Nokia N95 The Master Piece

The Nokia N95 is an absolutely jaw-dropping incredible device. It would be doing it a huge disservice to simply call it a mobile phone. What can you call a jewel of electronic wizardry which incorporates a 5 megapixel camera, satellite navigation, media player, a full suite of PDA features and, oh yes, even makes phone calls? That's going to be a tough decision, but I believe that there is a groundswell of opinion behind the term: "Mine!"

The Nokia N95's two way sliding format lets you go slip slidin' away to choose between a proper keypad or a fully touch sensitive arrangement of player controls. The first time you see the 2.6 inch screen switch to landscape mode and the 3D multimedia menu start rotating around, you're likely going to dive for your credit card.When you're sloshed by the boardwalk in Blackpool and trying to find your way back to your hotel, you'll appreciate the N95's capability of downloading local maps on the fly, GPSing you within a few feet and showing you just where the heck you are.

The 5 megapixel camera exceeds the performance of Nokia's already superlative N93i snapshooter, featuring a Carl Zeiss lens with autofocus which renders super strong colours and provides exceptional picture quality in even very low light situations. Should you need a little help in the lumens department, the LED flash will shed a lot of light on your subject so that your buddy can see the next day how green his face was at 3 am.

There is also a secondary pinhole camera for videophone transmission.The Nokia 95 provides mini-HDTV resolution and clarity during playback on MPEG-4 format. It's really hard to believe that it's actually' being generated by a phone. While on the subject of the phone (yes, it's easy to forget that there are telephone features here too), the quality of the voice calls is astounding. You might think your mates were right in the room. Surprisingly, the sound quality of the music playback on both FM and MP3 doesn't quite measure up to the phone. Regardless, dump the earbuds that come with the N95 and invest in a top quality set. Everything will sound much better.

As to whether the Nokia N95 can capture a strong share of its market segment in direct competition with the iPhone which should eventually retail at less than half the price is going to be difficult to say. It has a stonking great feature set, implemented with the usual Nokia panache, all wrapped up in a tidy package that is going to have people swiveling their heads like Linda Blair in the Exorcist to have a gander, especially when they see the Google Earth-like GPS animation swoop down from space and right down to your pub. Is it the ultimate phone of the mobile/PDA wave or does it have the chops to surf the iPhone wave? The punters will have to make that determination when they vote with their debit cards at the local shops.