If you want a phone that is good at everything, choosing a top-of-the-range Nokia S60 smartphone has always been a surefire bet. These are phones that tick all the boxes, continually win all the awards, and that allow you to get all the latest technology without compromise.

The latest in this prestigious line - the N95 - however, has taken the concept of the do-everything phone to a completely new level. A year ago, the N80 bowled us over with its built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and macro-focusing camera. Now its successor not just builds on the 3G specification, it sets a new benchmark for every other phone to follow.

Nearly every aspect of the phone has improved. The resolution of the camera rises to 5 megapixels, and an automatic focusing system is added to help harness this resolution. The screen, meanwhile, has nearly doubled in size - and it can now shoot video footage that challenges that taken with a standalone camcorder. And you now not only get 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity - there is HSDPA support too, allowing you to supercharge your broadband access speed.

The real headline-grabber, however, is that this phone now incorporates its own satellite navigation system. Not only does it have a built-in GPS antenna but it provides free access to a world of road maps, allowing you to find out where you are, and how to get from A to B wherever you happen to be. Forget the Bluetooth-connected modules and add-on mapping that are popular on other S60 models - the N95 offers an alternative to your TomTom straight out of the box.

Despite the addition of the 2.6-inch, 16-million-colour 320 x 240-pixel screen (and the Sat Nav aerial) the N95 is surprisingly not much bigger than the N80. It is very slightly longer and wider, but compensates this by shaving a little on the depth. This is no super-slim handset, but for a fully-accessorised 3G phone with such a powered up palmtop computer onboard, you can't help but be impressed by the 120g weight.

This phone has been carefully designed to help you get to the things that matter with the minimum of fuss. As with all multifunction devices, there are lots of facilities that you have to scroll through menus and search through icons to find.

But if you want to use the digital music player, you can literally slip it into operation. A clever two-way slider mechanism means if you push the top of the phone up you get the expected numberpad, essential for typing messages or dialling numbers. Shunt the mechanism in the opposite direction, and you get a full set of transport controls for the MP3 player, and the music application automatically fires up.

The camera is turned on with similar painless ingenuity. You simply open the lens cap (a sensible new addition to the N series design) to get the right bit of software into gear.

Simple operation

Finding your way around the rest of the phone is simply a matter of using the regular joypad and softkeys; there are no thumbwheels or trackballs to speed up handling here. But this does mean that anyone used to the Symbian S60 operating system will be at home, right down to the provision of the application key, and the strange button for activating text editing options. One gripe would be that the softkeys are rather too thin for thought-free use , and there is a constant danger that you might press a neighbouring button by mistake.