Nokia N95 Review

Nokia called the N95 a multimedia computer and, in March 2007, the spec sheet backed it up: a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss autofocus camera that shot VGA video at 30 frames per second, built-in GPS with Nokia Maps, Wi-Fi, 3.6 Mbps HSDPA, stereo speakers, TV-out, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a 2.6 inch QVGA screen, all behind a slider that opened one way for the keypad and the other for media keys. No phone had put those together before, and none of it was fake: the stills embarrassed every other camera phone of the year and the video was in a class by itself.

Then you used it. The TI OMAP 2420 ran at 332 MHz, which was fine, but Nokia paired it with 64 MB of RAM, of which around 20 MB were free after boot, so the camera, the browser and Maps could not all live at once and 'Memory full' became the phone's catchphrase. The 950 mAh BL-5F cell, feeding GPS and Wi-Fi, was gone by mid-afternoon. Symbian OS 9.2 with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 was deep and flexible and looked five years old next to the iPhone that arrived three months later.

To Nokia's credit it kept shipping firmware: the 2008 v20 release added demand paging, which finally left enough memory free to run the camera and the browser together. Nokia announced it at 550 euros before subsidies, and it reached the US Nokia flagship stores in April 2007, unlocked, at 749.99 dollars. The N95 8GB, with 128 MB of RAM and a 1200 mAh battery, fixed both faults within the year, which tells you Nokia knew.