Nokia N96 review. Boring is good

When the specs of Nokia N96 were first leaked to the net, I thought it was a pretty boring phone. After all, more then a year has passed since the introduction of Nokia N95 handset, and the only improvement that N96 had to show – was some added memory and DVB-H tuner…. Duh

During Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, I had an opportunity to check it out live. And I have not changed my opinion – Nokia N96 is boring.

However, I had an epiphany while playing with Nokia N96. It turns out, that except for us geeky/blog newsy types, boring is actually very good.

When Nokia N95 hit the market, it had multiple bugs, was slow, used to crash, did not really felt right in the hands, the slider on it sucked, as did the battery life. We, early adopters, actually became beta testers for a new device and even shelled out some serious money for the privilege.

But all was forgiven in the name of all these cool gimmicks like GPS, 5mpx camera, Wi-Fi and others, that worked more often then not.

With Nokia N96 it’s a completely different story. You can feel that the N95 platform had a year to mature just by holding device in your hand.

nokia-n96-live.jpg

Smooth shiny surface, really well implemented slider hinge, big clear screen, fast responses and small details like touch pad navigation or built-in quick stand for watching video, makes using Nokia N96 much more pleasant experience then a year old Nokia N95 in my pocket.

But, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words and a moving picture should be worth even more. So here’s a video demo of Nokia N96:

You might not see it in this video, but the movie quality that Nokia N96 is really great. Thank’s to built-in video accelerators, N96 is able to support video bit rates of well above 1.5 Mbps (up to 5 Mb’s ?!), while conserving the power use at the same time.

I also have to take back what I said about Nokia N96 in my previous post.

2.8″ screen is not too small and, given enough bitrate/video quality, it is actually quite good for watching movies and TV shows on it. Nokia N96 should give a run for the money to any flash based portable media player around.

Other cool feature on Nokia N96 is 5 megapixel camera with geo tagging functionality (Via GPS). When enabled it automatically tags the images with the GPS location coordinates, which you can later use when sorting the pictures on your PC or online photo service.

Nokia N96 also comes with 16 GB of built-in flash memory and microSDHC memory card slot, where you can fit 8 GB memory card for a total of 24GB of storage.

One thing I’m not sure about – is the battery life. The 950 mAh battery in Nokia N96 is the same as in N95, and we all heard about the troubles with battery life that N95 had.

Let’s hope that newer, more efficient chips and software in N96 gives it much longer durability then it’s predecessor.

Full specs of Nokia N96 include:

All- in-all, Nokia N96 is a great, feature packed mobile handset. Initial retail price for Nokia N96 will be around 550 Euro, which is OK for it’s category.

The only problem is that Nokia N96 is expected to start shipping only in Q3, 2008 – and that’s about half a year from now. Which is way too long a time to make me happy.

For best deals on Nokia N96 in U.K. click here!

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Posted on 18 Feb 08 - Filed in Nokia, Video, Wireless, reviews - Comments - Written by Staska

  • Elizabeth Gurnley Brown
    Looks good, but it would be beter for people to wait for an inevitable N96i Upgrade. After all, even if the upgrade does not appear, or is unimpressive, this edition of the phone will still be available and it will be cheaper too.
  • How would you know if there is an "inevitable" N96i. Why would you want to wait anyway, and what if as you say the supposingly Nokia "N96i" doesnt come out and you have waited a year for this... You'll be ending up getting a phone a year later, not for free, but for serious money! And would you like to pay £499 for a N95 now, after a year? I don't think so!, noone would want to do that generally for anyphone!
    DON'T LISTEN TO HER!!!
  • Ngeek
    I'm on of the early adopters of the N95-1(since May/07) and besides battery and some small things my device is not that far from the N96 and if you are looking for good battery life...I don't think this is the phone to go. If you have a N95 and you want to upgrade wich devices would you consider having in mind that media and office specs are needed?

    Maybe: HTC Touch Pro?
  • FONGSTA2036
    who knows the release date in australia?
  • ENFDO
    N96 has not Buil-In Acceleration.
  • All I can say is bring it on.. and let the consumers test the battery life..

    I do believe it will be improved as from reading previous reviews of the N95, Nokia has targeted so far all the complaints that were mainly the issue for bring the N95 down.

    The N96 will be awesome I am excited for it to hit the selves :D
  • arun
    such a retarded review ... very amateurish
  • Andrew
    Oh that really helps. Your comment is also very retarded and your spelling is very amatuerish.
  • Aidan Nicholas
    I just bought one of these on Vodafone.. comes on the 2nd October.. cant wait.. great upgrade from a Samsung U600 hehe. i'll post when i get it n tell y'all how its goin
  • Chris
    I have the N96, after waiting for an upgrade for a long time. So far i have been very impressed with all the features, especially the quality of the screen. The battery life seems pretty good considering the applications, i have been using. If you charge your phone everyday whats the problem?
  • waqar
    I only hpe that the walkman sound quality through headphones is similar to n91 which till date is rocking...
  • George
    OK..AVOID THIS PHONE. Received my N96 upgrade from my n95 8gb today and its gone straight back in the box and being returned. The phone is so slow compared to my n958gb.What the review above fails to mention is the fact that the processor is slower on the n96 and it is also missing the 3d chip used for gaming and other apps such as gps mapping. Look on Youtube for n96 vs n95 and look at the framerate that the preinstalled racing game runs at. the n96 feels very platic and flimsy. Also the camera takes very pale looking pictures (agreed this may be fixed in a firmware update).. Yes it has 16gb and looks pretty but that really is the only improvement. If you have an n95 then wait before you upgrade!!! I've had just about every N series phone and the N96 is the only one i've been really dissapointed with. I'm going to check out the samsung innov8 with 16gb and an 8mp camera.(with online video editing to 120fps)
  • Harriet
    Totally disagree in that the N96 is still slow and prone to sticking. I'm really unhappy with this handset.
  • The Nokia N96 is a great phone, no doubting that. It can give the iPhone a run for its money any day. Some people will prefer the touch screen on the iPhone, but the N96 performs better all round. Only downside is it weighs a bit more, but that's a smae price to pay for a superior phone. What's more, the phone isn't tied to one network!

    www.nokia-nseries.co.uk
  • coachled
    Bought the N96 and it is like pre-paying for a five star hotel only to get some flea-bitten crap hotel that you're scared to sleep in... this is an unbelievably bad phone... I had the N95 8gb and thought that was perfection... reliable, incredible, soild, gorgeous... and so, assuming that companies progress, ordered the N96... it's appalling... slow, so full of bugs that it requires a total fumigation and overhaul.... It's on par with the vile Motorola Z8 --- Evil Phone-- which would heat up like an oven for no apparent reason and turn itself off... If you have the N95 8gb, keep it, make a shrine to it, and pray that the powers that be at Nokia get their act together and realise that an upgraded phone means better not worse!
  • mike
    totally dis-agree there mate got the 16G n96 had if for about 6 months not had a single problem with it hasn't heated up, turned off once on its own nearly filled it an its still as fast as it was when i got it proper sophisticated handset think you must have just had a bad pick an ive got 7 mates with the n95 8g an 4 of them have regular problem an 3 are fine so i would congratulate nokia on there improvement launchin the n96 16g!!
  • angel
    i want one badly but i'll wait until the price drops.
    By the way who knows how much it is??

    I WANT IT!!
  • mike
    the n96 16G is the best phone out there ive had it about 6 months an haven't put it down an would advise anybody intending on buyin a new phone to get one, brill piece of technology.
  • samir
    that is the sell phone
  • Ian
    Don’t be too quick to praise the N96 - I bought mine six months ago and is the worst phone I have EVER owned…

    First of all, it is slow. VERY slow. My contacts list takes 15-20 seconds to load when selected - and I have the latest firmware available to me here in Australia (12.043).

    The TV is useless. Like most places around the world, there is no-one transmitting DVB-H - at least, nobody does in Australia. Nokia make a big thing in their marketing here about a feature NOBODY can use, and are unlikely to in the life of this phone (unless they take it overseas).

    The turn-by-turn GPS is not out-of-the-box. Here in Australia, you get a short free-trial and then you have to pay an additional $130/year to use it! Nowhere is THAT mentioned in their marketing! I tried the free-trial and it was useless - frequently crashing the phone and constantly gave wrong directions. The user interface is, quite frankly, terrible. I gave up and bought a dedicated sat-nav instead. At least that doesn’t disappear when a call comes in!

    Bluetooth A2DP? Don’t even get me started! Put simply, IT DOESN’T WORK! The music suffers from the equivalent of a disk-skip every 10 seconds or so - the music isn’t constantly streamed. As good as useless. My $200 Parrot Party Bluetooth speaker unit is useless as a result (correction: everyone else in the office can connect with THEIR phones - SonyEricsson, LG, Samsung etc. - Me, with my ‘market leading Nokia’ phone that cost more than theirs PUT TOGETHER simply won’t stream the music cleanly and sounds horrible).

    Nokia have short-changed their customers by supplying a phone with a grossly-underpowered processor. It simply is NOT fast enough to handle the features.

    I have never regretted a purchase decision so badly as I did when buying the N96. For me, it was like waiting for Christmas only to find my new toy was smashed and broken upon opening it. Nokia’s customer service has been abysmal - TWO requests for service submitted via their own website - WITH confirmatory emails from them saying someone would get back to me in 72 hours, but so far, nothing. That was 5 months ago.

    I guess they’re busy fighting all those other N96 fires.
  • ankit
    this is the most awesome phone by nokia upto date ..

    check my review @

    http://rockingnokianseries.blogspot.com/
  • fuk u
    im bored ok
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