It's not quite all in the name. Nokia's revamped version of its successful N95 do-it-all smartphone may trumpet its extra storage in its moniker, but the N95 8GB brings more than simply more tune space to the table.

Nokia has reworked the look of the N95, introducing a slick black casing and enlarging its display, but at the same time Nokia has enhanced the GPS capability of the handset, upgraded the software onboard, and boosted battery life by adding a higher capacity power pack.

Sure, the timing of the Nokia N95 8GB's release, alongside the N81 8GB, may suggest just a touch of iPhone-awareness in its launch schedule. But much of the N95 8GB's appeal comes from a hefty bunch of core features that Apple's iPhone doesn't touch on.

Once again, the new N95 comes with a benchmark-setting 5-megapixel camera, utilising Carl Zeiss optics for high quality imaging, and is equipped with a built-in GPS receiver for satellite navigation functionality.
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This now supports A-GPS (Assisted-GPS), which uses satellite location, in conjunction with mobile network information when necessary, to help pinpoint the phone's location more accurately - and more speedily.

Users have the option of using the N95 8GB's 3G HSDPA mobile data connectivity or Wi-Fi for browsing or downloading content at high speed. As one of Nokia's flagship music player mobile phones, it's one of the first models to arrive with support for the Nokia Music Store over the air music download application installed.

This Symbian S60 smartphone is also geared up for Nokia's Ovi platform of services and applications, including Nokia Video Centre access for downloading and streaming video from a variety of sources.

Nokia's newly revamped N-Gage gaming platform is included here too - one of the first Nseries phones to support it. Our sample came with demos of the sophisticated games N-Gage promises, although at the time of writing the launch of the interactive service - which features social networking elements as well as advanced graphics - was still delayed.

Much of the software improvements that come with the N95 8GB are also available in the latest firmware updates available for the Nokia N95, but there are other significant improvements here. Of course, the 8GB of internal flash memory is a huge upgrade to the original N95's 160MB of storage.

The N95 8GB sacrifices MicroSD card expansion, which is a shame, although there's an additional 100MB of internal dynamic memory reserved for messages, images, contacts and other stuff.

One of the impressive improvements Nokia has made to the design on the N95 8GB is with its larger display. Already big for an S60 smartphone, the N95's 2.6inch display has now expanded to a 2.8inch QVGA (320x240 pixels) screen.

This 16.7-million colour display is a rich, bright platform for appreciating the phone's impressive imaging, multimedia and mapping capabilities. To demonstrate the screen in its full glory, Nokia is supplying the N95 8GB pre-loaded with the full movie version of Spider-Man 3.

It may not be your cup of tea as a film, and you may not be convinced about movie watching on a phone's display, but we couldn't help but be impressed with the smoothness and clarity of the playback

The overall dimensions of the N95's case haven't altered despite the screen gain - it's a slightly bulkier 128g, measuring a pocket-bulging 99(h) x 53(w) x 21(d) mm. Despite its size, its feels good in the hand, with the slider mechanism particularly more-ish.

Naturally, the two-way slider mechanism employed on the original N95, has been retained; slip the phone one way and the phone's numberpad is revealed, the other way and a panel of music player control keys emerge. Similarly, a secondary camera for 3G video calling still sits above the display. What has changed is the control buttons under the screen.