When the Nokia N95 was released it took the world by storm as it managed to pack pretty much everything the hardened gadgeteer could need into a pocket-friendly device. Since then it's been joined by other do-it-all phones such as the iPhone 3G and T-mobile G1. The N96 signals the start of Nokia's fight back as it promises smoother video playback and some other neat extras. But has Nokia done enough to make the N96, which is available for around £500 SIM-free, an attractive upgrade for the owners of the N95?
Positives
Looks-wise, the N96 isn't a radical departure from previous designs. The handset still has quite a bulky frame, but instead of the matte finish, it comes with an altogether more stylish-looking high-gloss exterior.
The slide mechanism has also been tweaked and now feels much smoother and sturdier, but the unique dual keypad arrangement has been retained. If you slide the screen upwards you're met by the standard numerical keypad, but when you slide it downwards a column of four media playback controls (play, stop, fast-forward and rewind) are revealed.
Nokia has paid close attention to video with the N96. In order to add support for the DVB-H standard (more on that later) Nokia has had to kit the phone out with new video acceleration. This speeds up decoding of video formats like h.264, the most common standard for video on mobiles.
The advantages this brings are clear when you download the iPlayer application from the BBC's Web site. It works like a dream -- the streamed video looks incredibly smooth and artefact-free on the N96's excellent screen. Nokia has even added a kick-stand to the rear of the phone so you can easily rest it on a desk when you want to watch a few episodes of your favourite programmes or a couple of music videos.
Up until now, the N81 was the king of the nGage gaming handsets. But that's all changed with the N96's arrival -- sliding down the screen when an nGage game is loaded transforms the media controls into additional gaming buttons for two-handed control. It helps game-playing immensely and makes the phone feel like a real portable games machine.
The camera is pretty much a direct carry-over from the N95, but as it takes such good shots that's no bad thing. The five-megapixel sensor captures plenty of detail and the Carl Zeiss optics make sure that everything remains pin sharp. Although there's still no Xenon flash, you do get dual LED photo lights to help in dim conditions.
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david16 15 December 2012
Good: Storage capacity , nice screen , ngage gaming , alot of apps like ms office and pdf reader , camera
Bad: battery life , sometimes slow performance.
Comment: One of my friends still own one and i have used it. It is said true about performance that it is slow at some times but other than that its a good cell phone. I have used iphone 3g thats another class so i wont be comparing it with n96. I played n-gage games such as fifa 08 3d and sims and i would say that it was pretty slow as compared to its older brother n95 due to missing gpu offcource, thats not the big issue because its not that slow. Music playback is awsome and video playback is good too the small issue with it is the small lag when u got more songs that 1 gig like i do the list just take a while not a big issue too . When it comes to apps i just love it ms office , pdf , dictionary , translator, games , media players , ovi store and lots of stuff so its a very good gadget in its price range. internet works fine not bad 3g is good and simple to use . The good thing is 16 gig of storage i have 5 gig of hd movies and clips which are 1080p and they work just fine so that's a big plus. Camera is awesome its good during day and average during dark 5mp camera just awesome same goes for video recording unlimited time isn't that great. The only big issue i have is battery life only works a day and u need to charge it for at least 4 hours .that's awful. There is little bit of lag due to less ram and cpu power during multitasking but not a big issue eather. some say the design is not goodlooking and cheao but i thing its best looking device out of the n series and its thiner that the thick n95. i still use it and like it
gopikrsna925 26 November 2010
Good: Good camera and some cool features
Bad: Mobile freezes a lot. Camera is bad during night, music player is not great.
Comment: Good mobile nothing special.
406hdi110 3 October 2010
Good: Feature Packed, Tonnes of Memory, Camera
Bad: Battery life, slow, it just gets worse and worse
Comment: Ok when i got my phone i had abandoned nokia for some time after using slicker sony ericssons i loved their smooth user interface and great build quality. When i got the nokia new it just didnt feel as well made. Initially i was impressed with the many features and the 32gb of memory i got with both the phones memory and sd card, i could put all my music on the phone and i suppose thats one thing it can do well is play music but its that slow to search for songs i just used shuffle, its camera was great but again too slow to really bother using, the interent explorer was rubbish full stop and even with opera there was never a good enough connection to make it worthwile, it would crash plenty of times when on the internet, and as for the gps the phone could never connect in time, if it did it would munch through the battery in about an hour, when it sat on standby the phone struggled to do a day. It didnt transfer its contacts to my cars bluetooth. The kickstand broke off, as did the whole battery cover, the slider got dirt in easily and got hard to move. But generally the n96s biggest flaw is that it has too many features and not enough processing power to deal with even a single application running, £100 is the max i would pay for one now, i wont buy a nokia again
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