Nokia N95 8GB

13 DEC 2007 Until the iPhone landed, Nokia’s formidable Symbian Swiss Army smartphone was the mobile Holy Grail. Its feature line-up was the cause of many a mad man gibbering and jabbering: HSDPA download speeds, built-in Wi-Fi, five-megapixel camera, VGA-quality video capture at 30fps, music player with integrated 3.5mm headphone jack, built-in GPS for sat nav – the list was endless.

But the N95 was far from perfect; slow wobbly software, the battery life of a May Fly and a disjointed sat-nav performance blighted its rep. But now Nokia has corrected these nagging niggles with its successor, not to mention adding the small matter of 8GB’s worth of internal memory. Yep, the iPhone isn’t the only mobile memory mastermind and along with this mammoth storage boost, the only other notable overhaul is the bigger display footprint that improves video watching and web browsing.

Memory boost
The core power and features of the original N95 remain but amazingly, the 8GB memory injection hasn’t caused the N95 to balloon in girth. Apart from a measly eight gram weight gain, the N95 8GB’s vital stats remain the same as the original. So it’s still a chunky pocket-bulger but, honestly, what do you expect when it’s scoffed the best mobile features money can currently buy?

Nokia has also tinkered with the design a tad: the front keypad controls have been scrunched up to accommodate the new copious 2.8in screen but thankfully this hasn’t hampered usability. It’s also cloaked in a new look black coat and tactile soft paint rear finish. Overall, the slight makeover has improved the N95’s desirability by a country mile.

Slick software
The software on the N95 mark one had the tendency to stall and lag but with a double helping of RAM, the N95 8GB performance is less vexing and much faster. The battery juice has also been improved by approximately 50%, so highly abuse its power draining features and it should last longer than a day.