I'm not a big fan of product facelifts or minor upgrades. But in the case of the N95 8GB, Nokia seems to have addressed many of the elements overshadowed its predecessor's "almost perfect" standing.

Physically, this "enhanced" model looks and feels pretty much the same as the original N95 release - with the exception of a notably-bigger display (the sides of the top slider section is now flush with the lower), slightly-modified designs for the nav-pad (the set of buttons below the LCD) and media controls, and the moving of the LED flash to the left hand side of the Carl Zeiss lens (most probably to improve illumination performance). In short, these changes can only mean a better product for the end user.

On the inside, the 8-gigabyte worth of storage is the obvious headline feature here (if you hadn't noticed) - but does away with the ability to use external memory cards with smartphone. As irrelevant as the latter may be, given the vast amounts of internal memory available to the N95 8GB, losing the ability to work with 'memory cards' in general - especially for the phone's camera application - can be a bummer, and an inconvenience, for some.

With the exception of the aforementioned, the N95 8GB retains the same outstanding features of its predecessor - with the addition of the following enhancements:

• a new 2.8-inch (viewable diagonal) display (up from 2.6"), and supporting up to 16 million (24-bit) colours;
• support for a higher-capacity battery cell (BL-6F @ 1200mAh) - up from 950mAh for the BL-5F used for the original N95;
• the pre-loading of the new N-Gage application, providing access to the new online gaming service (to be available globally in November 2007); and
• an 8-gigabyte internal (flash-based) memory area for media-based content (for other content, such as PIM-based data and applications, these are restricted to the phone's 100MB dynamic memory area).

An ETA of Q4 has been given to the "second edition" N95. For those who've held off on the first-gen model, this is most definitely a worthwhile consideration. And as for existing N95 users, like myself, upgrading to the 8GB version is a probable option - but probably not worth the while, given the high price tag of this reigning Nseries flagship.

Resources: General product pages (Nseries.com) | General product pages (Nokia.com) | Technical specifications