We thought that nokia had reached epitome of mobile development when they had announced N95-8GB, but it seems that they have something else in mind while they have launched N96. It’s somehow a N95 with cosmetic changes and storage upped to whooping 16GB with further 8GB addition possible through micro SD card. It also features a DVB-H receiver for times if you want to view TV on its big 2.8 inches screen. It is targeted towards multimedia oriented audience.
Let’s go towards the specifications of the device. It’s based on same platform as the previous N95-8GB, but offers poor battery backup as it is powered by 950mAH battery, the same one on original N95 which was very poor on battery life. It seems that the DVB-H would be sucking a lot of battery from the device rendering its usability limited by the battery backup. Seems like keeping a backup battery for extended viewing maybe not a bad idea. The phone comes in similar shape of newly launched Nokia N82 and looks crafted out of steel. The design is sleek two way slider, similar to N95, with one side having keypad and other having dedicated multimedia control buttons like play/pause, FF, RW and stop. The buttons are tactile to touch and so wouldn’t find much of audiences with youngsters who are much into text messaging. The weight of device is whopping 125 grams, far more than other competing mobiles, but it can be easily ignored if the number of features on the device is considered.
The display is 2.8inches with QVGA resolution of 240×320pixels. It seems that Nokia does not understand that when most of the manufacturers are going to higher resolutions, they are still stuck to technically inferior quality resolution in spite of the fact that they tend to put this device as true multimedia substitute. The phone has auto-rotate UI and the back of the phone has a stand kind of protrusion which allows you to keep the handset at a particular angle when you are watching video in landscape mode. This feature is quite useful for prolonged viewing of videos. The speakers are made on right side of the handset and come on top when the device is kept in landscape mode. As usual, they are of superb quality and produce stereo sound. Also if you want to view your videos in discretion then you can use the standard 3.5mm jack to plug in a standard headphone to listen to music or videos. The phone with hefty 16GB space would help you dump all of your videos without any second thoughts about the memory getting filled up very fast.
Featuring host of connectivity options like 3G with HSDPA for both international and American networks, EDGE and GPRS, it’s surely a phone made for world. There is WLAN 802.1b/g, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, infrared and micro USB for connecting it to other devices. When you plug it to your PC then it has a special mode where it is recognized as a music player by windows and allows you to synchronize it with Windows Media Player with ease.
The camera module is taken directly from the Predecessor N95, which is a 5megapixel autofocus sensor with 20x digital zoom. Other features like red-eye reduction, image stabilization, and exposure control are standard. But its really pity that Nokia is still not putting optical zoom and xenon flash in its flagship phone, when it has already introduced that concept in N93i long time ago. Though this phone has very good specs, but if you already happen to own N95 or N95-8GB, then there is not much worth in going for upgrade. It is expected to be priced around 800$ .
