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The Nokia N96 has a pretty hefty reputation to live up to. The N95 was a true powerhouse, and the finest converged device of its time. With a 5 megapixel camera, 3G data, the powerful S60 UI and eventually 8GB of internal memory there were few devices that could compete with it, and arguably no one could do it as well. Then along came a little device out of Cupertino and the cellular landscape changed. Not one to be reactive, Nokia has stuck to its guns with the retooled N96 and delivered an upgraded device that once again aims to sit atop of the mobile industry; improvements include 16GB of internal memory with microSDHC expansion and an integrated DVB-H tuner for mobile TV. But is it enough to compete with the almighty iPhone?

Design

Aside from being the first smartphone to feature the now ubiquitous trio of HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS, the N95 was known for its pocket-straining chunkiness. While phones in other segments continued shrinking in size, the N95 came out large and proud of it, thick like a cheap bar of soap. The N96 appears slimmer, and indeed is slimmer, but only marginally so. Where the N95 measured in at 21mm in thickness, the N96 now slides into your pocket more comfortably at 18mm — hardly the biggest loser in the realms of tech slimming. The N96 does feature more streamlined design, even over the improved N95 8GB model. The edges are smooth and the corners rounded, and external keys and control protrude only slightly. The centrepiece is a 2.8-inch QVGA resolution screen with a 16 million colour display and even though this screen shares similar specifications to that on the N95, the N96’s newer display seems to present colours much better with darker blacks and brighter colours. Like its predecessor, the N96 features a dual-slide design. A forward slide reveals a T9 numeric keypad, a backward slide uncovers a small selection of music player control keys, plus rotates the screen orientation to widescreen mode. The numeric keypad on this year’s model is a step back in our opinion. The N95 8GB featured keys raised to a slight peak which defined each key from its neighbour. The N96’s keypad is entirely flat and without significant definition at all. The highlight of the new design, and it seems strange to say it, is a kickstand located around the lens of the 5-megapixel camera on the back of the handset. It takes a sharp fingernail to flip the stand out, but once in place, the stand turns your new mobile phone into a mini TV set, allowing it to stand without assistance on a desk while you watch videos on your phone. In addition, the 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the handset is perfectly positioned for a media-focused mobile.

Features

Let’s pretend Nokia didn’t release the N95 last year. Without the shadow of the former looming over the N96, its feature sheet is reasonably impressive; HSDPA, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, A2DP stereo Bluetooth. However, the fact that the N95 featured exactly the same connectivity specs is cause for mild disappointment. There are, of course, some important differences to consider. The N96 ships with 16GB of internal storage and a microSD expansion slot. This is a vast improvement on both the previous models and more than enough to compete with Apple’s storage friendly iPhone. The major technological advancement is sadly completely irrelevant to Australian customers. Nokia has included a built-in DVB-H TV tuner into this model, capable of receiver DVB-H broadcast signals for mobile TV channels. You’d know DVB-H transmission are still a while away. To compensate its Aussie customers, Nokia has struck an exclusive deal with BBC Worldwide to include one complete BBC TV series with the purchase of the N96. Before you rush out in hope of downloading the latest Dr Who episodes, there are only four series available; Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show, Yes Minister and Walking with Dinosaurs, and you are only eligible to download one.

Performance

Perhaps it was the excellent performance of the other recently released Nokia handsets, or perhaps it was our simple expectation that newer tech performs better than older tech. Either way we expected the N96 to run like greased lightning, and it simply doesn’t. For the most part menu navigation is OK, we were able to move between the menu trees with minimal processing pauses only. Typically taxing processes, like opening the messaging interface often results in lag spikes lasting several seconds, especially with other tasks running in the background. Another major area without significant improvement is the N96’s average battery life. The N95 struggled to see the end of a full business day before needing to be charged, and we’ve been disappointed to find similar results with this newer model. With moderate use we could stretch a battery cycle to include a second day, but once we added the use of GPS and Wi-Fi hardware we were back to a single day of charge. Nokia really needs to include a larger capacity battery for a device drawing this much power. Without exception the rest of the components in the N96 worked as expected, which is to say they performed solidly. Web browsing is great with Nokia’s OSS web browser and GPS navigation with Nokia Maps v.2.0 is good; the hardware is fast to lock onto a signal and followed our movements well. The 5-megapixel camera is still one of the best in the industry, and from a side-by-side comparison with the N95 8GB, we can say the shutter and processing of images is slightly faster and the colour reproduction seems to be better as well. The N96 features a dual-LED flash system with the secondary flash acting as an auto-focus assist light. It seems strange that Nokia wouldn’t include the brighter Xenon style flash on its flagship N-Series model, although there has been some speculation in the industry recently as to whether Xenon flashes, while brighter, actually help produce better images.

Superb phonebook

The Symbian style phonebook of Nokia N96 has practically unlimited capabilities. The storage space can possibly stretch out to fill the whole phone memory, which is impossible to deplete even if you tried intentionally. Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names. You can set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed. The contacts can be ordered by either first or last name • searching by gradual typing of the desired name is also available Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. Personal ringtones and videos are also available for assigning. If you prefer you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone. An endless list of fields is available when editing a contact Nokia N96 also sports the Call log application to keep track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included). The period can be shortened to save some space but you are quite unlikely to do that, as even with a huge number of calls the log only takes a few miserly kilobytes of memory space. And Nokia N96 is surely not the phone to have you fussed over storage.

Messaging is great too

Nokia N96 is surely going to be appreciated by the people who text a lot. The keypad does reasonably well and the software support is completely up to the Symbian high standard. Not really surprising, Nokia N96 supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. The first two share the all too familiar intuitive editor. It has a counter of characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending. The SMS and MMS share a really intuitive editor Switching from SMS to MMS is as simple as inserting some multimedia content. A nice feature allows automatic resizing of pictures that are too large for sending via MMS. Nokia N96 also features the dedicated audio message editor. You can either record the message on the spot or use a sound clip from the phone memory. Delivery reports pop up on the standby screen and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts saving it to the Drafts folder or discarding it.

The email client is really nice, able to match almost any emailing needs of the user. The best part is that Nokia N96 sports the ultra easy email setup we came to know in recent Nokia phones. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your username and password to start enjoying email-on-the-go. The phone downloads all the needed settings to get you going in no time. Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mailbox (be it POP or IMAP) is set to run on the N96. The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. There is also support for attachments, signatures and you can hardly think of something important that the Nokia N96 is missing.

Music player flying high

The music player is another noteworthy Nokia N96 application. With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone won’t play. Album art is also supported but unluckily there are no alternative visualizations. Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available. You can also create your own playlists in no time. The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option. You can avoid that if you upload the music via Nokia’s proprietary PC Suite application. The music player automatically sorts your tracks by artist, album, genre e.t.c. The player comes with five equalizer presets and if they seem insufficient you can create new ones in a matter of seconds. Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track. The dedicated music keys do help the sonic experience but, like we said, having two sets of them is too much. Finally the A2DP Bluetooth profile means that you can enjoy your favorite tracks on a stereo wireless headset.

Read my lens

Nokia N96 is equipped with a 5 megapixel camera with a maximum image resolution of 2592×1944 pixels. It sports autofocus and a dual-LED flash but unluckily no lens protection whatsoever. This means the glass protecting the lens is quite vulnerable to scratches and finger smudges. Just a quick glance at the text on Nokia N96 lens is enough to tell us that its sensor has been downgraded. It shows a focal length of 5.2, while Nokia N95 8GB has a focal length of 5.6. Having in mind that both handsets have the same angle of view this clearly indicates that a smaller sensor has been used in Nokia N96. The photos also come to confirm this. Autofocus is surely the best thing about the Nokia N96 camera. The software bit of it, that is. The atrocious shutter key is doing its best to ruin things big time. Anyway, autofocus is almost instant in broad daylight and quite quick in low light too. The dedicated AF assist light also helps here. N96 sure is the first cameraphone we see to achieve focus lock as quickly. Another nice camera feature is geotagging, which by the way, works with videos too. GPS locks are quite fast, so you won’t have to wait too much for your first geotagged shot. However, it’s not all bed of roses for the camera in N96. The camera key deserves every ounce of our indignation and we just won’t leave it be. The button is almost impossible to use and makes taking a decently focused photo a real challenge even with the great AF system. The camera UI of Nokia N96 is the same as in N95 8GB. Using our favorite tab layout, it offers extensive settings – starting from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity and including exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings. Various effects are also at hand, labeled color tones. However, we are disappointed to find the option of customizing icons on the toolbar we saw on the low-key Nokia 6220 classic missing in N96. The picture quality of Nokia N96 is decent but, much to our surprise, not as good as any of the Nokia N95 versions. It is quite obvious that a smaller sensor have been used in Nokia N96 resulting in a reduced dynamic range. The handset also has a strong tendency to overexpose photos which brings in quite prominent highlight clipping. The clipping of a single color channel, resulting in loss of detail is also quite common. At least the colors are rather precise and the noise is kept to a decent level. In favorable weather there is more than enough detail and even foliage seems to come out pretty well. Sharpness levels are also very good with no traces of excessive sharpening.

Key features:

• 2.8″ 16M-color TFT LCD display of QVGA resolution
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash and AF assist light
• Built-in DVB-H TV tuner
• Symbian OS 9.3 with S60 3.2 UI
• Dual ARM 9 264 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM
• 3G with HSDPA support
• Quad-band GSM support
• Wi-Fi with UPnP technology
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS functionality and 3 months of free voice-guided navigation
• Dual slide design with dedicated gaming/audio keys
• Massive 16GB onboard storage
• microSD card slot with microSDHC support
• Built-in accelerometer for UI auto-rotation
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• TV out
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• Car charger in the retail package
• VGA video recording at 30fps
• USB and Bluetooth v2.0
• One free N-gage game and Transformers movie preloaded
• Keypad locking slide key

Main disadvantages:

• Inadequate battery life
• No camera lens protection
• The N81-inspired design
• No office document editing out of the box
• Doesn’t charge via the USB port
• Dreadful camera key
• Cheap looking keypad
• Unreasonably hefty price tag

Conclusion

On the whole we are impressed with the N96. It offers noteworthy upgrades to its forerunner, such as the DVB-H tuner (not usable in the States) and 16GB of internal memory with further expansion, and the design is also greatly refined. Running S60 Feature Pack 3 gives the N96 the flexibility to handle most anything the user throws at it. With an overall capacity of 28GB of memory (and theoretical capacity for 48GB) and a large screen it serves as a worthy PMP replacement. The camera and camcorder on the whole was very good, and would do as an everyday point and shoot. Our real gripe is with the fit and finish of the phone. Though it is improved over the N95, the key layout is still cramped and we’re not a fan of the materials used. The white backlighting seeps out of cracks on the front cluster so much that it resembles a cheap knockoff in the dark. No matter how you spin it the N96 is fat; it’s too wide in our hands and too thick in our pocket and the simple way to remedy this is to remove the slider and keypad. Nokia is definitely moving in the right design direction and as far as function goes the N96 still on the short list of premium devices, but we’d recommend US users wait until the North American version is released, which will support 3G on this side of the pond. With the likes of Samsung, Apple and HTC nipping at their heels with converged devices that take form just as seriously as function, Nokia seems to have taken more of a lateral step than pushing forward with innovation. Of course, the same could be said of Apple.

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