I have never had a hi-tech phone. I have three phones (all Nokia) but none of them have a camera or any such things. For quite some time I have been eyeing a PDA phone because I badly need one to juggle everything I do. Testing an N95 8GB is the next best thing to owning my own PDA phone.

The N95 is a combination of the following:

• an MP3 player
• a handy video/multimedia player
• a PDA (that’s Personal Digital Assistant)
• a cellphone
• a digital camera
• a portable web browser
• a super flash drive with 8gb memory

It’s so nice. Bigger than I’m used too but the features more than compensate for it’s bulkiness.

Music and Multimedia Player
The music player sorts songs by user-defined playlists, artists, albums, genres, and even composers. You can directly transfer music from your computer to the unit via a USB cable. The sound quality is not bad. The earphones that came with the test unit is easy on the ears and has a contraption that will allow you to pause, start, stop, and navigate through your playlist without the hassle of using the unit itself.

The unit has a Real Player installed and it is useful for watching edited videos, ads, and even tv shows. The .avi and MP4 videos are clear and crisp, however, .wmv videos are not as clear.

Camera
The camera is only 5 MP but has same features as my Canon Ixus 70. It can take as many photos as the 8GB memory would allow, and can record videos as long as 1 hour. The camera has eight scene modes: Auto, User defined, Close up mode (Digital Macro), Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night, and Night Portrait. I usually use the Auto, Close up and Portrait modes, for blogging (and camwhoring) purposes. It also has a self-timer which can be set to 2, 10, and 20 seconds, and a sequence mode which I haven’t tried yet. Color tones can be set to Sepia, Black and White, Vivid, and Negative.

It’s a handy camera, that has rendered my point and shoot 7 MP Canon almost useless.

Here’s an Ovi Slideshow of some photos taken with the N95:

And a video I took using the phone:

Calendar and Clock
The calendar can be set to a Month View, Week View, and a To Do View. New entries can be saved as a meeting, a memo, an anniversary (or birthday), or a to-do item. If a to-do entry is not marked as done or deleted it still shows up in your list, bugging you to death to accomplish the task. Very helpful! Like you have a nagger secretary who bugs you constantly.

The clock has an alarm with a 5 minute snooze. The thing I love most about the clock is that multiple alarms can be set at the same time. So you can have an alarm for 7 am, and another for 8 am. 🙂 It also helps that the alarm can be set to your favorite tone or song.

Web Browser and Instant Messaging
The web browser is good and large enough to check email, check blogs, and even blog. Check out these posts I made via my N95: post 1 and post 2. I also use the unit for microblogging via Plurk. For instant messaging, I downloaded Nimbuzz.

Other Features
Voice Recorder for recording important discussions, meetings, and even podcasts. It can also record to as long as 1 hour.

Barcode Reader for scanning and saving QR barcode (also known as 2d barcode) information.

Office with Adobe PDF and reader, Currency converter, Zip for zipping and unzipping files, Quickoffice, and notepad.

Bluetooth for transferring files, to to use your phone as a modem. 🙂

Nokia Maps which uses GPS information. I heard the unit can also be installed with Google Earth. Will check that out soon.

Here are some features I wish it had:

• number screening
• insert number for SMS messaging

The inbox also has a tendency to re-arrange the order of messages even if I sort and re-sort it by date the order of messages is still weird. And it doesn’t have pre-installed games, not even Snake but it does have N-Gage trial versions of FIFA 07 and Asphalt 3 Street Rules. Minor annoyances I can live with.

I love the phone because it is very useful for many things and it can do multiple tasks at the same time. It fits my multi-tasking lifestyle. 🙂