Hands-on Review: Nokia N95 Slider

There's no question that Nokia's N95 is one of the most feature-packed phones I've ever tested. GPS, a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, a full-on media player, an Office doc editor...they're all here in a small (if somewhat bulky) package. All very impressive, but is it worth the breathtaking $750 price tag? Let's take a closer look.

While the actual N95 is actually a little smaller than I expected, it's still nearly an inch thick (0.8 inches, to be exact) and weighs in at about 4.2 ounces, so it's like a small brick in your pocket. That said, the 16 million-color display is gorgeous, and the phone's smooth, two-way sliding action is certainly unique; slide one way for the numeric keypad, the other way for a narrow strip of music controls (more on that later). The back of the phone has a nice, rubberized feel, offset by the N95's prominent camera lens. More importantly, cruising around the phone's Symbian OS-based menus was a breeze, and I love having my agenda and to-dos displayed prominently on the main screen.

The N95 acquits itself well in the bread-and-butter calling department. With its quad-band GSM radio, the N95 lets you make calls practically anywhere in the world, a nice touch for chatty jetsetters. In practice, calls sounded loud and clear, with no tunneling or echoing, and my pals said they could hear me just fine. You also get conference calling, voice commands and a loud-and-clear speakerphone. Battery life was solid; I managed to wring about four-plus hours of talk time from the phone. Pretty good so far.

GPS on the N95 is quite impressive, although it falls into some of the same traps I've seen on other GPS handhelds. Starting with the strong points, I love the globe that spins and zooms in to your precise location—sure, it's a bit unnecessary, but I enjoyed it. Testing the phone in Manhattan, it took several minutes for the phone's GPS receiver to get a fix; annoying, but not unusual for a phone. Once I had a GPS connection and downloaded a U.S. map (which fit easily on my phone's 2GB memory card), the phone did a great job of tracking me as I walked from block to block; I'd say it was accurate to about a third of a block, and I could zoom in until a single city block filled the screen. You can search for addresses or by category (restaurants, hotels, ATMs, etc.), then switch on the navigation mode for spoken point-to-point directions. But while the "by car" routes were relatively direct, the "on foot" directions wouldn't let me walk the wrong way down a one-way street, leading to long, windy routes that didn't make a lot of sense.

The N95's camera is way above par compared to other camera phones I've tested. Armed with a 5-megapixel snapper and Carl Zeiss optics, the N95 takes impressively vivid pictures for a phone, and its recorded video clips are easily the best I've seen from a cell handset. Still, no matter what the N95's resolution, the phone's small lens keeps it well shy of the quality you'd expect from a stand-alone camera; for example, my snapshots looked rich and sharp, but there was still plenty of video noise in darker areas of the picture, and colors looked a bit floaty and impressionistic at times. And while videos looked smooth (probably with a framerate in the high twenties), they're still far short of DVD quality, despite Nokia's claims.

The music player on the N95 was pretty solid, but I had some trouble with the much-vaunted slide-out controls. The actual player looks great, complete with support for album art, shuffle and repeat modes, an equalizer with five presets, playlist support, and even some trippy visualizations. The player also handles all the major files formats, including AAC, AAC+, MP3, and WMA, along with support for subscription music services such as Rhapsody. I also appreciated that the phone has a 3.5mm jack on the left side, meaning you can use it with your own high-end earphones. My only real complaint concerns the music controls, which are revealed when you push the N95's slide down; the flat play/pause, stop, fast-forward and reverse buttons were tough to press, and I often had to push a few times to get a response.

The N95's Web browser is the same one that ships with other Nseries Nokia phones, but man, is it gorgeous. Even over the 2.5G EDGE connection, Web pages loaded relatively quickly—and I mean full HTML Web pages, complete with images, complex tables, and rollover JavaScript effects. The Nokia browser doesn't have Flash support, so you can't go view YouTube videos, but otherwise, it's hands-down the best mobile browser out there (save perhaps Helio's new Ocean browser and the upcoming mobile Safari on the Apple iPhone).

Messaging on the N95 is pretty solid for a non-business phone. In addition to the standard SMS/MMS messaging, you can collect e-mails from POP and IMAP accounts. I especially liked the messaging setup wizard, which guides you through setting up new accounts from start to finish; within a few minutes, I had my Yahoo! Plus mail account up and running.

Connectivity for the N95 is a mixed bag. While the phone works on speedy 3.5G HSDPA networks in Europe, it'll only work on EDGE networks here in the States. Luckily, the N95 has Wi-Fi on board, and for the most part, it works great. Again, a convenient Wi-Fi wizard helps you get the phone configured with your home networks; I had my 802.11g network with WPA encryption working within minutes. The N95 does a good job of showing you available Wi-Fi networks on the main page, but I wish it did a better job of handing you off to an EDGE network when you wander out of Wi-Fi range—or, by the same token, switching you back to your home wireless network. As it stands, you have to manually select a new data connection whenever you leave the range of the previous one, a minor annoyance. Back on the plus side, Bluetooth 2.0 and IR ports are both present and accounted for.

The phone also comes bundled with plenty of mobile software, including Lifeblog, a blogging tool that lets you post blog entries, pictures, videos and voice memos on the go; Video Centre, which downloads your favorite video blogs; QuickOffice for viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents; and a PDF reader. Phew.

If you're thinking that the N95's features are a lot to take in, you're right, and were it offered with carrier subsidies, we'd really have something. But while I'm not exactly writing the Bargain Blog here, there's no getting around the N95's massive $750 price tag, making it one of the most expensive phone's I've ever laid eyes on. And while the N95 really is a jack of all trades, it's also a master of none; yes, it comes with a top-notch Web browser and a great mobile camera, but even the 5-megapixel resolution is compromised by a small lens, and the phone's GPS navigator, while quite good, could never hold its own against a dedicated GPS device. In short, I admire all the effort that went into the N95, but I'm certainly not buying one—or at least, not until it's offered by a carrier with some serious subsidies.