Nokia N96 Review

It is becoming more and more difficult for current manufacturers to put a unique mobile phone into the market. Many cell phones are equal when it comes to their functionality, and there are only minor differences between current models and their successors. Unlike a few years ago, when mobile phones were gradually taking on more functionalities of other devices. These new models definitely made a difference at the time. The Nokia N95 brought fame to Nokia, which eventually resulted in the N95 8GB version. The same cell phone, in fact, only featuring a larger internal memory of 8GB, as the name already gives away, as well as a slightly bigger monitor and a different color than its predecessor. About the functions; the Nokia N95 already had excellent specifications, and the successor more and more often turns out to be approximately the same phone albeit with a different look. Up to now, Nokia did not introduce many mobile phones with a touch screen and perhaps the focus will be on these in the future.

One vital thing with any mobile phone is connectivity. This is a dual-band 3G phone with HSDPA support, quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE plus WiFi. The Nokia N96 supports stereo Bluetooth and high-speed USB 2.0. Sadly, the N96 lacks an FM transmitter, but the inclusion of a standard jack plug should help for in-car connectivity.

Design and Ergonomics
The company have been following a very monotonous design template as far as their multimedia smartphones are concerned, yet it can’t be called an unsuccessful one. The closest thing in appearance to the N96 is a N81, while N85 looks more elegant due to the rounded angles, a different plastic of a better quality. The overall size of the handset is rather modest, only making 103x55x18 mm, but the handset doesn’t give the hand a comfortable feel because of the width and the thickness, N85 openly wins the contest. On the other hand, it isn’t even nearly as bulky as Samsung i8510, the Korean flagship handset is really huge in an open state, the size being its chief weakest point.

Screen
The screen of Nokia N96 is identical to the screen N96 8GB, featuring the largest diagonal among all Nokias – 2.8’’, TFT, some of the best screen quality around. Compare this one to the screen of Nokia N85, powered by the AM-OLED technology. N85 is notable for much more vivid colors, yet the palette is more natural with N96, also the latter seems to display a better behavior in direct sunlight, bringing about less annoying glare. We can’t really say that the screen of N96 is worse than the N85 screen, it’s just in a way different.

Controls and Keyboard
The block of controls is remarkable for the use of dedicated media buttons, unlike N85 those are operable outside the player mode. You can use them to switch tracks or start/stop playback at any moment in any menu, which is immensely handy. The buttons aren’t of the touch kind, they are mechanical and very responsive, bringing no trouble at all.

A Navi Wheel is traditionally available, remaining active in all menus and lists. The sensitive area of the wheel is limited to a thin limbo running along the perimeter of the navigation element. Moving your finger clockwise or counter-clockwise allows for rapid playlist browsing in a corresponding direction. The light indicator sits right in the center of the Navi Wheel and can be easily turned off. It doesn’t carry out any special functions like a message or a call reminder, a feature still available on some older Nokia models.

Battery
Nokia N96 is equipped with a relatively old battery, the same with the original Nokia N95. It’s a BL-5F unit sporting a 950 mAh power output capacity. The choice is easily explainable: no higher capacity batteries were available when the development of N96 started, save for a few samples too big to fit into the battery bay. The existing battery is on a comparable size scale with the newer BL-5K battery (1200 mAh, used by Nokia N85), but is a bit smaller. Neither BL-5K nor BL-6F can fit into the battery bay of N96. Nevertheless, the smartphone can keep running for a long time regardless of the relatively low battery capacity, it can run longer than N95, and makes world records in media recording or playback modes. Not only Feature Pack 2 contributes to this, but mainly the power-saving STMicroelectronics chipset.

Connectivity
The availability of Wi-Fi also means the availability of the WLAN Wizard application, which essentially is a simple program intended to help the user to arrange network connections in a semi-automatic mode. There are but a few options, once a network is detected the user is prompted to submit a number of settings. Network filtering is available, the security standards include WEP, WPA and WPA2. The scanning period during which WLAN networks are searched and detected is also adjustable in the options.

Memory
Once the device has booted, the remaining amount of free memory available to the user is 90 Mb; the total RAM size equals to 128 Mb, which is quite an adequate score for a modern smartphone. Heap Size and Jar Size for Java applications are unlimited.

Software
Nokia N96 bases off the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 platform. A comprehensive review of the base functionality provided by the said platform is already available in a separate article on our site, so there’s no sense in duplicating the sentences in this one. The preinstalled service clients include an online music store, Share on OVI and so on – nothing overly surprising at all.

Multimedia
The player interface looks quite standard, exposing almost no difference from Nokia N85 or N78; the same interface is used by all latest devices basing off S60v3 Feature Pack 3. The extra controls come in handy, both the buttons around the navigation button and the extra buttons on the upper half of the slider are used for rewinding, playing and pausing. Here we have a huge advantage over Samsung i8510 which isn't equipped with any extra player buttons, a flaw which is hardly compensated by the unmatched audio quality provided by this model.