REVIEW: Nokia N95 vs Samsung i8510 - which one is better?

Nokia N95 was, and actually is, the most advanced smartphone in the S60 lineup. After a while Nokia released updated version, N95-8 which had 8 GB of internal storage and a larger display. However it is a mistake to think that N95 will be unrivaled. Samsung Company recently announced its answer to Nokia N95 - Samsung i8510. This smartphone on S60 platform has amazing specifications, and has all chances to become a real "N95 killer". Let's look closer on both smartphones (N95-8GB version and i8510), compare them, and decide, which one will be the winner of this comparison.

Design and controls

Both phones look very similar, both are made in form-factor of sliders. However, while N95 can slide in two positions, revealing multimedia buttons or number keys, i8510 is limited to usual one way of sliding. It is hard to tell, whether this is an advantage of N95, but it definitely is an original way to control your music or other media functions on the phone. Aside from two soft keys and dial / reject buttons under them, there are two unlabeled areas that look like buttons. Even considering them as unknown buttons, N95 has two times more buttons on its front, 8 buttons opposed to 4 in Nokia i8510. Both phones have 5-directional navigational button.

Interesting enough, both phones have an indication of how much memory they have left, it is placed on top left corner of the front part. They are slightly different on the back part; Samsung i8510 camera can be closed to avoid lens damage, while N95 has no protection on camera lens at all. Samsung also has two holes for built-in dynamics on back.

Hardware

While looking similar, they are very different inside. Both phones have same display size and amount of colors they can show, but they differ in all the rest. Samsung i8510 has a twice bigger internal storage capacity - 16 GB, and a microSDHC slot, so you can double its capacity by using 16 GB microSDHC card, which will be enormous 32 GB! Shame for Nokia, they dropped expansion slot on their 8 GB model, which leaves you with only 8 GB with no ability to expand it.

While camera on N95 was considered one of the best phone cameras for now, Samsung tries to beat it not only with quality but also with the resolution - i8510 will have 8 megapixel camera on board, which makes it the most "megapixeled" smartphone. Every feature that is usual nowadays is present, such as autofocus, LED flash, even smile detection. Video recording is the same, QVGA and VGA resolutions supported.

On the multimedia side, both phones look very advanced, with a big list of supported audio and video formats and FM radio with RDS, both have the regular 3.5 inch headphone port. i8510 features internal graphics accelerator, which can be used later in games, and accelerometer just like the N95, so the phone can decide whether to display image in landscape or portrait mode.

Connectivity options are similar, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 support, such as 3G networks. We must notice that both phones are quad-band, so they will work all over the world. GPS feature is present in both of them, so there is possible to geotag the picture you made, and use many navigation programs available for S60.

The battery in both phones is of the same capacity - 1200 mAh. Official press release of i8510 states that it has an Optical mouse feature. What it can be? Could this smartphone be used as a mouse for your laptop? If it can, it will be a very interesting feature to have. It can be clearly seen, that in hardware battle Samsung i8510 is a clear winner, overdoing N95-8 in almost everything.

Software

On the contrary with the hardware, software side is what makes this phones look almost completely the same. Both are based on Symbian, which means that they have one platform and the same programs. However, it is still unknown which version will have this new Samsung smartphone. It will have two preinstalled games, FIFA 2008 and Asphalt, which fully use abilities of its integrated graphics chip. While it is unknown, will the software from N95 be compatible with i8510, the recently launched N-Gage 2 platform games will most likely do not work on it, making them exclusive to Nokia smartphones.

Conclusions

Of course the true conclusions can only be made when Samsung i8510 is revealed to the public, but even now we can see that Samsung is releasing a very strong competitor, which overcomes N95 in many domains. It is still too early to say that i8510 will be better than N95, but according to the specs it will most likely be the true long-awaited "N95 killer". Let's wait for the August, this is when this smartphone from Samsung is scheduled for release.