d probably expect, we are working on a comparative review between Nokia N95 and the best current photo mobile Sony Ericsson K800, which we are going to publish soon. We can guess that Nokia N95 will come out as a winner of such a competition. The images it creates maintain their sharpness throughout the entire frame. Higher resolution allow for printing on bigger formats as well as for creating crops.

There is no doubt that any direct comparison between Nokia N95 and other mobiles situates the former on the very top of the chart. Its drawbacks only become obvious in confrontation with a standard digital camera. And that is exactly what we did: we picked up a Sony DSC-H1 camera and took a number of comparative photos.

Sony DSC-H1 digital camera

Nokia N95 on the left • Sony DSC-H1 on the right

Apparently the most significant con of Nokia N95’s pictures is their cold touch, which frequently results in a light violet shade. This drawback is best visible in pictures taken shortly before sunset. Sony software evaluated light conditions exactly and left nuances of yellowish sunlight, while the pictures taken with Nokia N95 look like they were taken in early afternoon. Nokia N95 does not feature any special white balance option to make colors look more natural. Whatsoever, its images do not look bad at all; besides, any inaccuracies could be easily eliminated with some editing program on a PC.

Nokia N95 on the left • Sony DSC-H1 on the right

Tip: more sample images can be found in the third chapter of this article!

JPEG compression is quite strong – surface seems “patched” under closer examination, while details tend to disappear. The small size of the lens significantly contributes to blurring of details as well. A closer comparison between the images taken with Nokia N95 and those created with a digital Sony camera confirms the advantages of using a bigger lens. Anyway, the differences are not at all as drastic as one might have expected; the pictures taken with both devices would have been nearly identical, if it were not for the different color nuance.

VGA video

Nokia N95 can be also used as a video camera. You can record videos of average quality in 3GP format, suitable to go into MMS as well as high-quality videos in resolution of 640 × 480 pixels; the latter speed up to 30 shots in a second. High-quality videos are recorded in MP4 format, but they use an enormous amount of MB – half a minute of such a video “eats up” approximately 10 MB. Videos maximum length only depends on the available free memory.

Viewfinder in video recording mode

Video camera menu and its setup options

Video function menu is somewhat poorer than the camera one. Here you will find shooting mode settings, white balance, and a number of color nuances. You can zoom in digitally while recording, but zooming is not fluent, and most of all, it worsens the overall image quality. The microphone can be silenced if you wish. Another unusual function in the menu is the so called image stabilizer, but its influence is almost invisible.

Sample videos in full resolution:

Videos look brilliant both on the phone display and on a TV screen. On a PC screen, however, they come out much too colorful, with a far too high contrast. Nevertheless, for the moment this is the best you can get from a photo mobile on the market.

Substitute for a digital camera

Nokia N95’s glamorous presence along with the latest bunch of cameraphones marks the beginning of difficult times for common small compact cameras. The trend of replacing the compact camera with photo mobiles has been long spoken about and it will surely remain one of the hottest topics for some time. Yet, putting this trend in practice is going to take long time. For example, many users already perceive Sony Ericsson K800 as a full-functioning substitute for a common camera; its drawback is its resolution: 3 megapixels only. It does not mean that three megapixels are not enough for the production of a good-quality image; it is when mobile phones are confronted with standard cameras that the cameras score higher as their minimum resolution is 5 megapixels.

Viewing images • editing options

And here comes Nokia N95 with its 5 megapixels, auto focus, and very good optics. Yet, it lacks manual exposure settings and a high-quality xenon flash.

Apart from pure shooting options Nokia N95 also offers extras like filing pictures into albums, sending pictures in MMS or emails, or even sending images to a photographic blog within Flickr or Vox services. Pictures can be modified in the phone before they are uploaded.

More sample pictures with comments

Nokia N95 in full glamour – it captures images of quality so high that they seem as if taken with a common digital camera

The same green in three photos – Nokia N95 meets certain difficulties in balancing colors

Macro is one of Nokia N95’s strengths

Backlit photos are good – the sun is reasonably suppressed and, at the same time, visualization in darker areas remains pretty clear

Indoors under artificial light – here Nokia managed the white balance very well, even though the above images were taken in automatic mode

Pictures taken in the dark – there is far less noise than we have expected. Instead, the phone extended exposure time, so firm hand was needed to manage the shot. Anyway, the tram was too fast.

Scarcely illuminated night street in automatic mode • in night mode • in a minimum resolution mode for noise reduction (it would have been helpful if a longer exposure time was possible to set up; not available, unfortunately)

LED flash in action

More sample photos

Nokia N95 on the left • Sony DSC-H1 on the right

Source: http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n95_camera-review-139p3.php

27/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Camera, Nokia | N95, Nokia | Leave a comment

Nokia N95 (2)

Nokia N95 review: Nokia’s crown jewel

This is the our detailed test of Nokia N95, the best equipped phone on today’s mobile market. All functions have been rigorously tested.

Official images of Nokia N95

Key features

Two-way sliding construction
Dedicated music keys
Landscape screen mode
Stereo speakers
microSD memory card slot
UMTS, Wi-Fi, USB, stereo Bluetooth and Infrared support
miniUSB port
FM radio
5 megapixel camera with auto focus
Records video in VGA resolution
GPS receiver with free basic navigation
Symbian 9.2 OS with S60 3rd edition UI plus Feature Pack 1
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
TV-out port

Main disadvantages

Poor battery life
Charging through USB is not possible
No FM RDS
Voice assisted GPS navigation is charged
GPS chip doesn’t work with third party applications
Cannot edit office documents

At this moment Nokia N95 represents the crown of the entire Nokia portfolio. It is the best equipped phone on the world market. It was brought to public attention in September 2006 at an imposing Nokia show in New York. Due to the high customer demand the price is yet rather higher than the initially announced expected retail price of 550 EUR.

Nokia N95

Nokia N95 is among first mobiles to have a built-in camera with a 5 megapixel resolution. Among its lures are also an integrated GPS module, HSDPA support, two-way sliding construction, and a very handy 3.5 mm jack connector for earphones. The phone runs on Symbian 9.2 OS with the S60 3rd edition UI plus Feature Pack 1. Some of the innovations gathered under the label Feature Pack 1 are, for example, a new user function menu and a repeated alarm clock.

Unpacking

Construction and design

Pros: attractive design • comfortable size and weight for a smart phone • both-way sliding construction • high-quality plates • matt „soft touch“ surface on the back

Cons: no spring to facilitate opening • top half plays when the phone is open • friction between plastic surfaces causes creaky sounds that accompany each opening

It is a beautiful phone, discreet but at the same time irradiating a huge performance potential. The front plate is silver, while the back one is dark velvet („plumy“ in our case). Nokia N95 is coming in two color versions though: the above mentioned one and in a light „sandy“ one. The phone’s one and only design particularity is the expressed camera frame on its rear side. Surface is matt, so fingerprints will never ever be a reason to worry; except for the display, of course.

The phones slides out in both directions

Nokia N95 is a slider, but it slides either direction, which is quite surprising; this is the first time we come across such a constructional solution. A classical slide move upwards reveals the keypad, while a slide move downwards shows the four keys, through which the music player is controlled.

Moving directions according to the user mode applied in the phone

Nokia N95`s size of 99 x 53 x 21 mm is pleasing with respect to the great amount of functions it offers. The same holds true for its weight – 120 g. Nokia engineers have managed to reduce remarkably N95’s thickness (by 5 mm) and weight (by 14 grams) in comparison to the slider N80 from last year. The only smaller-body multimedia smartphone from the N series featuring a Symbian S60 3rd edition OS is Nokia N73. The latter may be longer than N95, but it is also narrower and by 2 mm thinner. Nokia N73 is lighter than Nokia N95 by mere 4 grams.

Nokia N95 looks rather compact among smartphones, but it is a true „fatty“ in comparison to common feature mobiles.

Size comparison: N73 and N95

Sliding both directions

Sliding is accompanied by „crinkly“ chafing of plastic against plastic. When you slide the top half out, it is recommended that you twist your thumb and lean it against the top edge; otherwise you will not be able to open the phone with one hand. In fact, a tiny jag (if it existed) located beneath the display against which a finger could lean would have been extremely helpful. When you slide the phone out in the opposite direction, generally you will be holding it with your both hands in a horizontal position, so you should not meet any difficulty like the above mentioned.

Sliding construction could have been elaborated better

When closed Nokia N95 shows a tiny space between both its halves. When we slid the phone upwards, however, we faced a rather unpleasant surprise: N95 produces extremely loud clicks when it is worked with in open mode. These clicks do not originate from the keys though. They are caused by the top half interfering with the bottom one. The problem is in the tiny space between them, so a press on any key results into the top half moving towards the bottom one and producing the above mentioned annoying sound. As various opinions from our discussion forum indicate, this is not a sporadic drawback, but even so, most pieces should not suffer from it. We recommend you that you test Nokia N95 well before you proceed to a purchase.

Beyond the sliding mechanism the overall construction of Nokia N95 is excellent. The plates fit in perfectly, without any creaks, at least for the moment.

Equipment, battery life and accessories

Pros: stereo speakers • instant access to images • 3.5 mm jack connector for earphones • 160 MB of internal memory • microSD memory card slot • mini charger

Cons: memory card is not part of the retail package • poor battery life

Naturally, the front plate is dominated by a large display. Nokia designers deserve a complement for having outstretched it making use of all available free space. The display is imbedded by a millimeter and thus relatively protected from scratching (in case you put your phone on a table with the display facing downwards, for example). Above the display you will find a receiver with a metal grill, an ambient light sensor for display brightness control, and a camera for video calls. Below the display is located the functional part of the keypad. It is decorated with chromium-plated keys organized in a rounded frame and with a navigation key with a glossy center.

Mounted on the top of the device is the switch on/off button, which also serves, as usual, for switching between ringing profiles. In the top of each phone’s side you will see a metal grill hiding a stereo speaker. Since the stereo effect is most appreciated during movie playing when the phone is held in a horizontal position, locating one speaker at the top and the other one in the bottom would have probably been a far happier solution. This is a minor issue, though.

Display makes full use of the front plate • camera for video calls • you will not miss the camera… • speakers on both sides

The right side of the phone also features a dual volume & zoom-control key, a camera release button, and an instant-access key to the Gallery. Newly created images can be immediately viewed without additional, unnecessary menu browsing.

Dual key for volume control of the receiver and for zoom setup • camera release button and a key for instant access to the image gallery

On the opposite side you will find a slot for earphones – a standard 3.5 jack mm compatible with any earphone type; no adapters are necessary. Surely enough, at the beginning this connector will seem like an enormous hole in the phone to you, but thank heavens it is there. Further on, you will see the discreet tiny Infrared port and a protected memory card slot. The cap of the memory card slot is easy to open due to the space nearby, which is big enough to allow you to insert your nail. Nokia N95 works with microSD memory cards, but surprisingly, there is none in the phone, or in the retail package. Apparently, Nokia chose to keep price down in reasonable limits and left card purchase to users according to their preferences. For example, Nokia E61i also comes without a memory card included in the package. Nokia N95 offers 160 MB of internal memory space that should do it as a starter.

Plug in your favorite earphones • memory card slot hidden under a protecting cap

The cap of the memory card slot is not active, that is, the phone does not recognize that you are about to extract the memory card. That is why we recommend you that you select the option „Extract memory card“ in the ringing profiles menu accessed through the switch-off button. In result, the phone will close all applications running on the card avoiding unpleasant complications. The memory card can be removed without making the above steps too, though. And of course, memory cards can be exchanged while the phone is working (hot-swap).

Daily charging

A miniUSB system connector is situated in the bottom of the device. Right next to it is the charger slot. The charger delivered with the phone is utterly minimalist with the socket plug being its biggest part. The charger slot is the same like in any other Nokia phone.

In the bottom: miniUSB connector, a charger slot… • …and an eye-let for a wrist band • charger is extremely small

On the back: the camera is surrounded by an expressed, slightly elevated silver frame. Only the bottom part of the rear plate is removable. Under it you will find a battery of capacity 950 mAh, which is advertised to provide the phone with power for up to 215 hours on stand-by or 240 minutes of calls. There is no need to tell you that these values are literally impossible to achieve. We have been testing Nokia N95 for 4 days quite intensively and we have had to charge it daily; yesterday even twice.

Only part of the rear plate is removable • what a pity there is not enough space for a bigger battery

The poor battery life of Nokia N95 is probably its most significant weakness. The phone is packed with features so that users never get bored. Yet, they may easily get bored to death if left without a battery juice. However, things do not have to go that wrong and the phone will serve you all-day long provided you watch movies and browse the Internet moderately.

Keypad, control, and display

Pros: intelligent keypad lock • the functional part of the keypad is comfortable • good numerical keypad • large display • brightness control through a light sensor • brightness can be set up manually

Cons: numeric keys could have been made bigger • uneven backlighting under the music player controls • lower display resolution • small font size in the clock on stand-by • no information LED

Keypad lock is especially interesting. Once closed Nokia N95 will not bother you asking whether it should lock the keypad or not, like Nokia N80, for example. It locks it straight away, instead. Locking takes approximately 2 seconds, which allows you to go on working with the closed phone; a brilliant solution, indeed. The lock gets automatically released when the phone is open. Locking and unlocking as described above work reliably no matter in which direction the device is slid out; it is also applied when the camera lens cover is removed – the keypad is unlocked and you can start shooting; you close back the cover and the keypad gets locked again. Of course, the lock can be deactivated through sequential presses on the corresponding context keys without opening the phone. A standard automatic lock with user-configurable idle time is available too.

The functional part is very well elaborated. The navigation key is precise and confirms presses confidently; the glossy keys form an elevated frame facilitating touch orientation. Plenty of space has been conferred to the main and multimedia menus access keys, which is admirable. The C key and the Pencil are somewhat difficult to reach when N95 is closed, but they will be rarely used in closed mode, anyway.

Comfortable, practical, no unnecessary design elements

The keys located on the right side of Nokia N95 deserve a compliment, too. They are big enough and a bit elevated, therefore easy to find by touch. The switch-off button on the top of the device is also useful, even though it is imbedded to prevent unintentional presses.

The keys mounted on the right side are elevated and thus practical • no keys on the left side • switch-off button on the top of the device

The numeric keypad consists of waves: each line represents one wave. Keys are spacey, but we expected them to be even more spacey with respect to the phone size since there is sufficient area for enlargement. When you type messages you might find uncomfortable the fact that the elevated bottom edge of the phone touches your thumb when you press particular keys. Nevertheless, we like this keypad a lot and we give it a high mark.

Imagine the sea – each line of the numerical keypad of Nokia N95 has the form of a wave

Numeric keypad backlighting is blue; the functional part glimmers with more colors. Backlighting is automatically activated when light intensity drops under a certain level. Light intensity is controlled by an ambient light sensor located above the display.

Keypad backlighting is controlled through a light sensor

The keys on the opposite side revealed by sliding the phone are black and completely flat; there are no touch orientation markers, but it is not a big deal since there are only four such keys. They might seem touch-sensitive, but they are not; they are mechanical, their plastic surface flats out slightly when pressed. Backlighting is blue and – quite surprisingly – very even.

Music player controllers feature no orientation markers

Large-screen show

We like the size of Nokia N95’s display a lot. The display has a diagonal of 2.6 inches, which is equivalent to a rectangle of 40 x 53 mm.

The largest display a Nokia NSeries phone has ever had

Resolution has not been modified: it is a standard QVGA one offering 240 x 320 pixels. Whoever is used to Nokia N80?s extremely fine display, whose pixels are virtually invisible, may be disappointed with the display of Nokia N95, which is rather „rough“ and its pixels are clearly visible if inspected in detail. Yet this fact will hardly have any importance in daily use. The display is quite neat; font is slick and polished and masks lower resolution quite successfully. Perhaps, we would have hardly been speaking about roughness in the case of Nokia N95?s display if it had not been for N80. As a matter of fact, most PocketPCs which have really large touchscreen displays feature the same resolution as Nokia N95. Nokia has already proven that it knows how to produce fine displays. With applying a standard QVGA resolution it probably aimed at 100% compatibility with all applications.

Display comparison
phone	dimensions	resolution	density
Nokia N95	40 x 53 mm	240 x 320 pixels	3,623 pixels/cm ²
Nokia N73	37 x 49 mm	240 x 320 pixels	4,236 pixels/cm ²
Nokia N80	35 x 41 mm	352 x 416 pixels	10,204 pixels/cm ²
Nokia N93	37 x 44 mm	240 x 320 pixels	4,717 pixels/cm ²
Sony Ericsson P990i	42 x 56 mm	240 x 320 pixels	3,265 pixels/cm ²
HTC P4350 (Herald)	43 x 57 mm	240 x 320 pixels	3,133 pixels/cm ²

The display shows 16 millions of colors; legibility under direct sunlight is brilliant. Backlighting is controlled through a light sensor, but at the same time you can set up brightness levels from the menu. Bear in mind that the brighter the display the more energy it uses. Default settings are optimal.

The menu offers a idle-time setup option for the backlighting (5 to 60 seconds) as well as a idle-time for the activation of the screen-saver (1 to 30 min.). In result, backlighting is off in saving mode, while the phone displays a bar with clock, date, name of active ringing profile and – if needed- icons of missed events. In screensaver mode the display is hard to see due to the lack of backlighting. Nokia N95 lacks an information LED that would twinkle when an event is missed such as the one in Nokia 6300.

Networks, data transfers, connectivity, and VoIP

Pros: GPRS and EDGE • UMTS and instant data transfers HSDPA • Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 2.0 including A2DP profile • Infrared port • miniUSB connector • USB Mass Storage • direct VoIP support • automatic setup of data profiles

Cons: data profiles cannot be automatically selected by priority • internal memory does not appear as USB Mass Storage • charging via USB is not possible

Nokia N95 is a quad-band phone, which means that it works in all four standard GSM frequency bands – 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz. Here it offers data transfers via GPRS or EDGE. The phone also works with 3G UMTS networks. Apart from video calls you can also enjoy instant data transfers as fast as 3.6 MB/s thanks to the HSDPA support. The latter is already on the market in some countries, but there aren’t many networks with speeds above 1.8 MB/s.

Data transfers can be used for numerous applications straight in the phone no matter if you only browse the Internet, send images to your blog, download maps, or watch streamed video. If you like to use Nokia N95 as a computer modem, simply connect it and it will start working. The old famous much verified and constantly improved service program Nokia PC Suite creates all necessary settings on its own and when the phone is connected to a computer, all you need to do is click on the icon “Connect to Internet”. Connecting takes a few seconds.

A single click on Nokia N95 connects PC to the Internet

Using the details stored on the SIM card the phone recognizes the name of the active mobile operator and subsequently sets up all necessary data profiles – APN internet, WAP, and MMS – in accordance with this operator. If an application requiring connection to Internet is being run, Nokia N95 always asks for your preferred access point. In many cases the phone allows for presetting of a default access point that is subsequently selected automatically. Unfortunately, access points cannot be organized by priority or automatically selected according to their accessibility. To see how such options work, have a look at Sony Ericsson P990.

Manager of access points for data connection • menu • editing the parameters of the access point • you can also assign different access points to various applications in the same directory

We tested the speed of HSDPA connection repeatedly in a city of half a million inhabitants. In the center of the city it was about 800 kb/s, while in the outskirts it would frequently reach 900 kb/s and even more. Apparently, connection speed depends to a great extent on how busy the respective network is.

The phone offers an almost entire megabyte; upload is good

More results measured by Speedtest.cz

One of Nokia N95’s greatest assets is Wi-Fi support. There is an option for quick search of available WI-Fi networks straight on the stand-by display. It is especially useful in case that you often need to connect via Wi-Fi out of your home, in a restaurant, for example. You don’t need to search any settings in the menu; all you have to do is select a network and connect directly, without any complicated setup. Nokia N95 searches for available networks on its own and if it finds a known network, it connects to it automatically. Of course, you could deactivate the automatic network search option and save a little bit of energy.

Searching for available networks • connected to the network DAP • active stand-by mode menu • selecting another available network

If you are connected to a Wi-Fi network, connection appears on the stand-by display; if you select the connection icon, you can either search for other Wi-Fi networks, or select the option “Start web browsing”.

Scanning can be enabled or disabled

In the settings of Wi-Fi connection you will find an option for mode selection (infrastructure/Ad-hoc) or even a security option (WEP, WPA/WPA2).

Calls via Internet

Nokia N95 has inherited Internet calling from its „siblings“ from the E-Series. This service is preset in the phone so it works without any need for additional applications. All you need is Wi-Fi and a corresponding setup.

Setting up the internet phone is easy

Once you have set a SIP profile and an Internet phone account, when you dial a number, a new item called “Internet calls” will appear under the item “Video calls” in the context menu. This is how an Internet call is executed. However, if you want to not only make calls via Internet, but also to receive such, you should select the option “Permanent network registration” in the SIP profile settings. You can also set your preference call type from the call settings. If you go for Internet calls, Nokia N95 will dial all numbers via Internet. To restore GSM network connection, you will have to select it from context menu. As soon as Wi-Fi signals disappear, the phone will automatically give priority to GSM.

If you prefer to execute calls in Internet via Skype, install the freeware application Fring instead of setting up SIP profiles. As a result you may not have Internet telephony built straight in your phone system, but you will surely have Skype including all its extras. What’s more, this way you will even get along without Wi-Fi because Fring can also be used while the phone provides data connections to mobile network.

Stereo Bluetooth

Nokia has apparently „lost all love“ for Pop-Port, most new Nokia models feature a standard miniUSB connector instead. Nokia N95 is no exception to this rule. When you plug the cable into a PC, the phone will offer you four mode options: PC Suite, USB, Image print, and Media player. If you select USB, phone’s memory card will appear in the computer as a common removable drive. Unfortunately, Nokia N95 is not able to make its internal memory also appear in a computer as a new drive like LG Shine can, for example. Nevertheless, the fact that the phone does not go into Offline mode while it is connected to a computer through a cable, allowing user to freely make calls, is praiseworthy.

Once the cable is connected, the phone asks you to select a connection mode • permanent setup of a particular connection is possible though

Nokia N95 uses two other wireless technologies to communicate with close range devices – Bluetooth and Infrared. Nokia motivates the presence of Infrared ports in all newly launched phones from the N-Series with the possibility to use phones as remote controllers. The pity is that there is no special application in Nokia N95 that would serve this purpose.

Bluetooth works reliably. Nokia N95 supports A2DP stereo profile. You can connect more than one device to the phone simultaneously – for example, Bluetooth headset for listening to music along with a computer for synchronization.

Data connections setup menu • Bluetooth settings

System, user interface, control, speed

Pros: a wide range of options for user-configuration • automatic orientation of the display • a great amount of available applications • Java support • very good voice control • phone lock • font size is configurable from the menu

Cons: limited setup options in the active stand-by mode • no clear function of the red key • slow access to the menu with most frequently used functions

The fact that Nokia N95 works on the OS Symbian 3rd edition could hardly surprise anyone these days. Not so sure or foreseen, however, is the presence of Feature Pack 1. It is a software package full of innovations and is comparable to Service Pack created for Windows XP. The difference is that Service Pack represents a number of additional improvements to cover security defects, while Symbian brings about very practical innovations for the user interface.

At first glance nothing seems to have changed. The stand-by display shows the menu of the active stand-by mode surrounded by standard details like time, name of operator, date, LED, and the indicators of battery status and signal strength. The active stand-by mode can be deactivated. If you do so, images in the back will be better but you will lose instant access to 6 selected programs and you will not be able to see events from the calendar. You will not be able to see all available WI-FI networks so quickly, either. Honestly, we had expected the active stand-by mode within Feature Pack to be improved somehow. Already Nokia 6300 based on Series 40 had its active display compounded by 4 bars, which users could fill with whatever they wanted. The same option would have been very useful in Nokia N95 too.

When the active stand-by mode is on, the ways of the navigation key help you browse the elements on the display. If it is off, you can assign the ways of the navigation key any function, you need to access instantly. As the menu is accessible through a separate button it is possible also to assign any function to the confirming center of the navigation key. The soft keys can be assigned various functions from the stand-by mode as well.

Active stand-by mode • main menu

There are plenty of user-configurable functions. Apparently, this was the reason for the cardinal re-make of the Settings menu in the main phone menu. Settings now contain far more options than one would usually find in any older phone based on Symbian. For example, there is a new group of settings called Adjustments, where, apart from the design and the control of the stand-by display, there is also an option for selection of graphic themes. Nokia N95 offers 5 such themes; additional themes can be downloaded from Internet.

Preinstalled graphic themes

One of the fundamental innovations of this improved system is the option to set a global font size out of three possible levels. The result is visible in the menu, in messages and…simply everywhere…

Setup options

Apart from menu colors you can also modify the design of the menu. If you are not satisfied with a matrix layout of the icons, you can organize them in a list. Naturally, you can move or exchange items and applications in the main menu in a way that best suits your needs. Another novelty is the option to create a multi-level structure of items. The icons in the menu are slightly animated, but if you do not like animation, you can deactivate it. The last innovation in the menu is the indicator of running applications: if an application is running, a blue symbol appears in the top right corner next to its icon.

Main display without active mode • main menu in the form of a list • menu animation can be deactivated

The main menu is accessed through a special key located on the left of the navigation key. If you press and hold it, a vertical list with all running applications appears in background. The red key behaves a little bit strangely and its function is not completely clear. In older phones it first used to minimize applications, then it took up the function of closing applications, and today it does something in between. In Nokia N95 it usually closes applications, but it also sometimes leaves them running in background. Unfortunately, what makes it work this way has remained a mystery to us.

Switching between applications

Auto rotate

Apart from the main menu there is another special menu containing the most frequently used functions, which are user-configurable. The menu is accessed through a special key on the right of the navigation key. Feature Pack 1 brings a substitute for the hash key with its four configurable applications: an active graphic interface, in which an infinite number of applications can appear; you can set your introductory animation or admire a 3D frame. At the same time, in the background, various images will be slowly popping up. They will be either predefined, or four images you have set up on your own. Regardless their type, they are all a bit blurred in order that their visualization does not interfere with the ordinary work of the phone.

User functions menu

All these effects are really very nice, but they take too long. Eventually, after the first two testing days, we deactivated both the background and the animation extras hoping that Nokia N95 would run more smoothly, but it did not. So we put the animation back hoping that it would at least make those four seconds pass faster. Why Nokia designed this most frequently used functions menu in this way is a mystery, especially considering how sensitive users are to interface speed.

Otherwise, the phone is quite fast and scores high in direct comparison to other smartphones. Being a smartphone, however, it always takes longer to run applications that are not cached into its memory.

The display uses portrait or landscape mode according to the application that is being used. If you slide it up, it will start working in portrait mode. If you reveal the four music player keys, it immediately switches to landscape. When you close the phone, the last used visualization remains until application is not changed. The entire phone system including all its functions adapt to the display, so you can browse Internet or pictures or whatever else you like in landscape mode, for example.

Stand-by display and main menu in a landscape mode

Voice commands

We remind you that you can give voice commands to Nokia N95 as well. The phone features a voice-recognition function and is able to virtually accept any type of command. Which application will be voice-controlled and which not is up to you, as the voice-control preferences are user-configurable. Generally, voice control works smoothly. If the phone is not sure about the order it has received, however, it gives you a list of all items likely to satisfy your search. The most probable item is located on first position. The phone proceeds to its activation, unless you quickly select another of the options available or close the entire application. Voice control is especially helpful when driving. Press-hold the right context key and the application will start running.

If you want to prevent others from browsing your phone, you can set up an idle-time, after which Nokia N95 will automatically lock itself. Before you can start using the phone again, however, you will have to insert a password.

And nobody will be able to open your phone

Telephony, ringtones, phonebook

Pros: video calls • automatic change of ringing profile after connection • call filters • voice dialing based on voice recognition

Cons: display blinks during ringing, not possible to switch-off • no option for terminating calls by simply closing the phone • ringtones are independently set up for each profile

You can make calls with Nokia N95 in three different ways – the standard one in a GSM network, via Internet, or in a 3G network with video. As usual, Nokia offers a high-quality, fine sound. Both the headphone and the microphone work brilliantly and so does the loud speaker.

Nokia N95 rings in 64-voice polyphony MID files, as well as with audio files in MP3, AAC, AMR, RealAudio, and WAV format, or through vibrations. Naturally, vibrations can be combined with sound. The display backlighting becomes active too. Ringing is of average quality, even though its basses are a little bit vague. Vibrations are strong enough, but at the same time they are rather loud. We tried to find an option to make the display stop blinking when the phone is ringing, as we would have preferred to see comfortably who was calling instead of getting a visual alert about incoming calls, but our efforts were in vain.

Ringing • call process • call context menu

Game lovers will appreciate the application 3D tones installed in Nokia N95. It uses the pair of stereo speakers to create miracles through common ringtones. For example you can not only set the sound to circle around you, but you can even define at what speed it should do so. An echo option is available too. If you select the sound route called „fly“, the phone will even offer you a Doppler effect setup option.

Application 3D tones

An hour instead of a minute

When the phone is ringing, the name of the caller as well as its number and mini image appear on the display. Thumbnail images are extremely small, unfortunately. Calls are accepted by opening the phone, but they cannot be terminated by closing the device. They simply go on. In fact, calls can be executed even if the phone is not fully open. In any case, an option for terminating a call by closing the phone – if there has been such – would have been much appreciated.

Let’s now have a look at ring profiles. You can set up as many of them as you like. You can define ringtones for standard calls, a different melody for video calls, a preferred style of ringing, keypad tones, vibrations, or even call filters; the latter can be configured according to call groups in the phonebook. We have never met anyone who has a different ringtone for each profile, but this is no guarantee that such users do not exist. If they do, they will surely enjoy the configuration options for ring profiles in Nokia N95. I myself use one favorite ringtone as it helps me recognize that it is my phone that is ringing. If I want to use it in all profiles, I will have to set it in each one of them independently. A far more comfortable and universal solution would have been the option to „copy settings from another profile“ in the context menu of the respective profile, but the pity is that there is no such one.

Call setup • ringing profiles setup

Any audio file can be used as an alert for incoming message, but, once again, you will have to set it up in each profile. The alarms of the alarm clock as well as reminder sounds are set up from elsewhere and are valid for all profiles. Each group of contacts as well as individual contacts can be assigned a specific ringtone, which does not depend on the active profile, either. Another handy option is the automatic switch between profiles after connecting accessories; for example, when you plug in your headset, Nokia N95 will automatically select the profile that best suits it like the one, where caller’s name appear on the display before ringtone is activated.

Incoming calls can be denied or simply silenced. From Settings you can insert a SMS text that will be automatically sent to the person, whose call you have denied. For example: „I cannot answer your call at the moment. I will call you back later. “

You can use other functions of the phone while you are calling. For example, you can check your calendar or start the voice recorder to make a track of your call. After several years of doubts, uncertainties and intentions without result Nokia has finally designed a voice recorder that creates tracks longer than a mere minute! Nokia N95 offers an entire hour. Yet, it remains unclear why the length of voice records should depend on anything else but the available free memory only…

There are no modifications worth mentioning in the video calls application. As usual, you can switch from one camera to another, zoom-in, or cancel your image and select another one from the settings menu to represent you before the opposite side.

“Blow-up phonebook”

Executed calls are archived in a well organized call log. Here you can set how long should the log be kept: 2 days, 10 days, or a month. When you open the call register you can immediately see the name or the number of the respective contact as well as the date and the time of the call (in smaller font). You can deactivate the call log for good, too.

Call register

The phonebook is a Symbian classic. Its capacity is only limited by the available shared memory. Each contact can be assigned a great amount of fields. There are precisely 46 types of fields, but it is also possible to add more fields of the same type. The entire phonebook can be synchronized with Outlook or with Lotus Notes. The phonebook is organized in lines and is not sophisticated. The only option you can select here is whether contacts should be ordered by first name or by last name.

How you will access your phonebook is up to your choice. One reference can be found on a first position in the active stand-by mode; however, you can also set an access on one of the context keys or from the user menu, for example. The phonebook is searched by gradual typing of the initials of the respective contact. The phone filters promptly, both by first and last name. Searching by company name is not available. Nokia N95 searches its phonebook faster than older Nokia models.

Phonebook: browsing • search • contact detail • editing • groups

As any other Symbian smartphone, Nokia N95 manages voice dialing very successfully. You do not need to predefine a voice label; the phone recognizes your commands and then checks in the content of the phonebook. If you pronounce both the first and the last name of the desired contact clearly and loudly, Nokia N95 guarantees nearly a 100% probability for success.

Contacts can be organized in groups; to do so, simply mark the ones that need to go into the same group. Each group can be assigned a specific melody and used as a call filter. The list with contacts on the SIM card is fully independent; it can be opened from the context menu.

Messaging, SMS, MMS, email

Pros: great T9 dictionary • delivery reports archived in a separate list • no need to preset MMS • good email client • possibility for setup of regular email receiving • support of office formats in attachments

Cons: last message recipient cannot be immediately selected

The message menu does not bring along any significant innovations, either. A novelty is the extended menu for creating new messages, where, along with SMS, MMS and emails, you will also find the so called audio messages, which are nothing else but instantly created MMS containing only sound.

You can receive as many SMS as you like; you will only be limited by the available shared memory. The first detail you see when you receive a message is the name of the sender; the message itself starts on the second line. SMS and MMS are stored in one and the same folder, while emails are saved in a separate directory. Reports of SMS delivery are saved to a folder of their own, too, which is convenient.

Message menu • selecting a new message • received messages folder • reading SMS

The message editor counts down characters and advises you of the number of already completed sub-messages. T9 learns new terms quickly: if you correct the word three consequent times, it will start offering you the version you offered on a first position.

Message recipients are selected from the phonebook and, of course, you can pick up more than one. There is no option for quick selection of the recent message recipients Sony Ericsson phones as well as Nokia models of Series 40 usually have this option. „Smart“ Symbian models – not yet.

Typing SMS

Sent messages are saved in a special folder, while unfinished texts are stored in a section called “Drafts”. When you decide to leave the editor in the middle of a message, Nokia N95 asks you whether it should save the message or delete it. Delivery reports can be set either globally, for all messages, or for each particular message. Delivery reports pop up for an instant on the display, after which they are saved in the folder “Reports”.

Each MMS can contain up to 300 KB of data. Creating a multimedia message is very simple: first select a recipient, then type a message subject and select content or create it (no matter if it is a picture, video or voice record). Add text and send out. If you have time and desire to play with MMS, you may want to use the function “Presentation”, which offers improved MMS pages with colorful background etc.

MMS creation • presentation function

Emails: no news

Nokia N95 can both receive and send out emails with attachments. It supports POP3 and IMAP4; emails are sent out using the protocol SMTP. Access to a mailbox is easy to set up as it is identical to the one applied in computers. All you need to do is connect to the Internet and insert your log-in name and password.

Emails • reading • setting up automatic receiving

From the settings you can select whether the phone should download entire emails including attachments or just email headers, or possibly something in between: the first X KB of each email. Besides, you can set the client to only download a certain number of all received emails. Regular mailbox checks are available too. You can even select whether only emails from local networks or, let’s say in roaming, should be downloaded; you can select the days, the hour (from – to) and the time interval (from 30 min. to 6 hours) of mailbox checks.

The email client is able to open HTML emails and attachments with no problems whatsoever. Thanks to the support of Office formats you will be even able to view attachments including Excel spreadsheets. The same array of options is applicable when emails are sent out too.

Time organizer, Office, Internet

Pros: improved alarm clock • very well organized calendar • seamless synchronization • browser for Office and PDF documents • brilliant web browser

Cons: simple task manager • Office documents cannot be edited, only read

Here comes a miracle: Nokia has improved the alarm clock application of its Symbian smartphone! This innovation constitutes part of Feature Pack 1. The new alarm clock will wake you up at one and the same time either daily, or on working days only, or – if needed – on a particular day weekly. Besides, you can directly set up a number of such alarms. Apart from time and repetition, the application offers user-configurable text legends, so it can also be used as a substitute of the reminders in the calendar.

Good alarm clock in the end

In fact, I am probably one of the few users whom the old non-repeated alarm clock application suited perfectly as I usually wake up at different times or I simply do not set any alarm. The good news for people like me is that the old “one-time” alarm clock is still present in Nokia N95, but under a different name “Quick wake up”. The only configurable detail in it is the time.

The alarm clock will wake you up even if your phone is off. What’s more, it is so intelligent that once it has woken you up, it will ask you whether you want to switch on the entire phone.

The calendar offers month, week, and day views, of which one can be set up as a default one. The days featuring events in the month view are marked with a tiny nook. When you select this nook, a small window with event description appears in its top. The week view works in a similar way with the only difference that events are visualized in the form of oblong bars in a time axis. The daily view contains a chronological list of events.

Calendar and task manager

Nokia N95 offers four types of events: meeting, note, anniversary, and task. Once you have chosen the type you need, you can assign it a subject, a location, a deadline, and an alert time. The items in the calendar can be repeated daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, or every year. On the other hand, Nokia does not offer task repetition; there is no simple way to set up a reminder (for example, of a call you need to make and the number that has to be dialed), either.

The task manager is an integrated part of the calendar. Tasks can be assigned a priority and a reminder. Simple text notes without reminders are available as well, but these are located in a separate folder.

Notes

The calendar, the tasks, and the notes can all be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook. Details like deadline, subject, repetition, location, and even note are transferred without any problems

No modifications

In the menu with office functions you will also find a Voice recorder. Record length is no more limited to a mere minute. Nokia N95 provides an entire hour, instead. Record quality and storing directory (internal memory or memory card) are both controlled from the settings. Of course, Nokia has not forgotten to install a calculator, which works with roots and has enough memory, but does not manage any scientific functions.

Office functions menu

Other helpful applications are the unit converter and the barcode reader.

Browsing Office documents

Nokia N95 offers two other, far more useful viewers that manage reading Office and PDF documents. The application QuickOffice opens Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, which you can read and browse, but not edit, unfortunately. PDF files are opened by the mobile Symbian version of Adobe Reader. And of course, all documents in the above mentioned formats can be viewed in landscape mode.

Landscape view is available too

Another useful application is Zip. It helps opening zipped documents coming in email attachments as well as sending out zipped files straight from the phone.

Internet everywhere

The Internet browser installed in Nokia N95 is not new; we know it from former Nokia phones and it is brilliant, as always. It manages complicated websites including scripts, remembers form data, works with cookies and Java, and is extremely comfortable to use. There is cursor moving on the screen, which snaps to links. If you move the cursor too quickly, a small window with your exact location pops up automatically. When you move to the previous page, the browser shows you previews of the pages you have already visited.

Internet browser • fast browsing via navigation window

The browser works very fast in the presence of WI-Fi or HSDPA networks. If you use a GPRS connection, then you will surely appreciate its economic mode. Of course, Opera Mini uses the bandwidth even wiser.

Web pages can be viewed in landscape mode; the favorites can be saved into folders, which can be subsequently synchronized with a computer browser. Nokia PC Suite offers synchronization not only with Internet Explorer, but also with Firefox. This comes to indicate that the phone quite probably supports Opera too, but we cannot confirm this fact as we did not have Opera installed in our computer while we were testing the phone.

Landscape mode

Unlike its older “siblings” Nokia N95 is quite stable and has no problems with memory insufficiency. You may only face difficulties if you start browsing very complex websites. In such case you can be sure that the message „Memory is full, close some of the currently running applications“ will appear sooner or later.

Some of the older phones featuring Symbian 3rd edition had two Internet browsers: one was called Web and the other one – Services. The reason was that the Web browser would not open WAP pages, so another browser able do read them was necessary too. Nokia N95 only has one browser managing all above mentioned tasks.

Camera

Pros: 5 megapixel resolution • active multi-plate camera cap • autofocus • a wide range of function settings • very high quality images • high quality videos in VGA resolution

Cons: strong JPEG compression • frequent use of cold color nuances • flash cannot be activated permanently • xenon flash would have been handy • no manual exposure settings

Since we already published a separate article about Nokia N95’s camera we will just copy part of the article here. Click to read the whole camera review here.

Full-function camera

Lens is protected

Optics from Carl Zeiss

The QVGA display (2.6 inch) serves as a viewfinder of the 5-megapixel camera.

Camera keys are located on the right side of the phone • keys are illuminated gradually • shooting position

Camera settings

Camera viewfinder

Camera menu and setup options

ISO setup from phone

Let’s now have a closer look at the camera functions displayed in the right menu column:

The camera/video mode switcher is on first position.
Shooting mode – you help the camera focus and provide exposure setup. Available are: macro, portrait, landscape, sport, night, night portrait, automatic mode, and even a user setup option. The latter allows custom settings for focus, flash, exposure compensation, white balance, color nuances, sharpness, and contrast. Automatic mode is rather reliable; macro would be better if setup manually.
Flash – automatic, user-configurable, or deactivated. Red-eye reduction is available, too.
Self-timer – off, 2, 10, or 20 seconds
Sequence mode – single shot or consequent shots with a user-configurable time interval of up to 15 minutes.
Exposure compensation – setup in a ± 2EV range; 0,5 EV step
White balance – automatic mode works rather well, white color reception under artificial light is possible to setup, too.
Color nuances – a standard set: standard, sepia, black & white, negative, and an additional vivid color mode.
Light sensitivity (ISO) – you can set it low in order to eliminate noise; this way, however, the shutter speed is lower; or vice versa. Available are three sensitivity levels and an automatic mode. Setting the ISO manually is a good step forward, but it works best only when combined with manual exposure setting, which Nokia N95 lacks. If you hold the phone still, switch on the self-timer, and set up a low sensitivity level expecting a nice night shot, you will only get a dark photo. The automatic mode does not allow you to extend shooting time too much preventing the image from getting blurred. In other words, manual exposure settings in photo mobiles remain a matter of future solutions that are still to come.
Contrast – suitable in case of a dull scene; it makes colors more vivid. Since Nokia N95 creates images of rather high contrast, this function is likely to be used rather seldom. Sometimes it may even require you to lower the contrast levels.
Sharpness – the phone software can make contours more pronounced or, on the contrary, blur them a little bit. Whether you should use this option or not is up to your

VGA video

Viewfinder in video recording mode

Video camera menu and its setup options

Here is a Nokia N95 sample video.

Music and video

Pros: 3.5 mm connector for earphones • state-of –the-art music player • special control keys • FM radio • online station search • videos can be played in full-screen mode • access to online video archives • video streaming

Cons: earphones enclosed in the retail package are very bad quality • earphone connector is located on one of phone’s sides • album images are not automatically open • no RDS in the radio application

Nokia N95 is fully equipped to entertain everybody. After all, providing fun is one of its basic missions. One of its key functions is the music player controlled through special keys for quick and efficient control. These keys are located on the smaller, sliding half of the phone. They are functional, even when the music player application is minimized. In case that the music player is off, pressing on the “ Play” button will make it run from the last played piece of music.

Music player: selecting artist and album

Playing • player functional menu

The music player is able to read music from any directory; it then sorts it by artist and album on the basis of additional details from the music files. You can organize music by genre or composer as well. Music files can be organized in playlists. Besides, the player automatically generates lists of frequently played and last added tracks.

Repetition (of one or all songs) and shuffle functions are available too. There is a detailed equalizer for finer tuning in all frequency bands. A very interesting detail is the visualization. It is identical to the one we know from computer music players: curves surge or columns gambol in the rhythm of the music. Visualization can be played in fullscreen mode. After you lock the keypad, however, visualization stops. Another interesting option is playing music and viewing images from the gallery simultaneously.

Setting up the equalizer

As usual, the music player shows song and artist name. You can also set it to display album images in the top left corner of the display from the context menu, but it is a bit awkward. For example Sony Ericsson models visualize album images automatically, as long as they are part of the album directory.

The original earphones enclosed in Nokia N95?s retail package are a real shame taking into account the high quality of the phone. They distort sound, which come out with aggressive heights and with no basses. Their shape is inconvenient too: they tend to fall off your ears frequently. We recommend you to get yourself another headset leaving the original one aside. The earphone connector is universal permitting the purchase of practically any model. As expected, the tests made with Sennheiser PX-100, HD-212 Pro and Koss Porta Pro came off excellently. The results were brilliant. Since no sound output works with all earphone models in the same way, the built-in equalizer is much appreciated at the moment of fine tuning.

Enclosed earphones do not play well • but they can be replaced by any other type of earphones since the connector is standard

On the other hand, the use of earphones different form the original ones complicates remote control from the cable (otherwise very practical). The cable of the original earphones is short; the rest of it starts with the controller and finishes in the phone. Everything is designed with the idea of carrying the phone in your pocket: the remote control is fixed to your breast pocket or pined to your collar and the earphones lie down into your ears. The remote control also has a standard head-phone connector, but if you use headset of your own, you can loop the rest of the cable around your neck. That’s why we recommend you to use the following combination – the first part including the remote control from Nokia, the rest – any earphones from the competition – Sony Ericsson walkman’s for example. I use the headset of Sony Ericsson HPM-82; they cost 30 euros. This combination of brilliant earphones on a short cable is optimum even if Sony Ericsson remote control will remain unused.

Remote control

The remote control features forward and backward keys as well as a pause/play key. Volume and call control keys are available too, of course. There is also a switcher for activation of the key lock and a fixing clip.

Music player in horizontal position • selecting visualization type

YouTube in the phone

If you get tired with your own music, switch on the radio. The radio only works if earphones are plugged into the phone as these serve as an antenna. Once you have activated it, it is also possible to divert playing from the earphones to the loud speakers in the phone. The radio offers manual input of frequencies and automatic station search. It also provides 50 saving positions for favorite stations, which you will manage to occupy immediately thanks to a special online service: you select the country, the region, and the city you live in and ask the phone to download the entire list of all available stations. Then you can edit this list adding new stations, for example. If you need to switch from one station to another, use the music player keys on the smaller sliding plate.

Radio: listening • list of stations • online station search

Videos are played in Real Player – a well known application from older Symbian smartphones. Apart from standard video playing in full-screen mode, Real Player also manages streamed videos and music. It works with MPEG4, 3GP and RealVideo formats. Here again you can use the side keys to pause, forward or backward videos.

An old acquaintance

While you are watching videos you may want to use a cable to connect the phone to your television converting Nokia N95 into a video player for mass entertainment. Standard television sets do not usually need any special high resolution so videos look pretty well. The above mentioned cable, however, does not suit only videos, but also allows you to view pictures from your trips, browse the Internet on a big screen, or even browse documents. None of the above functions is new, though. Nokia N93 would manage them successfully, too.

Cable for TV connection

The innovation brought by Nokia N95 is called Videocenter – a function providing direct access to video archives on the web. The greatest lure is the beta-version of the mobile YouTube: you connect to the server, look through the last videos menu and play the one you like. The original guide-post for this service is Nokia Video Service Catalogue – a simple webpage with links to all offered services. Besides YouTube here you will also find Reuters news-bulletin, for example. As you can see, Videocenter is basically a classical videopodcast.

Videocenter – what about a mobile YouTube

Navigation

Pros: GPS in the phone • sensitivity meets common user requirements • map fundamental details and basic navigation are free of cost • a practical application for tourism • navigation software is synchronized with the phonebook

Cons: GPS chip is located under the keypad • lower chip sensitivity • full navigation is not free • chip does not work with third party applications

Nokia N95 features an integrated GPS navigation chip, able to localize anything anywhere on the Earth. In the phone menu there are two applications that play upon navigation: the simpler one is called GPS data and provides basic navigation details. It works without using maps.

GPS data constitutes of three components – the first one is called Navigation; here, if you’re connected to a satellite, you see a compass and your moving direction, and if you have stated a target, you see the distance and the direction towards this target. You can state your target by inserting its coordinates or select a target from the list of your own coordination points. Coordination points are gathered in a separate application, but database is common for both this application and the other one working with maps.

Main navigation application GPS data

The second component contains basic geographic data: latitudes and longitudes, alignment accuracy, altitude, altitude accuracy, and moving speed. The third component provides you with details on your current moves. At the beginning of your trip you can activate the recording function, which helps the program count the length of your route, your time, average speed, maximum speed, degree of incline, and the entire measuring time. Bear in mind, however, that this program is not suitable for distance measuring during high-mountain tours as GPS only takes into account the speed of your horizontal moves. This is most clear in direct comparison between GPS and a bike counter. While on plain terrain both devices show the same speed, when riding up or down a hill, the speed measured by GPS is lower.

Localization and itinerary details

The other navigation application using data from the GPS module is called Maps. It is basically the navigation program Smart2Go, which Nokia started to offer free of cost not long ago. It downloads map details from the Internet according to inserted itineraries. It provides the latest information, but you will have to pay the cost of downloaded data.

Application Smart2Go works with maps • the phone localized on the map

Pay and I will show you the way

The navigation program is able to localize Nokia N95 and show its position on the map. Map scale is user-configurable; a 3D visualization is available too. You can localize points on the map by address; besides, there is a database with points of interest sorted by categories. You can easily find the nearest restaurant, monuments or accommodation… Each point of interest is accompanied by detailed information including telephone numbers.

Searching a restaurant in the neighborhood

You can ask the program to show you the shortest way to the selected point of interest from your current location. The result can be visualized as an route or straight on the map. There is also an option of crossroads preview so that you can prepare for them. If you have a travel companion, you could even achieve full-function navigation. The con is that Nokia will charge you for such. If you pay for this service, Nokia N95 will not only navigate you everywhere, but it will even do so by voice orders. Prices are as following:

Week license: 6.49 Euro
Month license: 7.99 Euro
Year license: 59.99 Euro
3-year license: 69.99 Euro

Let’s now get back to the application for archiving of points of orientation. It is accessible from both the application Maps and the program GPS data. Points can be sorted by various categories. Apart from showing location they can be loaded with details like address, phone, or even webpage. The application Maps goes even further and checks the addresses stored in your phonebook.

Archiving orientation spots

Searching by address • visualization is user-configurable

Various views at the map

The sensitivity of the GPS receiver has been one of the hottest topics in the mobile society lately. Nobody is certain about what will be hidden in the last version of Nokia N95, but it will most probably be the chip Sirf Star II. There is no doubt that the chip Star III, much praised for its sensitivity, would have suited a noble phone like Nokia N95 better, but the current situation is not bad at all.In order to make navigation in your car seamless and comfortable, fix the phone into the holder attached onto the front car window and make sure that its keypad is revealed as the navigation chip is located just under it.

Planning your route • route • selecting options • viewing the route on the map

Passing crossroads on the way to the target • you will have to pay for full navigation;

Hidden GPS

The built-in module suffers from one fundamental drawback: 3rd-side applications do not manage to identify it because they do not have proper controllers. They usually search devices connected via Bluetooth, and, quite naturally, Nokia chip is not among them. We tried to run TomTom Navigator or the Java application Handy Geocaching, but without success. If you want to use such applications, you have to attach an external GPS module to the phone using Bluetooth.

TomTom works • but an external module is required • Handy Geocaching is trying to find GPS in vain

So where’s the mistake then? Well, programs simply do not count the fact that there might be a chip integrated in Nokia N95. Even though we are sure that Nokia engineers would have easily programmed the chip to behave as if it was a GPS module connected via Bluetooth whenever an external application used, they have decided not to do so. It is a con that limits the utility of GPS in Nokia N95 significantly.

Nonetheless, there is another application that can be applied thanks to the integrated GPS module – Nokia Sports Tracker. It is very helpful for sportsmen and for runners, in particular. It is able to state a route and then export and display it on the map, in Google Earth, for example. We should also mention that Nokia offers this handy application for free.

Work with files, PC Suite, others

Pros: well-organized image gallery • images can be sent to blog • an interesting function of dynamic presentation of images • high-class service software PC Suite

Cons: Gallery opens slowly • only one and a half games

The phone features plenty of functions and applications using its internal memory (a total of 160 MB). Additional storing space is provided on the memory card.

Basic file management is done through a File manager; files can be moved, copied, deleted, etc… For better transparency the file manager is divided into two folders – the first one contains the phone memory, while the others one is reserved for the memory card.

Images are viewed in an application called Gallery. It takes the Gallery a few seconds to read and open image previews, but on the other hand, it rotates pictures in a flashy way and is able to show previous and following ones as thumbnails. A fullscreen mode as well as direct print is available too. Images can be sent out in MMS, emails or via Bluetooth and Infrared. Besides, Nokia supports Vox and Flickr photo blogs, and you can upload pictures straight from the phone.

Gallery • viewing images • placing images on the web

Pictures can be organized into albums. From camera settings you can even select the option of automatic filing into albums. Both fullscreen mode viewing and automatic presentation are available as well. An interesting option is automatic zoom and move, due to which presentation is no more a boring slideshow, but becomes a real dynamic spectacle.

In the Gallery the phone opens all the images it finds, which blocks user control and is therefore a little bit unpractical. For example, it would have been more energy-friendly if the images of music albums did not open together with camera taken shots.

Nokia N95 has a very good editor for additional image modifications. It offers crops, size modifications, contrast and brightness control, insertion of cliparts, suppressing of red-eye effect, color effects etc.

Viewing images on landscape mode • editing options

In the menu you will also find two games – a 3D snake and a 2-round demo version of the space 3D action SRE. A phone so expensive could have had a greater dose of entertainment potential, indeed. Further, there is an application called “Help” and a Flash player. From here you can also access the functions located on the SIM card (SIM toolkit), Chat (Instant Messaging), and PTT (Push to talk). One of our most favorite applications, Lifeblog, is also integrated in the phone.

Attractive 3D ride, but only a two-round demo is available

We tried to install the Java program Jimm for communication via ICQ in Nokia N95. It worked seamlessly.

Very high price, no competitors

Till today I have never had the courage to name any phone like the best one on the market with clear conscience. But Nokia N95 does deserve this label. It has no adequate competitors on the current mobile market: it is extremely rich in functions, has a comfortable and detailed user interface with plenty of settings, and on the top of it, it is a relatively light and compact.

The most notable drawback of Nokia N95 is its battery life. It will require daily doses of power, unless you limit its usage to occasional calls and messages, deactivate 3G, Wi-Fi, and GPS, and play no videos. In this case you may happen to postpone charging by a couple of days, but is such use worth the purchase of a phone like Nokia N95? The answer is no. Of course, battery life is an individual matter and depends on many factors. Nevertheless we can assure you that during our intensive tests we had no other option but to charge the device sometimes even twice a day.

Do you want me?

The first batch of Nokia N95 hit the market at a high price. Even so it was immediately sold out. The main delivery whose price is said to be a bit lower is being expected at the end of April. Anyway, the price remains rather high, perhaps due to the strong customer demand. Nokia N95 may be very expensive, but it also offers a lot and thus keeps attracting numerous prospective buyers. In this sequence of thoughts it is quite probable that in a few months, when the initial ecstasy falls off, the price of the phone will also fall down a bit. Be prepared, however, that drops in price will hardly be significant as Nokia N95 will continue to be the best phone in the world for a while and will thus manage to easily maintain its price.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n95-review-141p10.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Nokia | N95, Nokia | Leave a comment

Nokia N95

Smart2go

The launch of Nokia’s Smart2go system in February 2007 marked a sea change in the way mapping and navigation worked, at least in terms of smartphones and handheld devices. Previously there had only been the two models – the traditional one, where you buy a memory card with all the maps on it, along with a license (enforced) to use it with one device – this solution typically would cost at least £70, or up to £200 when bundled with a Bluetooth GPS. The other solution was to simply have a small client application on the mobile device and load up routes, map segments and calculated directions over the Internet, usually by signing up (again for the one device) with the appropriate Internet service. In latter times, basic mapping and route planning have been free using this technique, with the likes of Google Maps.

Each solution had its downsides. The first solution’s downside was the sheer expense and commitment, especially if you had more than one mobile device in the family or you tended to upgrade/swap quite often. The second solution’s downside was cost (again) and also a dependence on the network – if you got really lost then the chances are that you’d drive out of network coverage area and you wouldn’t then be able to plan a way back.

Screenshot

With Smart2go (initially developed by gate5, subsequently bought up by Nokia in mid 2006), this traditional either-or scenario is turned on its head completely. Not least because the software and maps are basically completely free, for as many devices as you care to load it up on. The idea is that detailed street maps of virtually the entire world are made available for free, along with route calculation and display of your GPS position (if required, should you own a Bluetooth GPS). There’s the option to have all maps stored on your expansion card or to grab them as needed over GPRS or 3G data, so you can plump for the option that’s best for you.

Screenshot

So how can Nokia afford to give this away for free? The idea is that if you wanted to upgrade the system to ‘Navigation’, i.e. to supply turn-by-turn instructions in real time, based on your position (along with spoken commands e.g. “In 100m, turn left”), then (and only then) would money change hands. And, unlike traditional £100 for life or for one year arrangements, there’s the option of licensing navigation for as little as a day (for a couple of Euros), for a week, a month, right up to £30 (50 Euros) for a year, at which level it’s still an awful lot cheaper than its competitors.

N95 in situ

We really, really like this kind of ‘pay as you go’ licensing for navigation. Effectively, it means that you can keep any maps you want on any devices you want (S60 or Windows Mobile) and use them as much or as little as required, all for free. Then when you plan a trip and are going to stray from your familiar area, you license navigation on whichever device is going to be your main companion for a week or month (for example) and you’re done. Nothing extra to install, you don’t even have to get your credit card out. Simply request navigation and the appropriate premium SMS messages get sent, to debit your phone bill/account. Really rather neat.

The Nokia N95

I suppose I ought to mention the N95 at some point, lest you be wondering why I’m talking about Smart2go at all. You see, “Nokia Maps” in the N95’s ROM is actually just Smart2go. It’s nice to have the core app pre-installed, but you obviously still have to get your maps in the usual way, by direct download as-needed or by using the PC-based Smart2go MapLoader to grab entire countries and pack them onto your expansion card. The process is fairly straightforward, but it’s also tediously slow, as MapLoader needs hours rather than minutes to do its thing – best to leave it going overnight – and Nokia, if you’re reading this, please use some of your Smart2go navigation revenue to upgrade your servers. Pretty please.

The main difference between a standard S60 or WinMob smartphone running Smart2go and Nokia Maps on the N95 is of course that the latter version is tightly integrated with the N95’s built-in GPS receiver. Yup – you read that right – it’s built-in, so no messing around with (or charging) a separate Bluetooth GPS. I’m not entirely sure exactly where the GPS antenna is, but Nokia do say to open the keypad for best performance and this is borne out in practice.

It’s worth noting that we’re not talking SiRF III performance here. In my experience, lock-on can be up to (in absolute worst case) two minutes even when the N95 hasn’t moved from the spot where you last used its GPS, with satellite lock being disrupted more easily by buildings than with my two year old TomTom SiRF II GPS. Having said that, the extra convenience that comes with an integrated GPS may outweigh the performance differences, and in any case it’s easy to supplement the built-in GPS with a Bluetooth GPS (‘GPS Data | Positioning settings’) in areas where you know there are going to be problems seeing GPS satellites. Maps/Smart2go automatically uses this extra GPS data if available and then goes back to its internal attempts at a fix when the Bluetooth GPS is unavailable.

Driving around with the N95 sitting in a cradle next to the steering wheel, I had a GPS fix (and thus reliable navigation) for 99% of my test runs) – aside from the slow startup time, this element of the N95’s functionality is certainly ‘good enough’.

Screenshot

Navigation

The core GPS-related function for most users will be road navigation – paying to upgrade it to Navigation status was the very first thing I did. Which puts the N95/Smart2go solution head on with the likes of TomTom Navigator, Route 66, Navicore and CoPilot Live, not to mention the likes of Wayfinder. In the last three years, quite a few ways of navigating using your smartphone have come to prominence.

I’ve found Smart2go, with its two-tiered approach (mapping/planning, followed by navigation if needed), to work very well indeed and, unlike Route 66, Navicore, CoPilot Live and Wayfinder, Smart2go (i.e. Maps on the N95) was always intuitive. For every occasion when I thought ‘Now, how do I do that?’, I’d pop up the Options menu and there would be exactly what I needed – it seems that Smart2go has gone through a lot of usability testing and the end result is rather impressive.

Screenshot
An access point is needed for grabbing of maps that aren’t already downloaded, for grabbing voices (a one-time operation) and for grabbing extra or updated category information. Address searches take between ten seconds and thirty seconds for the UK.

Screenshot
Once matched, just click through to see the search result…

Route planning was as good as most of the above and substantially better than CoPilot Live, based on my tests. Again, impressive when you consider that this aspect of the software is free. Voice guidance (the actual voice samples are grabbed from the Internet after you’ve selected a language) is clear, loud and effective and I had no complaints. During navigation, audio volume is handily placed on the Options menu.

Screenshot
Once activated, you can ‘Navigate to’, to bring up real time turn instructions and voice commands…

Screenshot
The alternative to ‘Navigation’ is non-real-time route planning, shown above, both graphically and in text. A GPS position indicator will be shown if appropriate, but with a very small icon, meaning that for practical purposes you really need the Navigation upgrade if you’re going a-driving….

Screenshot

You’ll notice from (most of) the screenshots that on-screen mapping defaults to 2D rather than the 3D view popularised by TomTom. Smart2go does include a 3D view (just press ‘0’ to toggle), but I found the top-down version easier to understand. Cleverly, the zoom/scale is adjusted dynamically, depending on your distance to the next junction, so that you get a feel for the next ‘leg’ of your journey. This generally works well, but the algorithm sometimes got confused and had the scale zooming in and out rather erratically (see my notes on it being ‘beta’ below). There’s an option to plan for journeys ‘on foot’, but unless you walk at reasonable speed and exercise common sense, Smart2go’s instructions can be confusing to follow – when on foot, it’s easier to simply use the free mapping in conjunction with the displayed GPS position.

The overall level of functionality falls some way short of the market-leading TomTom Navigator (no specific roadblock avoidance, no itinerary feature, for example), but I’d argue that Smart2go’s more standard (for S60/mobile) interface brings it up level and that the licensing and cost benefits (e.g. installed on all your family’s smartphones for free and navigation for a pittamce only when you need it) take Nokia’s solution into the lead.

To add in the fact that the N95 doesn’t need a standalone GPS receiver, with one less device to charge, is another distinct benefit, although it should be noted that the N95’s battery life isn’t exactly stellar and that prolonged GPS use with screen backlight on (i.e. when using it for navigating) really brings this point home. I’d estimated that a fully charged N95 would only last an hour or two at most in this mode. My recommendation (and my own practice) is to have the N95 charging from my car’s 12V socket while driving – so no worries about running out of power, in fact the opposite, with the device usually fully charged by the time you arrive at your destination.

In the interests of completeness I should mention that I’ve experienced a few funny freezes and oddities with Smart2go, both standalone (installed on my N93) and on the N95. Still, it’s still listed as ‘BETA’ on the Smart2go web site and the N95’s firmware is still very new, so I’d expect free updates to both fairly shortly and this will undoubtedly improve reliability.

N95 with power

Extra features

As with other mapping systems, Smart2go includes over 40 points of interest ‘categories’ and, as with its competitors, these are somewhat erratically populated. Again, this might be an indication of beta status, but I don’t hold out that much hope.

At least the main categories have useful entries, e.g. railway stations, hotels, and all entries are sorted by distance from your current position, as with TomTom Navigator, and each also has associated address and phone details, so that you can call ahead if need be, only a click away as the software’s running on a smartphone, of course.

Screenshot
Searching for results in the supplied Smart2go ‘categories’.

Screenshot
Category entries have details and are contactable, as you’d expect

Any location ( whether you’re there or just browsing the map) can be saved as a ‘landmark’ (favourite), for easy navigation at a later date, plus there’s the novel option to send any location via text, email, Bluetooth, etc., which might just save someone’s life one day.

Finally, Smart2go has an integrated ecommerce system for ‘City guides’, I’ll be looking at these in a separate article, but suffice it so say for now that these seem to be of variable depth and quality.

Have Nokia succeeded?

And so to the bottom line. Has Nokia’s attempt at integrating mapping, navigation and GPS into a smartphone succeeded? Does it make the N95 significantly more attractive than any other (for example) S60 3rd Edition smartphone? In truth, it’s hard to say yes to this, although you may be lusting after the N95 for other reasons, of course, such as for the 5 megapixel camera, DVD video recording, large screen, Feature Pack 1, and so on. For many people, adding Smart2go and a £30 Bluetooth GPS to their existing smartphone will be a better option.

But for new smartphone users, the simplicity of having everything in the one device can’t be overstated. Aside from the slowish startup time and questionable GPS reception in dense cities, it’s quite fantastic to have your accurate position available on demand and to be able to get guidance home, by car or on foot, from anywhere on the Earth’s surface.

With the Nokia E90 and 6110 also having GPS built-in, I’m sure the N95 is the vanguard of a whole new crop of GPS_enabled smartphones, with Nokia Maps (nee Smart2go) standing an excellent chance of being the de facto standard across the smartphone world.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N95-part_2_the_Navigator.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Nokia | N95, Nokia | Leave a comment

Nokia N73 Music Edition

N73 photos As with each ‘Music/Internet Edition’ that Nokia produces, the end result is mainly an exercise in marketing, at least in that those who bought the original device certainly don’t need to upgrade, since their hardware can almost certainly be used for the same purposes. But full credit to Nokia for making the extra effort to get across to consumers that you can (shock horror) listen to stereo music on their S60 smartphones.

In the N73’s case, it’s a bit of a double whammy, since it’s already known for being something of a supreme camera phone. Camera AND music? Must sound pretty tempting to someone on the High Street.

But what has actually been added? After all, the original N73 was a fairly complete package. The hardware had its limitations, in the tiny keypad and the camera which couldn’t handle very bright light conditions, and the hardware here’s identical. What’s different is the music software, a key assignment and the accessories shipped in the box.

Oh yes, and it’s black. Music biz black and, in my opinion the best looking N73 yet. And it’s not as obvious now that it’s all plastic.

The key assignment mentioned above and pictured on the right is that of making the previous ‘Media’ key now go straight to Music player. I never liked the Media key and I think this is a definite improvement. Having only the single dedicated music key isn’t as flexible as on some other devices, for example the HTC STRTrK and Nokia’s own N75, N91 and 6290, not to mention the imminent N95, but at least any music function is now only two keypresses away at most.

Staying with hardware for a moment, the main changes for the N73 Music Edition are the welcome addition of a 2GB miniSD card (enough for around 30 CDs worth of music) and the superior AD-41 adapter/stereo headset. This has a standard 3.5mm stereo connector embedded in its control unit, meaning that you can plug in your own in-ear headset rather than having to stick with the slightly cheaper Nokia earbuds.

N73 photos

The Music Edition firmware (retro-fittable to standard N73’s by some accounts) has as its centre piece a brand new version of Music player, complete with two Windows-style visualisations (‘Oscilloscope’ and ‘Spectrum’), full support for Album Art (especially when syncing across from Windows Media Player) plus optional ‘stereo widening’ and ‘loudness’. Ultimately these are all frills, but when you’re aiming at the consumer it pays to tick all the boxes, I guess.

Screenshot

Rounding off the Music Edition are a couple of new themes, ‘Waveform’ and ‘Stave’. Again, ultimately more frills and frippery, but combined with the black case, ‘Waveform’ at least looks pretty darned cool and gives off the right sort of vibe. (The less said about the awful green, default theme, ‘Stave’ the better…)

Screenshot

Despite my few marketing digs above, the facelift that is the Music Edition is definitely worthwhile overall. It reinforces another core capability of modern smartphones in a fairly friendly and very cool way – and the fact that it does it to a device which was arguably near the top of a different class of phone – camera phones – means that Nokia has made this doubly attractive.

Source: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N73_Music_Edition.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Nokia, Other | N73, Nokia | Leave a comment

Nokia E65 (2)

Nokia E65 review: Business beauty

A gorgeous outlook and high-tech functions are literally breathing from Nokia E65. Yet, is it really so brilliant to be worth the investment?

Nokia E65 official pictures

Key features

quad-band GSM and 3G support
Wi-Fi with a dedicated scanner
VoIP over Wi-Fi
elegant design
videos in MPEG-4 format with a CIF (352 x 288 pixels) resolution
microSD memory card slot
USB support
2 megapixel camera
search option for the entire phone content

Main disadvantages

voice recorder limited to 1 minute
small functional keys located beneath the display
no office documents editor
retail package doesn’t include a memory card and a stereo headset
no secondary video camera for video calls

Nokia E65 is an attractive slider smartphone powered by the Symbian OS. It offers Wi-Fi capability and has 3G support. Its extensive software equipment is an apparent necessity, while its built-in 2 megapixel camera and dedicated keys for conference call management are delightful extras.

Nokia E65 weighs 115 grams mostly due to the materials it is made of and the hardware hidden inside its body. Yet, it could still be considered a medium-weight phone if compared to the 134 gram Nokia N80. At the same time, its dimensions are surprisingly comfortable for a smartphone: 105 x 49 x 16 mm.

Beauty rules the parade

This is the very first time in the history of the „business E class“ models that Nokia resorts to a slider construction. In this sense the most eager to upgrade with a Nokia E65 purchase will probable be Nokia E50 or E60 owners, as these models lack a full-function QWERTY keypad (unlike Nokia E61 or E70) and could therefore be used as standard phones rather than communicators. Nonetheless, business communicators fans should not be sad either as Nokia has placed a „Coming soon“ label on two other models – Nokia E61i and Nokia E90

Nokia E61i and Nokia E90

Side viewed Nokia E65 looks like a rectangular trapezoid. The bottom side is perpendicular to the base, while in the top area there is an expressed beveling. The label „Nokia“ is probably the only missing element on the colorful body of the testing piece delivered to our office. I doubt any other manufacturer would have dared to use brown shade on a high-tech, high-class device as the one we are presenting you today (Nokia calls it „mocca brown“). No matter how fashionable at the moment, brown has never been common on the mobile market. The situation with the alternative red version of Nokia E65 is no different.

Nokia E65

No matter how much or less attractive the two above mentioned designs seem to you, there is no doubt that, at first glance at least, the brown Nokia E65 looks very stylish. This is due to the combination of dark nuances and mirror images on its front side. While the dark plastic areas are intensely matt, both the display and the surrounding area are highly prone to fingerprints.

The phone in a hand • details on the leather-like back cover

Let us make one more remark on the materials the phone is elaborated of. Its rear plate is made of plastic, which strongly resembles leather. Even though the leather design is not so attractive, it brilliantly fulfills its basic purpose: preventing user’s hand from sliding.

Absolute solidity

Let’s now have a closer look at the sliding mechanism. Unfortunately, we are not able to give you an opinion of a long-time user. As recent users of Nokia E65, however, we have come to like its sliding mechanism. Even more, we consider it a top-class one. Unlike the mechanism itself, sliding process does hide some difficulties: when the phone lies in your palm, you will find it hard to curve your thumb to slide the phone open to the bottom edge. At the same time, given the absence of a bulge on the front cover, where to rest your thumb, you need to either push sideways or press on the keys or the glossy display surface in the worst case. The closing process is pretty much the same.

The phone opened • details of the sliding mechanism

Both phone parts hold very firmly. However, this solidity seems to be directly related to stronger resistance showed by the sliding mechanism. It also seems that the top cover of the phone skids over the internal keypad when slid out and simultaneously pressed on, which is not good. Nokia E65 features two rails – one for each side of the phone, whose aim is to maintain the sliding part in vertical position. You can see them from behind as well as hear them whenever the device is opened (quiet friction).

Size comparison with Nokia N73

As a matter of fact, Nokia has never been brilliant in constructing sliders of perfectly sticking parts. This drawback is often a direct consequence of sliding camera covers and is fortunately not present in Nokia E65. Except for the slight deflection when opened, the phone gives a strong impression of firmness. Besides, as you all know, pedantry is our job and this is a tester phone, so do not take each critical remark we make to heart.

As I am looking at the bottom of Nokia E65, I cannot help but give out a sad „ah“. The phone only features a Pop-Port, even when Nokia has recently established a practice of equipping its models with a miniUSB connector and a 2.5 mm jack. Right next to the Pop Port you will find a narrowed charger connector (the travel AC-4 charger is part of the retail package).

Right stronger than left

While the phone’s left side is quite poor of control elements, its right side is full of them: a loudspeaker, a voice note/voice dial key, a „stylus“ key for work with text, and a slightly elevated volume button. According to us, however, placing the volume and the text keys on the opposite side would have been a far happier solution, as they wouldn’t have to be so small as they are. Now they are a real trouble for users with bigger fingers as their management requires that you stick your finger a bit under the phone’s surface. The button for profile activation is situated on the top of the phone and is not so easy to press it with one hand only.

Pop-Port • switch-on button • side keys and battery • microSD slot

The Infrared port is accessed only when you slide up the top part of the phone. The rear plate mainly constitutes of the battery cover; above it are the camera lens and a bit further – the company logo. Inside Nokia E65 you will find a BL-5F battery of 1000 mAh capacity. As to battery life, the official Nokia site quotes 3 – 6 hours of call time in GSM, 1.8 to 2.5 hours in WCDMA, and 2.2 – 3 hours in VoIP, while on stand-by the device should be able to stay on between 7 and 11 days in GSM, 8 to 14 days in WCDMA, and 4 to 5 days in GSM or WCDMA with WLAN being active. Yet, in cruel reality, Nokia E65 lasts in GSM networks for no longer than 4 – 5 days. On the left, under the battery is a tiny slot for a microSD memory card. A SIM card can only be placed in the phone if the battery has been removed.

The phone dismounted • retail package’s full content

The phone is accompanied by an extensive number of accessories, standard for high-class models. Besides a charger, a battery, a software CD, and a manual Nokia E65 also comes along with a Nokia CA-53 USB data cable, a Nokia HS-5 mono headset as well as a very attractive cover Carrying Pouch CP-18 for protection against fingerprints. There are only two elements missing so that perfection is achieved: a stereo headset and a memory card with adapter.

Four new elements

Few novelties are visible immediately. What you will definitely not overlook in Nokia E65, however, is its four new functional keys located beneath the display. Each of them has a specific function. The icon of the first key is more or less clear: a simple compilation of pre-selected conference call; the phone allows you to choose the participants directly from the phonebook.

A closer look at the four new functional keys

The second functional key carries the logo of a ring star. It is an equivalent to the multimedia key present in all models from the N series collection, that is, it carries out any preset task. The image in the top right key is more than evident: shortcut access to the phonebook. The last key silences or activates the microphone during ongoing calls.

The function of each of the rest of the keys edging the four functional keys is rather obvious: context keys, a call-control key, a menu-access key, and a deleting „C“ key. All of them, however, require some practice as their marginal areas are inactive and thus you have to first get used to the slim profile of the phone and then make sure you press keys? centers.

Numeric keypad • keys are low merging virtually into the surrounding surface

Let’s now have a look at the internal, main keypad of Nokia E65. As pattern from the above images, each side of this keypad is narrower by approximately 5 mm due to the rails of the sliding mechanism. Missing millimeters are most perceptible on the keys; the latter are narrow, equally sized, with low uplift and virtually inaudible press response. There is sag in the middle of each key. To sum up, typing on Nokia E65?s internal keypad is an easy task, it is really comfortable. On the other side, it may not turn to be an easy job for SMS fans with large fingers.

The keypad backlighting is controlled through a light sensor in the top right corner above the main display. On bright sunny days it does not even get activated. At night it is decently white and evenly distributed under the entire keypad, except under its very right margins.

Big, yet so fine

The light sensor controlling the keypad backlighting also serves the display illumination. The latter is fully active on sunny days while at night it is easier to read even at lower light conditions. If default settings do not meet your expectations, feel free to modify them according to your will.

Display • display backlighting • full-scale backlighting • keypad detail in the dark

The display itself is by a millimeter narrower and by 4 millimeters longer than the display of the forerunner Nokia E60. Even so its grid is very fine with particular irregularities being visible to very demanding users only. The pity here is that resolution has been cut back to the standard 240 x 320 pixels. The color depth has remained unchanged – the display is capable of visualizing up to 16M colors.

Do you remember our critical remarks on the miniature font of the date and time details on the screen-saver of the main display in former Nokia phones? Well, it seems that those times are gone for good. In Nokia E65 both date and time in the strip screen-saver are larger and thus visible from distance.

No changes in Symbian

The OS is the same, yet a bit different. Nokia E65 uses the last edition of the operational system Symbian OS 9.1 with S60 3rd Edition user interface. Nonetheless, you will probably be dissatisfied. Already 2 new Feature Packs have been introduced for the S60 3rd Edition platform – they supply it with new functions and some other updates. Considering that Nokia E65 was one of the hottest newcomers at the 3GSM congress in Barcelona last month, at least Feature Pack 1 would have been highly appreciated.

Compared to older Symbian versions in terms of software design this last edition is safer and far more efficient, which has a lot to do with the fact that each single program used in the phone, even the cheapest one, requires a special certificate. In this new system you can update firmware without visiting the respective authorized service dealer. This last Symbian also provides USB support, but the memory of the phone is not accessible in USB mode. For this reason you need to get yourself an additional memory card.

Always on the move

Many Symbian users will have difficulties imaging a main display without references to favorite programs or overview of tasks, or main events from the calendar. References to functions and programs can be modified from the settings, just like functions assigned to the two context keys beneath the display. Beneath the icons there is a dynamic task list.

Besides missed calls, received messages, oncoming events in the calendar, the number of pending tasks, and running music files, Nokia E65 can also alert you of newly received email messages or SIM card available services. The active mode could even include a list of the last items of a given type. There is also a useful Wi-Fi indication bar; if clicked on, the system starts to automatically check interface for available Wi-Fi networks.

Settings • active stand-by mode • searching for WLAN

The active stand-by mode preferences are configurable from the Settings menu. Along with the above mentioned folder in the active mode here you can also set which modules should or should not appear on the main display so that space is best made use of. For the moment it seems that it is only possible to work with modules delivered together with the OS. Nonetheless, we expect that user-configuration of the stand-by display through third party applications will be available in near future.
Menu is visualized in two standard ways: 3 x 4 icons or as a 6-item list. Menus are cyclic, that is, they do not finish at the display end, but roll back to the next item in line or column. You could also move by using shortcut keys, where key location on the keypad corresponds to icon location in the matrix or in the list.

The menu in a matrix format • as a list • user-configurable application

Preset tools are ordered in thematic folders, while newly installed programs are organized in a folder called „Installations“. Each item can be picked up and moved somewhere else, into a different folder or be renamed. If an item is not part of the system, it could even be deleted.

It works everywhere

According to the legends on the retail package Nokia E65 distributed on the market is quad-band, that is, it can be used in all GSM networks supporting 850/900/1800/1900 MHz bands. You should also be able to communicate in the 3G networks WCDMA 2100 or via VoIP (Internet).

Call quality is standard, even though in particular moments it would not have been bad if volume levels both of earphones and speaker had been higher. On the other hand, there were also moments when the opposite part was excessively loud. Apparently, the reason for such a difference stays with the opposite side, not with Nokia E65 itself. The phone, however, features another rather unusual problem: constant peeping in the earphone, which remains present no matter whether you call or not, whether the display is activated or not, etc. It is not a big deal, but yet it deteriorates the entire impression of the phone. It might quite well be a defect in a tester model.

If you do not want or cannot hold in hand the Nokia E65 when calling, employ the single-earphone handsfree from the retail package. Music from a single earphone? Forget about it: first you will be considered technologic barbarians; and second: the sound quality reproduced by the earphone serves for nothing more but calls.

We guess our reference to 3G networks evoke notion of video calls in many of you. Since Nokia E65 lacks a front cover camera for transmitting caller images, however, the only applicable option here is one-way video calls, that is, Nokia E65 can receive the video of the other party, but can not send video.

Call settings • automatic SMS • image in a video call • VoIP can get automatically deactivated

It is possible to silence the ringtone of incoming calls, reject calls by sending the caller a preset excusing SMS, or accept them and start to record the conversation. Unfortunately, Nokia has not learned its lesson… the duration of the voice recorder has not been extended and continues to be a mere 1 minute.

Received, missed, and dialed calls are stored in independent folders inside the Call register. Information about calls’ date and time is available too. In case that you have made more than one call to the same number or received more than one call from identical number, these only appear once with the date and the time of the last try. From the Call register settings you could also select storing period for all registered events or make ongoing call duration become visible on the display.

Call register • last calls • call duration • data register

Straight from the Call register you can make a call, send a SMS or a MMS, or save a number into the phonebook. The register also indexes call duration and transferred data. In the latter case, however, it is not enough to simply press the green key from the stand-by; applications are run from the main menu. This way you are provided access to a detailed overview of what exactly has been done with the phone: single (and repeated) calls and data connections. The Call register can be organized by connection type or even by a specific phone number.

Millions of contacts

The phonebook uses shared memory, which means it can fit in an unlimited number of contacts and perhaps even an infinite amount of phone numbers for each contact. Along with first and last name each entry can also contain: company, position, nickname, foot-note, mobile numbers, land numbers, video call numbers, Internet numbers, fax numbers, pagers, Push-to-talk addresses, emails, web sites, notes, street addresses, and birth date. Each entry can be assigned an infinite amount of numbers, 50 for example.

Editing a contact • phonebook menu • details • label modification

The phonebook is accessed from the menu through a shortcut from the stand-by display, or via the new key mentioned earlier, located top right from the main four-way control key. Searching is performed by gradually typing the first letters of the respective name. Entered letters are compared to the initials of both first and last names no matter which one of them is set as primary.

Voice dialing speaker: settings

All names in the phonebook can be voice-dialed. It is not necessary that you record a name tag of your own as Nokia E65 recognizes any voice. The phone presents two preset speakers: Martin and Ellen. When you press the respective key and pronounce the name of the person you are to call, the phone first visualizes them, then reads out their name with an automatic voice, and finally dials the number assigned as default. Shortcut keys to particular numbers in the phonebook are user-configurable too.

Emerging voices

Speaking about voice options, let us also mention how voice commands can be used to run functions. Again, you will find pre-installed voice tags for the most frequently used programs. These tags can be modified, but it will always be the selected speaker that will pronounce them.

Basic selected functions • command menu • settings • selection of other applications

If you are too lazy to make the effort and read your SMS yourself, then make use of the installed speaker. If the message is not in English though, we do not recommend using this option; few of what the phone speaker would manage to pronounce in a language different from English will sound familiar.

Voice help: menu • codebook • context menu • watch
Inside the menu there is a special application called “Voice help” for users with sight problems. It is some kind of a menu inside a menu. “Voice help” picks up the most important phone functions and organizes them in a list. When the cursor is placed on a particular item of this list, an automatic voice reads what is being visualized on the display. This way one can browse the call register, the phonebook, dial various numbers, use the voice mailbox, or even get to know what the time is. Unlike Martin and Ellen the “Voice help” operator pronounces details in languages different from English quite successfully.

Online or offline

Let’s now go back to the phonebook. Each stored contact can be assigned a specific ringtone and an image. The latter appears in a tiny icon when its owner calls you or you dial his name. Contacts can be organized into groups, each of which can be individualized through a specific ringtone, but cannot be assigned an image. The groups may be used for call filtering within ringing profiles.

List of profiles • context menu • profile details configuration

As usual, Nokia E65 features 5 standard profiles plus an additional one for using the phone in an offline mode. More profiles can be user-configured. Within profiles options you can independently set up specific ringtones for calls, video calls, messages, and emails. Volume, vibrations, keypad sounds, and the above mentioned filters can be set up from here too. If you use the filters, Nokia E65 will only ring if calls from pre-selected numbers are coming in. In the rest of the cases it will merely blink. The profiles offer another interesting option: you can select, whether or not the phone should read with an automatic voice the name of the calling person. The only requirement here is that the caller is in the phonebook

Nearly all existing formats a mobile phone is able to support can be used as ringtones in Nokia E65. Obviously, MID files with 48-voice polyphony are the basic ones. Besides, Nokia E65 supports AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, M4A, AMR (NB-AMR), Mobile XMF, RealAudio 7,8,10, SP-MIDI file, and True tones (WB-AMR). The vibration’s small motor is quite decent, just like one would expect form a really elegant gentleman. It can be felt inside a pocket, but is not too rough.

SMS

The SMS application has undergone no modifications. The font is easy to read, the space for typing texts is the same. During the typing process Nokia E65 automatically corrects letter spacing in order to make the text look better, which is quite unusual, but yet very interesting. This extra can be considered either a dish for aesthetes, or an unnecessary load for the internal memory.

Message options • editor • modifying options • word alternatives

Sent messages are archived in a “Sent” folder, whose content is user-configurable, that is, it can be limited from the settings. The amount of sent and received SMS is limited by free memory space. MMS are easy to create; their profile is automatically set by the application “Setup manual”. The editor is simple and well organized. You can write a text, and then insert an image, an audio, or a video file. An instant messaging client is available as well.

Setup manager • email configuration • detailed settings • a folder with messages

You can create an email account using the Settings manual, just like in the case of MMS. Configuration is no more automatic. You have to enter at least the basic parameters of your mailbox. Once these have been memorized, you can continue with setting further properties or start to download from the corresponding server. Emails in HTML format open up seamlessly. The editor works with accounts through POP3 and IMAP4. You can download either entire messages, or just headers with a subsequent selection of desired/non-desired items. Nokia E65?s client manages Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel (Microsoft Office 2000/XP/2003) attachments as well as all files compatible with the applications Zip Manager and Adobe PDF.

Why so simple?

Attachments are downloaded and viewed without difficulties. If you try to edit them though, you will run into troubles. It makes little sense, but Nokia has once again equipped an office phone with a document viewer without any editing options. Someone might protest considering the smaller size of Nokia E65?s keypad, which seems rather uncomfortable for editing. Yet, we think that typing a few explanatory notes is not an impossible mission for a 12-element keypad. Work with archives is another story. While earlier Zip Manager would only read zipped files, the one installed in Nokia E65 is already able to zip files on its own.

Office • Adobe PDF • menu and… • …Zip manager settings

Considering the corporative type of customer base Nokia E65 is meant for, it is equipped to download further management applications, if necessary. You can download compatible programs straight from Nokia official website or using the Download! application already available in the phone. The Download! application includes a regularly updated catalogue with services and products (often free of charge) compatible with your particular phone model. For work with corporate emails, in particular, Nokia offers applications like BlackBerry Connect and Mail for Exchange. In the Office Tools folder you will find a tool called “Mobile Search”.

Download!: main menu • email tools • synthesizers • application Reuters

In one of the available folders we even found alternative versions of voice synthesizer. Thirty speakers from all over the world are available. Before you download the item you have selected, a brief info box with price, size, and a short description pops out. If you want to be updated daily, sign in to receive daily news from Reuters for free. If you are a frequent traveler, you may find the application WorldMate with instant weather forecast, unit converter, and other useful functions pretty helpful. The latter is also free of charge. For those lacking entertainment the game Golf Pro Contest is available.

Internet in all modes

Inside the main menu, under Web you will find a high-class Nokia Internet browser. The main cursor is controlled from the four-way navigation key. Everything here works like in communicators, with the mere difference that there is no touchpad. Use the cursor to click on links. If you place the cursor closer to the margins of the page, the latter starts to scroll in the corresponding directions. If you continue to scroll, the phone will show you where exactly on the page you are at that very moment with a visualization of a mini-map. The mini-map can be opened from the menu too. Previews are also applied in history browsing.

Browsing • a whole page on the display • text version of MM • visual work with history

Otherwise excellent, the Internet browser suffers one significant drawback: it cannot be used in landscape, although the application itself implies such an option (compare to Nokia E60?s Internet browser).
Synchronization as well as file copying from or into the phone is provided through Bluetooth or IrDA connection. If your computer lacks wireless adapters, employ the system cable delivered together with the phone. Faster transfers of bigger-size files will require the use of USB mode (only memory card will be accessible). The E65 cannot be charged through a computer port, unfortunately. As soon as you plug in the data cable, Nokia E65 will offer you two possibilities: work in PC Suite mode for synchronization and control through computer, or Data transferring for USB Mass Storage.

PC Suite is a standard implemented default application for communication between phone’s software and a computer. It is usually available on an enclosed CD, but you can also find its latest versions on the Nokia website.

Breathtaking speed

Nokia E65 establishes Internet connection through the technologies GPRS and EDGE, both in Class 10. Of course, you might be able to turn profit from far faster connection, if you are located in a place covered by 3G signal. The flashing-point of all data transfers however, is Nokia E65?s integrated support of wireless WLAN networks, more commonly known as Wi-Fi.

According to Nokia official website Nokia E65 supports IEEE 802.11b/g, which virtually means that it is able to transfer information at the stunning speed of 54 Mbit/s.

Nokia E65 features WLAN manual application for work with wireless networks. It helps you detect all available wireless networks in the surrounding area and connect to them if possible (the latter depends on whether the respective network is secured or not).

Wi-Fi networks configuration • Internet access options

Along with WLAN you will also find the so called VoIP application. This is a program enabling calls through the use of Internet. Wi-Fi appears to be the ideal support for VoIP, even though other data technologies could also be applied. VoiP Internet calls are located in the phone settings. It is one of the default options for connection between incoming and outgoing calls.

Call testing through Internet is the same with testing any other function depending on network signal quality, that is, pretty tricky. Flying experience with video calls executed through home-established wireless networks shows that they could resemble 3G network connections pretty successfully. Anyway, as we mentioned earlier, signal quality is a decisive factor.

Camera

And here we strike again into an old problem: cameras built in mobiles which are „made for business“. One of the greatest assets of the previous model Nokia E50 was that users were offered two purchase options: with or without integrated camera. The camera is especially a sensitive feature in work environments where information protection is enforced by all means necessary – meaning that employees are not allowed to have cameraphones.

Camera application • context menu • picture setup

Nokia has equipped the E65 model with a 2 megapixel camera. This means you can take pictures in a resolution up to 1600 x 1200 pixels. In spite of this, it becomes clear, once the camera has been run, that it is nothing more but a complementary application. Its user interface dates back to the times before the N-series models were released, when Nokia cameras were thought to be of average quality.

The main display, whose surface remains partially unused when pictures are taken, shows information on the number of images still possible to make as well as on the 4x digital zoom. If any of the additional functions is active, its icon appears in the view-finder. The functions referred are: night mode, sequence, self-release, white balance, or even color effects. Pictures are stored in JPEG format and carry detailed EXIF information.

As far as video is concerned, there are a few innovations worth mentioning. Nokia has increased the resolution used in older Symbian models, jumping from 176 x 144 pixels to 352 x 288 pixels. What‘s more, it has started to substitute the older 3GP format for the more universal MPEG-4. Whatsoever, Nokia E65 visualization capabilities remain far behind the VGA resolution achievements in Nokia 6233, for example.

Sample photos taken with the camera built in Nokia E65

Music player

The music player has remained untouched, which does not mean anything bad at all, by the way. In several Nokia models already it has been given the highest possible mark. Music tracks can be shown all together, ordered by artist, genres, albums, or composers. Volume levels are sufficient, with the highest ones being almost unusable. What could make the sound better, though, is the acquisition of better audio accessories. For the very moment the only officially supported accessory is the mini-speakers Nokia Mini Speakers MD4.

The music player keeps running when minimized too. In such case the name of the played file appears on the main display, from where it is also possible to adjust volume. When a call is coming, the player mutes gradually; once the call has been ended, the payback is resumed. Incoming calls ringtones can be heard in the earphone.

Media folder • music player • context menu • equalizer

Video records can be played either in standard size, or in a full-screen mode. The latter is pretty handy at boring moments due to the horizontal positioning of the display.

RealPlayer • player setup • standard video… • …and in fullscreen mode

Nokia E65 offers 50 MB of internal memory. Our advice for multimedia fans is to extend existing memory by purchasing an additional memory card.

Time management

What to accentuate more in a manager’s phone if not its organizing functions. The most common, of course, is the Calendar. Here you can open a month, week, or day view as well as choose among three types of events. If you place your selection on a day marked with an event in the month or the week view, a bubble containing details on that particular event pops out. If you start to type while you are viewing the calendar, a new Meeting item is automatically created and the description being entered is visualized inside it.

Month view at the calendar • context menu • editing • day view

Tasks are located separately or as a part of the calendar. They are shown in both locations according to the date they are due. Tasks not accomplished on their due date are automatically snoozed till the moment they are marked-off as accomplished. Export from the calendar and the task list is a basic function of the active stand-by mode.

If we had to nominate the worst Symbian function in smartphones, then this will doubtlessly be the alarm clock. It has survived years without a single improvement: no repetition, no option for setup of more than one alarm time, nothing at all. It will wake you up, but that’s all. Let’s hope that better times are to come with the release Feature Pack 1, in whose standard features the alarm clock may finally live to experience so-longed functions. Here are several other standard organizing functions present in Nokia E65: notes, calculator, unit converter, and an elementary file manager.

Alarm clock • calculator • unit converter • File manager

A piece of news in this Symbian version is the application Teams. It is basically a state-of–the-art analogue of the call groups. Here the phone does not filter incoming calls; it is you who should provide the filtering. The application is based on a simple principle: you need to create a team, in which you subsequently insert any number of contacts. Should you need to later contact all members of such a team, you just mark it in the list and chose the means of communication: call, SMS, web address, Push-to-talk, or conference call.

Main display • context menu • settings

A bit of everything

Nokia E65 features one especially exquisite application – “Search”. We did miss this one in mobile phones. Here is how it works: with the time items in you phone start to pile and you start to slowly lose your grip. Thanks to “Search” you do not have to delete some of them in order to organize your agenda. “Search” helps you browse all your messages, emails, events in your calendar, your contacts, other files, tasks and notes, or even a random combination of the above mentioned items. Even though phone’s content is not indexed anywhere, searching takes no more than a few seconds before you are offered a satisfying result.

Browsing • the application Location • Navigator

Of course, Flash Lite is also present for work with flash animations and applications. What’s more, Nokia E65 features software support for external GPS modules connectable through Bluetooth. There are three pre-installed products for GPS – Space with up-to-date information from the closest environment, Navigator, and Description points for localization of device position.

Another innovation is the option to export the display to an external device. It might sound insignificant for common users, but for businessmen this option is a true savior during corporative meetings and conferences. All files can be sent from the phone to a compatible printer via Wi-Fi.

Difficult dilemma

Were you looking forward to purchasing the new Nokia E65 as soon as it appeared in the Internet stores? Poor you … The phone doesn’t differ much from its forerunners, and especially from Nokia E60. It is not even worth mentioning that newly implemented applications can easily be insalled in older Nokia models thanks to Nokia’s liberal approach. All in all, our expectations of more innovations have not been met. What might make Nokia E65 a successfully selling phone is its solid construction, elegant design and the slider form factor.

In any case one thing is for sure: by choosing Nokia E65 you get a high-class elegant office helper together with all pros and cons of a Nokia – Symbian cooperation.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e65-review-140p6.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Nokia | E65, Nokia | Leave a comment

Nokia E65

The Nokia E65 was announced at last month’s 3GSM conference in Barcelona, alongside its fellow Eseries devices the E90 and E61i. Together with the news avalanche that goes with 3GSM, this means that this compact and attractive handset probably has not received the attention it deserves.

The E65 is a ‘slider’ and, with dimensions of 105x49x15.5 mm and a volume of just 74cc, is one the smallest S60 devices announced thus far. The styling and design of the device add to this feeling; with rounded edges and soft materials, the E65 feels (subjectively) small in the hand. This is often more important than the actual physical dimensions of a device. The E65 is as small, if not smaller, than many of the standard feature phones that it might be competing against. It also compares favourably with the E60, which was a good device but was a little larger than many standard phones.

The E65 is an attractive smartphone and shows a lot more style that the first generation of Eseries devices (the boxy E60 springs to mind). The front is a mixture of a rubbery-feeling plastic (on the sides) and a plastic housing (on the front) for the screen and control keys. The back features leather-like material (battery cover) and the same rubbery plastic from the front (camera housing). These materials add up to a phone that is easy to grip and which feels comfortable to hold.

The slider mechanism is very solid and there is a nice clunk as you slide it up or down; it is a definite improvement over other Nokia smartphone sliders such as the N80 or N95. The keypad surround and slider runners are metallic, with the keys themselves made from a hard plastic. They keys are of fair size and although they look a little (horizontally) cramped they initially perform well thanks to a combination of ridges in each row of keys and to the generous vertical height of each key. It should be possible to achieve good text entry speeds using predictive text. The device is weighted such that most of the mass is in the lower half of the slide, and as a result there are no problems using the keypad, as can be the case in other sliders.

On the right hand side of the device are four keys; the record key (voice notes and voice commands), the pencil key and volume up and down keys. These have been well positioned and should suit both left and right-handers. The E65 uses a Pop-port, located at the bottom of the device; I would have preferred to see a mini-USB port, but the necessary (mono) headset and PC cable will be provided in the box so the majority of business users will be not be too concerned.

The control keys are clustered beneath the QVGA screen, smaller than on many other S60 3rd Edition devices (56mm diagonal compared to 62mm on the N73 and 67mm on the N95) but larger than screens on comparable feature phones. Thus on-screen writing and icons can be a little small; it is a shame that the scalable font options found in Feature Pack 1 of S60 3rd Edition are not present here. The usual navigator key and control keys are present, but they are joined by four ‘one touch’ keys (Conference, Contacts, My Own and Mute) for accessing common functions. The navigator key is excellent for general use, though may not be ideal for games. A central button provides selection, while the surrounding ring provides directions. The function, calling, cancel and S60 menu keys are a little small, but a raised outer edge prevents most mis-keys.

The one touch Conference key allows you to easily initiate conference calls. This is done either by using a default (configurable) number such as a regular conference calling number and includes support for sending additional key tones (e.g. sending the ID of a call to the conference calling service), or by selecting the members of a conference call from the contacts database. The second of these modes will require support from the network operator – in some cases this may be enabled automatically, while in others it may be an extra service and you may also be limited in what type of numbers you can call. I imagine many people working in Enterprise environments will have a single conference calling service that they use on a regular basis for team meetings or similar events – it is exactly this type of person that the one touch conference key is aimed at.

Conference Screenshots

The Contacts one touch key will open the Contacts application, of course, and on a second press will act like a ‘back’ key, returning the user to the previous application or location in the phone UI. The My Own key can be set to start the application of your choice, while the Mute key will mute the phone’s microphone during any call. This facility is particularly relevant to conference calls, where muting your microphone helps reduce the background noise which can blight conference calls with multiple participants. When the mute key is used, a large mute icon is displayed on the screen. The one touch keys can apparently be changed at the request of large enterprises and operators. There are likely to be E65 variants that replace the My Own key with either an operator shortcut key or a shortcut key to corporate PBX or VoIP systems.

The extra buttons are one of the key propositions of the E65 and, together with the small size and number keypad, indicate that the device is firmly ‘voice centric’.

Screen Mute

The E65 has good connectivity options, with quad-band EGSM, WCDMA (3G), WiFi, USB 2.0, IrDA and Bluetooth 1.2 all supported. However, there is no front facing camera for video calls, so the WCDMA connectivity’s main use will be for data.

Thanks to the inclusion of WiFi, the E65 is also a very capable VoIP device. It includes the second version of Nokia’s SIP stack, which has better support for NAT transversal and therefore supports a greater range of SIP services. The Internet telephony application is also present, which allows you to manage multiple SIP services and set VoIP as the default call type when a SIP service is successfully registered. In practice, this means that, once set up, you can forget about the VoIP functionality – the phone will automatically use it when you make calls if it is able to do so.

The Nokia E65 runs S60 3rd Edition, with the usual array of applications. Multimedia is covered by Real Player, Music Player, the Camera application and Gallery. The E65 is initially shipping with the older versions of these applications, which is a shame, especially in the case of the Music Player. More irritating is the inclusion of the HS-5 Pop-port headset in the sales package, this is a mono only; a stereo headset would enable more users to get more out of the phone out of the box.

Camera 1 Gallery

The quality of the images from the 2 megapixel camera is quite acceptable, but nothing special. There is no Flash LED, macro mode or auto focus, which limits the conditions in which the camera can be used. However, it should still be good enough for quick snapshots, and the start up and capture time is good. A few sample images are shown below.

Messaging is a key selling point of the Eseries range of devices and the E65 is no exception. The phone supports push email services from Nokia (Intellisync), Microsoft (Exchange), Blackberry (Blackberry Connect), Good (Mobile Messaging) Visto, and more. Clearly, with the absence of a QWERTY keyboard the E65 becomes more of a read only email device, although short replies are possible using the number keypad. Mobile email in general has been taken up by only a minority of enterprise users – there are a great number who might benefit from always-on access to email and who only need read access. A device such as the E65 is ideal for this type of user.

Outside of Multimedia and Messaging, there is an impressive suite of accompanying software, ranging from the standard PIM applications to viewers for Word, Excel, PowerPoint (Quickoffice) and PDF (Adobe) documents, as well as a Zip Manager (Epocware) and the Search, Teams and WiFi (wizard) utilities which are now standard on Eseries devices. Many of the newer features of S60 have also been called on to round off the package, these include the Message reader application (reads text messages aloud), Voice Control (which can be accessed by holding down the record button on the side of the device and includes speaker independent voice recognition for all stored contacts) and the Welcome applications (Settings Wizard, Transfer and Tutorial).

Screenshot screesnhot

The E65 may not have the glamour of the E90 or the popularity of the E61i, but it should not be underestimated and I think it is the dark horse of the Eseries range. It is a reasonably well specified, but competitively priced enterprise focused device, which is ideal for office workers looking for strong voice features and a read only mobile email solution. It makes a compelling addition to the overall Eseries portfolio, slotting in between the E60 and the E50. Outside of the enterprise focus, the multimedia features are mediocre in comparison to Nseries phones, but they’re still better than much of the competition. Thus the E65 may also appeal to general consumers as its size and design will attract those looking for a little extra from their day to day phone.

The E65 is available in red and mocha (brown), is available immediately and costs approximately 370 Euros unsubsidised.

Source: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E65.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Nokia | E65, Nokia | Leave a comment

Sony Ericsson W950i (5)

W950 Looking back on my review of the W950i leaves me with an interesting thought. If the W950i had been a bad phone, there wouldn’t have been as much to write about. The length and depth is a testament to just how good it actually is. The W950i is not perfect though, and if Sony Ericsson can keep the focus groups and designers on track, the W950i mk 2 is going to (hopefully) get a lot of the kinks out of the system.

Speaking of The Kinks (well, it is a music phone) it is the Walkman branding that is going to sell the phone, and the application that (naturally) sums up the phone… “the little walkman that could”. There’s no doubt that the Walkman functionality in the phone is an absolute killer. 4GB measures up nicely to the iPod Nano and the other music-based smartphones on the market. Having a keypad to help you search for music is a huge advantage over a scroll wheel or list, and being able to use the handwriting recognition to find a track is more of a real leap forward.

While the W950i is the sixth Walkman smartphone in the Sony Ericsson range, it is the first UIQ powered one, and to be honest it does feel more like a first generation device rather than sixth. Sony Ericsson has kept a lot of the UI from the existing Walkman phones. Which explains the initial layout of the icons on the application launcher, but not why we can’t alter the layout to what the end user wants.

I have stressed in the review (see links above) that the W950i is geared to a specific target audience, I think that there’s just a little too much focus on replicating similar styled phones. The earlier Walkman phones may be regarded as non-smartphones, but they still packed a lot of functionality. People coming to this device are going to expect something a bit more than a dumb phone, even those upgrading from the W900. And I think Sony Ericsson have gone too far in their quest to try and hide as much complexity of the UIQ interface and make the music the unique selling point when marketing the device. This is missing the whole idea of a smartphone.

If I wanted something that only played music, my choices are legion. If I want a phone that plays MP3, I’ve a huge range of medium to low end phones. If I want something that can do music, my email, my diary, play a few games, read my RSS feeds, pretend to run a nightclub, have hundreds of third party apps (eventually) loaded into the device – then the W950i is the best phone to do it in.

The W950i is pitched as a Walkman Phone with Extras. It’s much more than that. And while some of the applications are a touch rough at the edges, you could happily use the W950i as your pocket computer during the day. The crunch for me is what I’m going to do now the big review articles are over. Does the W950i stay in my pocket for day to day use, or does it sit on the desk for compatibility testing?

It’s staying in my pocket. For every little thing that annoys me, there’s something else nice about the device. The weight for one (it’s incredibly light compared to some of the ‘phones’ that I carry around). The gorgeous QVGA screen. And there’s the battery life, which just about exceeded my best expectation. Sure, I’d love an update to the firmware to get round its little foibles, but for now it’s the little bundle of entertainment that keeps me happy!

W950 Keypad

Source: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Sony_Ericsson_W950i_part_4-summing_up.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Sony Ericsson | Sony Ericsson, W950i | Leave a comment

Sony Ericsson W950i (4)

PIM

The big four management apps are the PIM applications – your Contacts, Calendar, Notes and Tasks/to-do’s. What is important to a user here is two-fold. The first is the ability to find the information he needs on his phone as fast as possible; the second is getting the information both into the phone and taking out the changes.

Synchronising the data is very easy – hook up the phone and your PC, and the Sony Ericsson PC Suite will get to work and match up all your Outlook data with that on the device. It’s incredibly fast, simple, and can be set up to do so automatically – and while I’m old fashioned enough to not have the auto-sync box ticked, I have every confidence that it would work.

What I don’t have confidence in using is Notes and Tasks. On my Outlook installation I have these spit out into categories (or folders). So I have one set of tasks in the folder (AAS UIQ), some in (AAS Podcast), some in (Shopping) and some in (Local Radio). None of this information is transferred over to the W950. I could be fair and point out that no other UIQ or S60 phone handles this – but on the other hand it’s something that Palm OS and Windows Mobile have had worked out from day one.

It’s even more irksome here in UIQ 3 because the Tasks and Notes applications actually have a folder system, yet it has no relation to the folder information that the PC could offer at sync time! I’m not going to enter my information twice (not with the amount of balls I juggle at once), I’m just going to not bother using the applications unless I really have to, and remember to move any new items from ‘unfiled’ to where they need to go when I get to my PC.

However, for the review, I persevered. Underneath the organisational problems, these apps are incredibly similar, and are pretty easy to use – in fact the only difference in the Notes application compared to the Tasks application is the appearance of the tick boxes and priority numbers. Underneath, each app has two screens – tasks has a screen for text and a screen for setting information such as the priority of tasks and when it started and when it finished. Notes has the same text screen, and a second page for ‘doodles,’ essentially a basic sketch application.

I will take my hat off to the Calendar application though. It makes great use of the screen, especially in the default view – with a month view and little squares showing an entry, and a breakdown of the highlighted day at the bottom of the screen. Click through on a day from the scroll wheel and you get taken to the day view, where you can choose and edit an entry, or move to an empty space and enter a new appointment. Again we have a tabbed dialog with the most important information at the top, and then extra info on subsequent tabs.

I like that this tabbed dialog is the same over all the PIM applications – I know that the idea of a consistent interface is drilled into the programmers and developers in the Symbian OS world, but for someone coming to the system new, this is vitally important. You learn one application, and your common sense will show you how to use the others.

Onto the final PIM app, and it’s probably the key in any smartphone… Contacts. Your phone numbers, email addresses, web URLs and other details of all your acquaintances are in here – the proverbial little black book in the modern world. Unfortunately, for me Contacts fails in one common sense way that has me a touch frustrated, and it’s in its search function.

You have to be super careful when searching for names. Just as in the music application, you can only search from the beginning of the string, not for text in the middle. By default the W950 sorts by surname and then first name. This means if I look for “Rafe” then I can’t find him. Put in part of his surname (Blandford) and you’re fine. Now you can switch that round to first name then surname, but then RAF works and BLA doesn’t.

With the processing power behind the W950, surely this is something that is easily rectified? Apart from this, the contacts application runs on the same rails as the other PIM applications, talks nicely to the PC Suite with your data, and is generally pretty reliable.

It’s worth pointing out that while the W950’s PC Suite is only for Windows, it talks to both Microsoft Outlook, Windows Address Book, Lotus Notes and Lotus Organiser.

Getting Online

For those of you buying the device SIM free, the W950 uses Sony Ericsson’s automatic configurer, so you can go the Sony Ericsson web site, tell it your network and phone number, and you’ll get your settings sent over the air to you [NB. the same basically applies to any other phone these days – Ed] – hey presto, one configured phone. Your network provider should be able to do the same if you’ve bought it on a contract. It’s a good system, not as ‘plug and play’ simple as reading the SIM card and checking an internal database (as Nokia do) but it means that any errors in the setup, or new systems, can be easily accommodated by Sony Ericsson.

Hardcore (Old Skool) users can still enter and tweak everything by hand in the Control panel, of course – although the settings are spread over quite a number of dialog boxes and areas.

Email and Messaging

Setting up your email, perhaps counter intuitively, is also done in Control panel, although at least you have a shortcut in the menu system of the actual Messaging menu. As is becoming the norm, all your incoming messages will end up here, be they SMS, MMS, emails or received files over Bluetooth. Each email inbox has its own top level folder – and these folders can be set to refresh automatically at regular intervals to check for new messages and potentially download the headers or the first few K of any messages – think of it as a poor man’s push email and you’ll be there.

Unfortunately, the W950 doesn’t come with viewers for Microsoft Office files, so when you get that Word or Sheet document in the mail, you’re not going to be able to read it – it’s text only I’m afraid. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, as the target market for the W950 will not be looking for Office support, and it can easily be added by third party software if needed.

Web Browser

The other main Internet component on the W950 is the Web browser – it’s actually Opera v8.0, and it’s a very good mobile browser. Where Nokia’s current browser’s goal is to replicate how a web page would look on a ‘full’ browser, Opera is more interested in presenting you with all the information in readable form – this involves the Opera Small Screen Rendering engine to take into account both the content of a web page and the size of your screen. I like the fact that it does its level best to eradicate the need to scroll left and right – which means the scroll wheel is a great way to navigate through pages – and the strengths of the touch screen become very obvious when you are navigating links with the stylus.

All this can be toggled off and Opera will render the page normally – sometimes needed with complicated layouts that just don’t lend themselves well to repurposing. You can also switch to a landscape mode – sometimes this makes pages a bit easier, but the ergonomics of the W950 make it uncomfortable to use for long periods.

The Web browser does what it needs to do and does it well – there are no flashy graphics, slides or transitions. It’s functional and fast, and that’s good enough for me.

The Incidental Apps

As well as the major applications, the W950 ships with 27 seperate application icons. While not integral to the phone, they provide some great extra functionality – previously you would expect these to be delivered by third party software – but they are now bundled in alongside the core applications. A few of the highlights for me were…

A basic RSS reader – great for checking a few web sites, but without an import function it’s not going to read all your feeds. I’d still recommend using the mobile web version of Bloglines (mobile.bloglines.com) or Google Reader (details on how to get started).

The FM Radio provides an alternate source of audio entertainment, but you must have the headset plugged in to act as an aerial. It’s a nice touch, especially as any calls will result in the ringtone interrupting the broadcast so you don’t miss the call.

There are three time-based applications – the standard Alarm Clock, with three programmable and tickable alarms, hasn’t changed from previous UIQ devices, I just wish that if you set an alarm to an MP3 music track then it would play the whole file and not just loop the first 30 seconds. There is also a Stopwatch (where the counter increases) and a Timer (where the counter decreases). What’s great about the last two is that they are displayed on the Welcome/Home screen, so when you set 25 minutes for something cooking, a quick glance will show where you are up to.

Finally, Nightclub Empire is a small ‘Sims’ like management game where you start with a small pool of money, a deserted nightclub, and trade your way up to the dizzy heights of fame and notoriety.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Sony_Ericsson_W950i_part_3-The_Applications.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Sony Ericsson | Sony Ericsson, W950i | Leave a comment

Sony Ericsson W950i (3)

The Interface

Lets talk about the user interface. The W950i uses UIQ3, running Symbian OS, a similar set up to the P990 and M600i.

Interfaces are in the news a lot at the moment, and it would be fair to point out that UI design is a thankless job – because everyone is going to have a little thing that they think is wrong and should be done another way. The W950i is no exception, as I’m about to prove.

And I’ll point out that I actually like the W950i – I’ve been using it as my regular phone now for over a month and it’s approaching the point where I know it will work, and I’ll trust it as my main (and sometimes only) device. The fact that I feel it can still improve (and I want it to improve) do show a large commitment to design from Sony Ericsson. But I digress…

UIQ Overview

Fundamentally, the W950i’s UIQ interface is the same as that of the other UIQ3 machines, but with each model having a slight tweak to accommodate the form factor and target audience, there is a certain respect for the end user. For example, the W950i clearly has no flip, so there’s no need to have the standby screen driven by the same system as the P990 uses. It’s also safe to assume that there will be a lot more stylus interaction from the user, so that can be taken into consideration as well.

What I find strange is that while this distinction has been made, there seems to be a reliance on the use of the stylus, with no effective second method. Obviously, Qwerty based devices can use shortcuts to achieve the same functions – on the W950i you sometimes have no choice but to use the touch screen – actually, let me refine that. You sometimes have no choice but to use the stylus. When you’re on the move, the last thing you want is to be pulling out a stylus and trying to target an 8×8 pixel icon at the top of your screen.

Many of the UI features can be found using a nice big thumb (well, this reviewer’s thumb) along the three soft-keys at the base of the screen. Some of these are direct actions to take you to other screens, others call up menus or dialogs where the scroll wheel and click can be used – which is a genuine one handed experience.

But there are just enough functions requiring the accuracy of a stylus in day to day operations that unfortunately mean you have to stop, pull out the stylish (ahem) orange and silver stylus from the rear of the phone to do anything with real depth – and that goes for any decent amount of text entry. Using the keypad and T9 for a standard SMS can be a frustrating experience, and for speed reasons you really do have to switch to the ‘pretty accurate’ character recognition system from CIC – Jot.

Jot hasn’t changed that much since it was made available on the P800 – but we’re still left with this as a single choice. The Windows Mobile based smartphones have a choice of four different handwriting systems, from single letter block recognisers to fully cursive sentence recognition. It would be nice to see if UIQ could develop or licence some of the alternatives. While Jot is accurate, it does take a bit more learning effort on the part of the end user, quite apart from the two-handed stylus use issue.

Using the UI

Let’s start at the home/standby screen. Presenting a tree based guide to your day, you can expand out the tasks, emails and appointments that you have on a daily basis. I found this a great way to present the relevant information. You can see what is waiting, and if you want to expand it out and see more detail, you can, and you don’t need to leave the home screen. The default font (chunky white characters with orange outline) does mean that there’s very little room for text to be displayed in full, but this is highly personal – as you all know, one of my bug bears is wasting screen space with big fonts and no zoom option for the user.

You’ve then got the time and date on display, and apart from the Clock application this is the only place where you can see the time. Okay, whose smart idea was this? The status bar at the top of the screen has more than enough space for a small digital clock (as all the previous Pxxx phones have had). To add this in would bring the W950i into line with pretty much all the regular phones out there, including the existing Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, almost all the Series 60 devices, and more. It’s incredibly frustrating to me to not be able to glance at the screen to get the time. Most UI choices I can justify in my head, but not this one.

Along the bottom of the home screen are five ‘quick access’ icons – these are editable to point to any program you wish, and are big enough so a thumb press will activate the desired program, just like the soft menu keys at the base of the screen. Interestingly, when you first start the W950i there’s yet another Walkman icon, taking pride of place as the first shortcut icon (lest you forget what this phone is really for). Not surprisingly, that got changed to something far more useful in double-quick time.

Finally, back up to the top of the screen, where you’ve got your status information along the top bar, with signal strength, battery and the task manager icon.

Now I know the idea is to hide as much functionality as possible from the end user, but you still need a task manager to show what applications are running, and to allow easy switching to another application – for example you might want to jump from your ebook reader (after highlighting some text, for example “and it turned out Snape was actually Harry’s father” and email it to Rafe). Without a task manager you would have to press back, back, back to get to the home screen, then two presses to get to the email application. The Task Manager will let you see which programs are currently running, and also shortcut the last few programs that have been launched. Which should lead to a better experience.

But yet again there seems to have been a strange decision in the UI design. Call up the Task Manager and you are not presented with the currently open tasks, but the ‘recent applications’ list. Ehrm, does that make sense? Well it will to some people – first of all it’s likely that your open apps will be one of the last five open (but not guaranteed), and the Main Menu and Standby screens are always listed at the top. It just seems that UIQ have decided to add another tap to a basic computing process. I fail to see why [ – I can see why, I think I’m with Sony Ericsson on this one, for new users, at least – Steve].

The Application Launcher

Much like S60, your applications are printed on screen in a grid of icons, here in a 3×3 format. You can switch this to a list, with a smaller font size (yaay!) that shows ten applications and their names – the icon screen is only the icons themselves, with no annotations – but these icons are thumb sized, so work for the one handed user on the move. Some of the icons are for applications (you just know before I mention it that the Walkman icon is in there), while some of them are folders to more applications (e.g. Organiser leads to three icons, for Calendar, Notes and Tasks).

As well as my first steps with a new phone (see here for the full article), I always like to move my icons around. For example, with a multimedia folder, it makes sense to me to move the Walkman icon into there, and I tend to make the organiser folder a PIM folder, and add in the contacts, messaging and clock applications into it. Except UIQ3 won’t let me do this.

Now I know there are some thing that UI designers choose that need to be fairly fixed, such as the initial layout of the icons on the launcher, but (as a lapsed programmer) I cannot see why you would not provide customisation as an option for the power user. People who would leave the icons alone would never see it, but those that want it would find it. Quite simply, by locking out this functionality for the built in applications, Sony Ericsson are directly reducing my productivity. Every Symbian OS-powered phone from the Nokia 7650 onwards has had a similar icon layout when in my hands. The eBook reader goes in the centre of the screen. The PIM applications have a folder, anything that connects to the Internet goes into another. Extra applications go in a folder labelled “Extras”. And they all live in the same physical location on the screen/grid (I have a similar system, with my own personal layout on all devices, which UIQ3 won’t let me implement – Steve).

Someone in Sony Ericsson has decided not only that they know better than me in laying out the icons, but won’t allow me to change the layout of my icons on my personal phone. You might say this is petty and small minded (“it’s petty and small minded” – shout from the back of the hall) but to me, it’s a potential deal breaker and the one thing on the W950i (and the other UIQ3 devices) that would make me not use these phone in day to day life.

So Why Do I Like It?

Right at the top of the article, I qualified all of this with the note that I actually do like the UIQ interface. First of all it doesn’t make any huge attempts at hiding any information – generally if you want to know some of the technical details then they are available to you (e.g. the Task Manager shows how much RAM a running application is taking; you can access directories and files through the File Manager, you can directly manipulate those directories from your computer, etc).

And let’s not forget the 80/20 rule. Most of my problems with the UI are more things asked for by power users – and we are not the exclusive target demographic for this device. For the majority of people using this device the touch screen, the scroll wheel, and their thumb will be able to access maybe 80-90% of the features of the phone, and that’s more than likely all the functionality they will need.

Smartphones nowadays are highly complex devices, so for any UI to work smoothly is an achievement in itself, and the UIQ interface is very much suited to a device with a lot of applications and potential. The fact that it manages this without complaint is one reason why I like it, and keeping the functions hidden is another.

Summary

So why, on balance, do I find the UIQ3 interface on the W950i a touch annoying? Because it is almost there. If Sony Ericsson take in as much feedback as possible, then it could easily become a magnitude easier to understand and use. Yes, it does do everything that it technically needs to do, but it does not do it all well. When Jeff Hawkins started designing the Palm OS interface he made a simple chart to count the number of taps that any operation was from the main screen – his target then was four taps to anything. Steve Jobs in the recent iPhone launch promised two taps to get to anything (of course he doesn’t have third party apps to worry about [hah – Steve]). The User Interface is set to become a major battleground for mobile devices in the next twelve months as the hardware and capabilities reach a plateau – and the Sony Ericsson W950i is in need of urgent reinforcement.

Source: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Sony_Ericsson_W950i_part_2-the_UIQ_Interface.php

10/07/2009 Posted by kleinkiesling | Sony Ericsson | Sony Ericsson, W950i | Leave a comment

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Blog about mobile phone review collection

Nokia N95 camera review: High five

Full-function camera

Camera settings

ISO setup from phone

Running for first prize

VGA video

Substitute for a digital camera

More sample pictures with comments

More sample photos

Nokia N95 review: Nokia’s crown jewel

Key features

Main disadvantages

Construction and design

Sliding both directions

Equipment, battery life and accessories

Daily charging

Keypad, control, and display

Large-screen show

Networks, data transfers, connectivity, and VoIP

Calls via Internet

Stereo Bluetooth

System, user interface, control, speed

Auto rotate

Voice commands

Telephony, ringtones, phonebook

An hour instead of a minute

“Blow-up phonebook”

Messaging, SMS, MMS, email

Emails: no news

Time organizer, Office, Internet

No modifications

Internet everywhere

Camera

Full-function camera

Camera settings

ISO setup from phone

VGA video

Music and video

YouTube in the phone

Navigation

Pay and I will show you the way

Hidden GPS

Work with files, PC Suite, others

Very high price, no competitors

Smart2go

The Nokia N95

Navigation

Extra features

Have Nokia succeeded?

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N95-part_2_the_Navigator.php

Nokia E65 review: Business beauty

Key features

Main disadvantages

Beauty rules the parade

Absolute solidity

Right stronger than left

Four new elements

Big, yet so fine

No changes in Symbian

Always on the move

It works everywhere

Millions of contacts

Emerging voices

Online or offline

SMS

Why so simple?

Internet in all modes

Breathtaking speed

Camera

Sample photos taken with the camera built in Nokia E65

Music player

Time management

A bit of everything

Difficult dilemma

PIM

Getting Online

Email and Messaging

Web Browser

The Incidental Apps