Nokia N96 > Reviews (32)

I can't say I've ever been a fan of Nokia, I'd be happy to stick with Sony Ericsson for the rest of my life. However, I thought about giving the handset a try, and have tried to give a fair review of the device.

The immediate look of the handset is that it isn't very striking. It doesn't look unusual, or revolutionary. It has a decent sized screen, on par and bigger than some of it's rivals. It's clear and has a good range of colours. It also has a built in light sensor to make sure the screen is visible even in the sun.

The majority of the keys, including the number keys, are flat. Whilst it's quite a good idea in theory, I found they don't give enough feedback, and become creaky over a period of time.

This handset was actually quite expensive, and isn't exactly cheap now. For such an expensive handset, it feels remarkably cheap. It really doesn't feel like very good quality materials have been used, nor does it give you confidence about how robust it is.

The camera isn't too bad. In fact, it's not too far below par of the 8.1MP cameras on some of the latest Sony Ericsson mobiles. In fact, in certain low light conditions, the quality is actually slightly better. It also has a secondary VGA front facing camera for video calling.

One of the best features of this handset at the time was the fact that it offered VGA video recording. Combined with a 5MP camera it had good quality video that was 'watchable' on PC or TV. However, with the introduction of VGA video recording to the 8MP cameras on Sony Ericsson handsets, this has lost a vital foothold.

I'm unsure whether Nokia intended this to be a multmedia phone, but from the dual way slider, kickstand and stereo speakers, it certainly gives that impression. It's a shame then that the music player isn't that great. It has visualisations, album art and most of the basics you would expect. Unfortunately, the audio quality through the speakers is appalling. Way below standards of most other mobiles out there, even those that are almost half the price.

As with most mobiles, the N96 supports themes. One of the advantages this has over Sony Ericsson is that the menu icons themselves can actually be changed and customised. Unfortunately, the menus and options on the phone can be quite complicated and difficult to find if you're not a regular Nokia user.

As with most mobiles, the N96 comes with Nokia's mobile phone software. I run Vista, which the software apparently supports. Unfortunately, I've had nothing but problems whilst trying to use it. These range from the handset not going into mass storage mode whilst connected to USB, to the software simply saying that no handset is connected (despite the handset saying otherwise).

Next, the battery life. Well, it's rubbish, to put it politely. I find that a lot of Nokia handsets have the same issue. During normal use, without Wifi or Bluetooth, no GPS - it lasted about a day and a half. That was with only a few calls and a handful of texts.

The Wifi isn't the most reliable system either.

I regularly went to connect to the internet, and it would not detect my wireless connection at all. I've never experienced anything like this with any other handset, or my PC's, so I can only put this down to the handset.

The GPS isn't great either. The amount of time it takes to connect to satellites is way below par. Other handsets, such as the Sony Ericsson W995 is able to find a connection within around 20-30 seconds. I left the handset, in the same area as the Sony Ericsson, and it took around 2-3 minutes!

The handset does have a file manager, however I've come across one massive flaw. When searching for a ringtone for example, all of the files are put together. The is no way to navigate through folders to find the ringtone. I think this is very poor.

Being on the Symbian OS, the handset can run a variety of applications. However, it also means that it can sometimes be painfully slow to respond. When closing the internet browser, for example, which sometimes takes around 10 seconds to close. This may not sound like much, but it's a delay that shouldn't be experienced.

I would like to think that when it comes to mobile phones, I'm quite open minded. However, I've tried several Nokia handsets over the last few years. I see very little improvement in this handset. Nokia tries to add gadgets and features to their handsets, which are sometimes a great idea. However, the handset lacks the speed and possibly memory, to run these features smoothly.