Nokia N96

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel
Durability & Robustness
Battery standby time
Value for money
Range of features

Advantages:	Features and more Features .  Feels smaller than rivals, Surprising battery life
Disadvantages:	Twin slider feels flimsy, isn't all that useful .  Software still buggy .  Issues with some WiFi

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The N96 is the new high end at Nokia, and boasts an impressive list of features, and equally impressive price tag. Designed as a successor to the N95 the N96 shares many of the same features as its predecessor, most of which have been tweaked or updated.

What you get

The phone comes with a good array of features and accessories, many of which I will review in more detail later, however, it seems prudent to go over the basics now.

In the box

In the box you get a good amount of accessories. Aside from the phone itself (including the battery) you get

• A wall charger - Pretty standard with all phones. It uses the same, mini power connector Nokia have used for a long while now, which is nice. I like that Nokia have avoided temptation to change the proprietary power connector every generation like so many of it's competitors do.
• A wired headset microphone/remote and headphones - the headset is quite nice, with a standard 3.5mm jack plug on it. The microphone and headphones are separate from each other meaning that you can use better quality earphones than the included ones simply by plugging them into the jack plug on the remote. The microphone also doubles as a third set of media keys, for easy music control.
• An in car charger - A nice inclusion, definitely more than I expected to get, although it makes sense if you try to use the GPS Navigation.
• USB Data Cable - Also nice to find in the box. Although it is a pretty standard USB-Mini USB connector, it is very useful for transferring music and maps to the phone. Much quicker than trying with bluetooth
• Video out through a composite phono cable - Very impressive. Video out is an exceptional feature, but the inclusion of the cable took me by complete surprise
• Excellent manuals and instructions - Very good manuals to supplement the phone's built in help features

What's on the phone

Aside from the obvious (HSDPA 3g, Bluetooth, basic software) the phone has a very impressive list of features, the most useful of which being

• 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss Camera with LED Flash
• WiFi (B and G networks)
• Full HTML (Webkit based) Browser support With Flash Lite 3.0 (Flash 8 content)
• A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning)
• Excellent media player supporting most common file types
• Huge 16 GB internal memory, upgradable via Micro-SD
• Large 2.8" 240 x 320 pixels display with up to 16 million colours
• DVB-H Digital TV Tuner (Sadly no DVB-H Content in the UK Yet)

Design

The biggest change from the N95 is a stylistic one. The N96 has not erased most of the N95's bulk; it is in fact slightly larger in some dimensions. It is 103 x 55 x 18 mm and about 125g, but still manages to feel smaller than the N95, thanks in no small part to it's thickness. It is about 3mm thinner than the N95, and makes the phone feel much smaller.

For those of you who have not seen the N95, it is roughly the same thickness as a regular deck of cards, and about one and a half times the height and width. It is still large by modern phone standards, but importantly, is not the largest, or bulkiest phone I've used. It feels comfortable both in a pocket, and in the hand. Importantly, it is small enough to operate single handed

The phone exterior is nicer to look at than many Nokia smart-phones of the past. It has more rounded edges and a better quality finish than most of the rest of the line, with a high gloss black front and back. The buttons too are black, shiny and look and feel very good. The phone features some silver trim and a silver finish around the side. All in all, it is a classy looking phone, a few major, and minor drawbacks.

Like all high-gloss devices, it is a fingerprint magnet, and the nature of its slide design means you need to stick your thumb right in the middle of the screen to open it. This problem is common to many smart phones, especially sliders and touch-screen phones, but Nokia could have done more, such as a raised/rubberised ledge between the screen and navigation buttons to facilitate better sliding.

Secondly, the phone is plastic... Very plastic. I understand Nokia's problem. The phone is already big, and using the sturdier, classier looking brushed metal of, say, the 6500 slide would add MORE weight and bulk to it. Still, I wish they would have done it, at very least around the edges, because although the phone is quite big, it is still not that heavy. It almost feels a bit too light for its size. For example, it is the exact same weight as the aforementioned 6500 Slide a much smaller phone at 96.5 x 46.5 x 16.4 mm. To put it in context, when I showed it to my fiancée her first comment was "It feels like a toy", not what you want to hear about a top end phone. Don't get me wrong, I like the design, and it is, I'm sure a solid phone, but it could feel better.

Like it's predecessor, it uses the Nokia twin slider design, which, I must admit, I don't love. The media keys are replicated on the face of the phone, making the extra slide a little redundant. Although kind of useful as n-gage control buttons, over all, the extra slide is more an annoyance than a benefit. The main problem I have with the twin slider design is that opening the short media slide also unlocks the navi-keypad on the phone. On more than one occasion already I have found myself with a dead battery because it has slid open in my pocket, and launched my Garmin sat-nav software (one of my softkeys). I would prefer that opening the shorter slide only unlocked the media keys automatically, not the navi-keys, as it is very easy to slide the media keys open in your pocket, but this is a small annoyance really.

The Phone

The phone uses a slightly updated version of the Symbian S60 user interface of most Nokia "Smart-phones", so will feel familiar to anyone who has used an N-series, or for that matter S40 or UIQ phone before. Since it is symbian based, there is a wealth of additional software available, or soon to be made compatible with the phone to further enhance it's functionality.

Like all smart phones, there is a little learning curve, and users used to the more stable operating systems of "non-smart-phones" will feel that the menu's are laggy and the software buggy and unstable. Still, compared to most smart phones, the phone is actually quick and responsive. It can get slow and bogged down by running a lot of big apps at the same time, but when running only a few, the phone excels. Simple apps open almost immediately, much quicker than on the N95, for example, and more complex apps, such as the built in BBC I-player software are still snappy and responsive when run alone, in my experience slowed much more by network constraints than CPU power.

The phone is also good at being a phone. The N96 does calling well. The software seems to have been tightened up in this respect, and I have yet to have any dropped calls or random restarts while using it as a phone. The audio quality is very good, clear and crisp, and the signal strength is above average. The phone also works very well with my bluetooth headset, another plus, as previous phones tend to randomly disconnection from the headset during calls. Nokia have made sure calling is as much a feature as the camera or GPS, which is a welcome change from a lot of smart phones.

The phone software is still a little buggy when using some of it's more advanced features. My N96 on "3" came with a letter explaining that the phone was shipped with unstable, incomplete, effectively beta software, and that I should seek out a firmware update as soon as possible... not a good start. This update now exists, and does iron out a lot of problems, but it is still not perfect, and more updates will inevitably follow. Nokia seem to have rushed the phone to market to capitalise on the christmas rush for consumer electronics, but I would have preferred to have waited a few more weeks, and not to receive a "beta" phone considering the cost.

Still, performing basic features, such as sending messages, manipulating contacts and adjusting settings is both smooth and painless. The message editor is quick and responsive and the keypad layout and T9 mode will feel comfortable to most phone users. The contacts mode is simple and self explanatory, and adding your contacts is a breeze. The settings are logical, well documented and clear, if a little awkward to find in the first place (hidden behind the tools folder, not on the main menu page.)

The display is large, bright and colourful, which makes it a shame that the default theme is dull and mostly black. It is 2.8" in size, smaller than some new touch screen devices, but larger than most media playing phones. The phone is not touch screen, which I have to say I prefer. I love the iPhone touch screen, but so many of it's so called competitors don't work nearly as well.. For example, the Tocco has a 2.8" touch screen, but input is still done with a "Virtual number pad" forcing you to use T9 or multi-press entry for entering text, which turns out to be much slower than on a real phone keypad, like the one found on the N96.

The battery life is quite impressive. There was some initial concern that the N96 included the same battery as the first generation N95, which was, in a word, pitiful. However, through optimisation and efficiency, it actually performs, in my experience, on a par, or better than the N95-8GB, which had a much higher capacity battery. Ultimately, the battery is still not great, (which begs the question why not optimise AND use the higher capacity battery) and will drain quickly if regularly using features such as GPS and web browsing, though is more than adequate for normal activities. In short, if you charge it daily, you'll probably never find yourself without enough charge for an emergency call, but you'll probably also make good use of the included car charger and won't want to go away for a weekend business trip without your mains adaptor either.

Other Features

It's important to remember that this phone is as much a camera, music player and 100 other things as it is a phone, and these features, not it's prowess as a phone will be what make it worth the investment for most people. This phone is really a convergence device, more than a traditional smart phone, merging personal, consumer electronics like MP3 players and camera's into a single device.

Camera

For many users, the camera is the single most important feature of a mobile phone (more perhaps than the phone features themselves) and the N96 is one of the finest cameras around. It is a 5 Megapixel camera, based around quality Carl Zeiss optics. Many users have bemoaned the fact that it does not include the new generation of 8 Megapixel sensors, however, for me, this doesn't matter. It is a commonly held belief that more Megapixels = Better Quality, however, this is simply not true. A megapixel is a measure of size, not quality, and the optics, and sensor are much more important to image quality.

The optics and sensor quality in this phone are truly second to none, including all of the 8 megapixel models I have seen. After a fairly slow launch time for the camera, the images come out crisp and clear, with nice definition and colour reproduction. There is little noticeable colour grain except in very dark images. The camera focuses quickly, and well (after the software update) and does a nice job of capturing the right detail at the right time.

The settings available are impressive, rivalling those of many stand alone cameras, allowing the user to change settings such as ISO (100-800), EV Compensation and White balance. The zoom is digital, like most phone cameras, but that is the only real thing stopping this phone completely replacing the modern point-and-shoot digital camera, and the 16 GB memory means you'll probably never have to worry about shooting in a lower resolution to save space.

The flash is twin-LED based, not the Xenon flashes which have started to appear on some phones, which is a slight disappointment, but in reality, the dual LED does a decent job for most dituations, and unlike a Xenon flash can be used as a permanent light for video cameras, or as a make shift torch, which on balance means it's a fair trade off.

My one niggling problem with the camera is the shutter button. It has a really long press, and is unresponsive and awkward. You need to push the button deep inside the body to register the picture, and for people, like myself, with clumsy, awkward fingers, this is a real challenge. Annoyingly, there is no other way to take a picture (by using the centre button for example) which means, for some, the excellent picture quality won't mean much at all, since they'll never get to take a picture in the first place. Sad.

Media Player

Possibly the N96's crown jewel is it's media capabilities, which are about as good as you'll find. The media features will be able to take full advantage of the built in 16GB memory easily replacing many stand alone MP3 and video players. The N96 supports most common file types, such as MP3, AAC, WMA, Mpeg video, H.264, and even Flash Video natively, with additional formats like OGG and DivX a simple software download away.

The audio browser is no iPod, and will take more time and effort to find what you are looking for than on the Apple devices, but it is relatively straight forward, and audio quality is excellent. Like most personal media players, the included headphones are not good, sounding tinny and lacking in bass reproduction, but all of these problems are all but eliminated by hooking up good quality headphones. The sound is equally as good as the iPod or Zune, and much better than many cheaper MP3 players.

In terms of video, it is impressive, but sadly milage will vary, The included real player software is good, and plays many common file types, as mentioned, however, only a few of those (namely H.264 WMV9 and Mpeg 4) are hardware accelerated, meaning FLV, and even Real players own RM format will not always play well or at full frame rate.

Playing most video on the phone itself looks very good. The screen is large enough to pick up all but the smallest of details on an average clip, and subtitles are readable for most people. Additionally, ability to play video of a much higher resolution at full frame rate on a television is very goof. This is particularly useful when using the included I-Player service.

Speaking of i-player, the application works very well, the video looks good, though not really great, and definitely shows compression artefacts, even on the small screen. After a quick update, content is available over 3G networks as well as WiFi

The one big feature you won't use here in the UK is live digital TV. The phone includes support for the DVB-H standard for handheld digital TV. I am informed that the results are impressive, however the UK does not have a DVB-H service at present, so this is somewhat of a pointless feature. Although no UK content provider has announced any intention to launch a DVB-H service in the future, it has recently been announced as the EU's "format of choice" for handheld digital TV, which may sway things. We can but hope.

The device also includes FM radio, however, as of yet, I have been unable to get this feature to work, as it will not tune, either automatically or manually.

For both audio and video, one minor let down is the built in loudspeakers. They are definitely loud, but sadly the expense of quality. When playing music or video on full volume, the sound becomes distorted and crackles. It is recognisable as what you're playing, but not definitely not the best way you've ever heard it. Simply put, the speakers are too small for the volume levels it pretends it supports. Most users will do well to leave the volume setting firmly in the middle.

GPS

Like many recent N-Series phones, the N96 includes a GPS receiver allegedly boosted by the A-GPS standard. In theory, the phone uses your data connection (wifi or 3G) to send pieces of data it can't quite understand to a computer somewhere which makes sense of them and, apparently, gets a quicker and more accurate lock. In reality, most users will probably want to turn this particular feature off, as it doesn't significantly improve signal lock and uses your data allowance (when I tried it, it knocked about 10 seconds off the 2 minutes it took to get a signal lock outside, and still couldn't get a lock inside, as some users have claimed it helps them do).

However, GPS itself is a very useful feature. The included nokia maps application is fun, and useful for occasional navigation when lost, however, as it requires a daily, monthly or yearly subscription to use voice guided navigation, users wishing to use this as a Sat-Nav on a regular basis would be advised to look up alternatives from TomTom, Garmin or Route 66, all of which provide an N96 compatible version of their software for a one-off price. Aside from the time it takes to get a signal lock (as much as 4 minutes, compared to about 30 seconds on stand alone devices) I have found the accuracy and tracking speed to be easily on a par with stand alone devices, and a very good alternative to a separate GPS device.

Internet

Like most new 3G phones, the N96 allows you to brows the mobile web at near broadband speed through the 3G network. Unlike many phones, the N96 also included WiFi support and allows full HTML rendering through it's webkit based browser. Webkit is the backbone of the Apple Safari web browser and is one of the most standards compliant renderers out there. It also includes Flash Lite 3.0, which is more or less a mobile version of flash 8 for PC. What this means is some flash content will work on your phone, including a number of online FLV players, but a lot of flash stuff won't, as it uses bits found only in flash 9, or even was just created in flash 9, and not exported in flash 8 compatibility mode. Basically, flash may work, but don't count on it.

But technical stuff aside in layman's terms, all of this adds up to mean the internet looks pretty good on the N96. It is more or less what you would expect to see on a PC or mac, and even includes some interactive content not found even on the iPhone. That said, the overall experience is not quite as slick as that of the iPhone. The software does not allow let you zoom continuously, forcing you to choose between 50 and 200% size in fairly large 25% increments. It also runs into trouble when clicking a link triggers more than one action, for example starts a video buffering AND opens a pop up link (such as megavideo) as there is no easy way I have found of forcing it to open links in new windows. Additionally, and perhaps most scarily, there is no easy way to tell whether it is automatically switching between WiFI and 3G data. I understand that it does not automatically switch, but I don't know for sure, and there is no clear indicator telling you which it is currently pulling data from. It's WiFi seems unstable at best, and it concerns me that the WiFi network could stop working, and it would switch to my 3G data, for which I currently have no plan.

Conclusion

The N96 has a feature list as long as your arm, and most of these it does very well. It does things most other phones wouldn't dream of, and does them surprisingly well. It in fact does so much that I could probably write as much again about features I haven't even mentioned yet, and probably as many again that I haven't tried. It is a high end phone beyond the reach of a lot of other high end phones, and has definitely set the bar high when it comes to convergence phones. It isn't perfect, and currently has nearly as many bugs as it has features. Thankfully Nokia is sorting them quickly, and it is fast becoming one of the quickest, most stable, most feature rich mobile phones on the market.

It certainly isn't for everyone, and the vast majority of features would be overkill for a lot of users out there. It is for technophiles, users who refuse to carry more than one electrical device and people who know that having fun is as important as having the most up to the minute information.

When it comes to convergence devices, it will inevitably be compared to the iPhone, however, it shouldn't be. In many ways, it is the Anti-iPhone. The iPhone does the things that it does, and does them very well, but it isn't nearly this feature rich. The N96 does everything... literally everything... to varying degrees of success with the theory being, if it doesn't work well yet, we'll include it anyway, and hopefully get it there soon.

It's a bit of everything, the "jack of all trades" and yet somehow, still manages to master more than a few of them.

For me, the iPhone is a different type of device, the absolute epitome of the Apple design philosophy, the "Think Different" mentality. This is not the iPhone. Nokia is not Apple. It is definitely a Nokia phone, and is the height of Nokia being Nokia. If Apple "think different" then Nokia "Think Bigger". Nokia excel at cramming more than you think possible into a device, and with the N96, that is more true than ever.