Nokia's N95 has come on in great strides since it was first released. When I saw an early review sample I was not overly impressed. The device itself felt plasticy in build, and the software was not as robust as it could be.

Things have moved on, though, and Nokia re-released the N95 with 8GB of built-in memory and improved software. Oh, and the phone is black as opposed to the original N95's rather grubby silver.

This is a chunky phone, but there is an awful lot going on inside it. In terms of size you are looking at a device that's 99mm tall, 53mm wide and 21mm thick. It has a slider format and, most unusually, there are two sliders.

The standard slider mechanism conceals the numberpad. With this popped out the phone becomes 130mm tall, which is quite a size. There is a second slider, and this emerges from the top edge of the phone. It offers four buttons for music playback control.

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I can't say this second slider does anything for me at all; it seems totally unnecessary, offering functions which could be so much more easily offered by front fascia or side-mounted buttons. Still, it is a defining feature of this phone, so you will probably feel compelled to use it.

The 2.8-inch screen offers 240 x 320 pixels of viewing area at 16 million colours. At this size it can double up as a personal video player, and in fact movies do look quite good on it.

On the other hand, it works quite well for any kind of data display. And with the N-Gage gaming platform built in, Google Maps (with GPS antenna) and a Web browser among the software, there is plenty of opportunity to use the screen.

Even if you are into things like mobile e-mail or diary management, the large screen makes viewing information a more pleasant experience than you'll usually find outside the smartphone world, and it'll flip into wide format at appropriate points too.

The phone's name gives away the fact that there is 8GB of built-in memory. This is in addition to another 100MB for storing calendar items, to-do lists, applications and other stuff. You can basically give the 8GB over to music and images if that's what you want to do.

When it comes to music, Nokia has managed to include a 3.5mm headset jack, and there is an FM radio here too. Wi-Fi is built in and getting onto my home network proved easy to do.

The camera shoots images at up to 5 megapixels, putting it at the cutting edge as far as today's mobile phones are concerned. It'll also shoot video at up to 640 x 480. There is a TV-out cable, so you can show photos and vids to others - and indeed can show anything the screen of this phone displays.

There is a front-facing camera too, because this is a 3G handset with two-way video calling support. It is also a quad-band GSM phone.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that Nokia has thrown everything it has at the N95 8GB.

This is a large mobile with a readable screen. A definite improvement on the vanilla N95, but perhaps too chunky for some. And the second slider is an over-designed indulgence.