Nokia Offers Free Updates to N95

Nokia is offering existing owners of its N95 mobile phone handset the chance to improve its battery life and try out extra features via a free software update.

The over-the-air upgrade, available to Nokia N95 customers, promises maps that load faster as well as recognizing and redrawing positioning times more quickly. A three-day trial version of its real-time navigation service is included as part of the update.

Nokia is also pushing the multi-tasking capabilities of its popular handset. The N95 was already able to play music while surfing the web; Nokia says the software update will make multitasking more efficient since paging files are updated faster.

While these refinements are as much a way of crowing about the advanced capabilities of the Nokia N95 handset as anything else, the update that will be of most use to handset owners is the prolonged battery life.

Nokia claims an increase of up to 30 percent between charges. As much as 12 hours of use can be enjoyed once the update is installed, claims Nokia.

Nokia recently started selling a revised version of the Nokia N95 with 8GB of onboard memory, compared to the original handset's 4GB. It has also just launched a successor to the N95 in the form of the slimmer N82.