As the lovely folks at WOM World so kindly sent me the Nokia N95 to play with I want to take a little time to talk about it exclusively now I've recovered a little from being so blown away by the N95 8GB.

An ideal body
For a smartphone there's no doubt in my mind that the N95 form factor is pretty hot. Large screen, purposeful keys and a good keypad are all essentials. Then there's the useful camera and gallery buttons on the side. The handset feels weighty but not heavy, and the materials are generally good. Things I don't like so much are the big back with a small front (and so smaller screen than there could be), and the quality of the front keys, which feel a bit loose.

Controversial Slider
A lot has been said about the N95 slide mechanism. Mine has the annoying 'click' when pressure is put on the front of the phone, to push the front buttons for example, and I was slightly surprised to receive a review sample with this fault. I also can't stand the 'downward slide' for accessing the dedicated music controls. I'd rather there were no dedicated music controls. However, when sliding in the regular direction to reveal the keypad I think the N95 has a really nice, smooth, slightly spring-loaded slide that feels really great in your hand. Just enough force is needed before the slider starts moving to prevent accidentally opening or closing it. Overall, the Nokia N80 did feel more robust, though.

Camera
The N95's camera is great. I love the auto focus, and the features are straightforward and simple to access. I'm not interested in photography, but I like to have pictures of things I have done so this is the ideal point-and-shooter. Unfortunately the delays in taking and storing a picture, and firing up the camera application in the first place, detract from what I would otherwise call a great experience. The camera has a lens cover, which some people adore (probably those who give their phones a rougher ride than I do) but I personally find the implementation on the N95 to be pretty cheap feeling. I actually found the need to open the lens cover quite annoying - I prefer to just push and hold the camera button or move some sort of large slider (a la N73). There's also a flash, which is nice, but not terribly exciting! There's a slight issue whereby the handset still detects a light touch of the camera button as a keypress in other apps, making a beep as you try and text for example or just lighting up the screen, but I have gotten used to it.

All about USB
I think it's fantastic to see Nokia using mini-USB on their phones. I think using the same port for charging would have been a smart step, but I'll let Nokia off on that as this is, I feel, a pretty massive step in the right direction for them already. In reality I rarely use USB to connect to Nokia phones as almost all Apple Mac's have Bluetooth, but future new customers to Nokia who have not been conditioned into not using cable connections due to the need to carry an annoying proprietary cable may well seize the mini-USB opportunity.

Other points
Having a proper audio jack built into the handset is great. I'd prefer for it to be covered somehow as it looks quite ugly, but it's there and that's what counts. The built-in Stereo speakers are on a par with laptop speakers, and I'd say that's remarkable for a handset. The slightly recessed screen (not as bad as the N80's, but recessed) is prone to gathering crud around the edges where it is hard to remove, and generally looks dated - I'm sure Nokia have learnt their lesson there. Browsing is satisfactory, though the S60 browser is ready for another massive shot in the arm if it's to compete with mobile Safari on the iPhone, and, though you will receive Out Of Memory errors if you're trying to either view a very large web page or do more than a couple of things at once, the software has generally been very stable. I did spot the handset restarting itself once, which I wouldn't have expected given how mature the device is. There's a microSD slot, accessed through a reasonably constructed door, though the implementation of the slot itself makes me feel a bit like one day a memory card is quite likely to go in and not come out again.

Battery
I just want to mention that I've found battery life to be good. I haven't heavily used any feature such as navigation that would put a fast drain on the battery, but for general standby, calls and texts there's nothing out of order at all - at least 48 hours between charges. From what I've read online, though, you can think again about using the N95 as a Sat Nav or video player on long journeys.

Conclusion
The N95 is an excellent Nokia S60 smartphone that will continue to be popular into 2008, until it is superseded by widespread availability of the N95 8GB. Excluding the 8GB, the N95 is the best smartphone Nokia have ever made, and then some. I'm becoming really fond of this one, and I think I'll miss it when it has to leave.