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.

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Nokia Morph: Not a phone

The future of mobile phones is this: there won’t be phones as we know it. Looking at the “future” as suggested by Nokia, the concept of the Morph goes way beyond mobile phone technology. Essentially speaking, a “phone” by definition today implies more than just making calls - there is a camera function, MP3 playback and web surfing. Pretty much, by design - a computer.

The Morph is the closest thing to a portable environmental suit: more than calls, it becomes a repository for otherwise useless information like pollution levels, smell analyzers and other such things that require the use of nanotechnology. it can help us locate places and people, be worn as a fashion accessory, and be folded up into something more portable.

The funny thing is that when I re-read what I just wrote, I’m basically describing phones as they already exist today (save for the smell analyzers and pollution level thingees). Cliche as it may sound, the future is not too far away, really.

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Nokia 8800 Arte: Let’s make “arte” with leather

The Nokia 8800 Arte is the latest in Nokia’s fashion line. There are two available units, the Nokia 8800 Arte and the Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte, with the main difference being that the latter comes with a leather slider. In terms of features, aside from the elegance of both units as fashion phones, the Arte displays a status menu of the time and missed events by tapping the metal bar at the bottom of the screen. The phone also comes with motion sensitive gestures like tilting the phone downwards to turn it to silent mode.

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Nokia N78: A cheaper N82

Cheaper by around 200 dollars, the sleeker N78 comes packed with a 3.2MP camera as compared to the N82. The Nokia N78 has a sleeker form factor compared to its predecessor. For one, the call keys are better located on the sides, and the four way directional pad supposedly also serves the purpose of a scroll wheel.

Nokia is quick to deploy their new user interface onto the new batches of phones starting with the N82.

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New Cellphone: Fido Releases Nokia 5200

Canadian service provider Fido Solutions adds a youth-oriented fun phone in the form of the Nokia 5200. The Nokia 5200, a budget music phone, possesses a bright color scheme and goes for about $25 Canadian ($23 US) with a 3 year agreement. The slider, which sports a VGA cam, Class 10 EDGE, Bluetooth connectivity and microSD expansion runs on Nokia’s Series 40, and comes with a 1GB card from Fido. If you’re on a budget, and happen to live in Canada, this might just be the thing for you.

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Nokia N95: Phone of the Year - EISA

Nokia

Europe’s leading association for consumer mechanics has just voted the Nokia N95 as the European Media Phone for the Year 2007-2008. The European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA), comprised of almost “50 prominent Photo, Video, Audio, Home Theater and Mobile Electronics magazines from 18 European countries,” as MobileWhack writes, has this to say of the Nokia N95, which according to them,”practically every feature one could imagine in a mobile device,” …”It’s no mere mobile phone and no mere status symbol. Pick up a Nokia N95 and you hold in your hands a state-of-the-art communication tool - the ideal way to remain permanently in touch and on track with the world that surrounds you.”

The Nokia N95 deserves the citation. A rundown of its powerpacked specs are: 5.0 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, MPEG4 video capture of up to 30fps, Wi-FI, microSD slot, advanced internet speeds of up to 3.5 mb/s, audio reproduction of multiple audio formats, just to name a few.

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Cellphone News : Nokia Luna

Gresso Unveils the Luna and Sol, the Only Phones with a 200 Year History

Scheduled for release on the last quarter of 2007, Gresso proudly presents their newest designer phones, the Luna and Sol. It is a phone that collectors woild surely love to have as no two phones are alike. Intriguing, eh?

It is because the phones are made of African blackwood,aged more than 200 years. That in itself makes the AvanGarde collection stand out from all the other luxury phones. Aside from that, the collection also boasts of other innovations such as the Roman Numerals used on the keypads.

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The Next Big Thing! GPS at Phones

The Next Big Thing! GPS at Phones

Service of Global Positioning System ( GPS) would continuously be countersinked at newest phones of Nokia. This thing will grow GPS as one of important fitur in every phones. “this GPS Service first time will be countersinked at N95 and points position of someone in realtime,” says Ralph Eric Kunz, Head Of Navigation Unit and Nokia map Corp, like published by Reuters.

The vendor handset predicts navigation service GPS as kicker phones the existing a real important. Even an analysis from Berg Insight express that produce of ponsel GPS in Europe and America will reach 12 million units in the year 2009, far more compared to in the year 2005 which only reach 1 million units.

Most available direction determinant facility in ponsel now relies on technology from operator. This of Nokia labours technology which no longer base on operator, only by using data from card SIM and new software support from, hence ponsel automatically can get the signal satellite.

“ Forwards other GPS Nokia will be countersinked this new service,” adds Kunz. Nokia starts industrial merambah of navigation beforehandly acquisition of Germany company, Gate5. Since then they started offers free map service and signpost to Februari 2007. While for navigation service they are synchronized is surcharger that is enough to be reached.

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Cellphone Deal : Nokia Buys Twango

After the success of Youtube and Flickr, a veritable ton of new video slash picture sharing websites have been emerging from the every corner of the Earth. And they all seem to share one thing in common: a really annoying, pointless name like Boingo or Whammy or whatnot. Nokia acquired Twango in a deal for an undisclosed sum of money. One of these sites, code-named "Twango", was acquired by none other than Nokia. Twango, I suppose, is a little different from your average video-sharing site: it allows users to share almost anything, from Powerpoint documents to ZIP files and almost every type of image under the sun. So it's basically a file-sharing site, kind of like XDrive.

One of the nicer features let you upload files through e-mail attachments which is slick. And of course it's free. There are some limitations like only being able to upload 250 megabytes a month, and also restrictions on what files you can upload. Unfortunately, Nokia did not release exactly how much it paid for the site, which was formed by a group of former Microsoft employees. They are, of course, all rich now.

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Newest Mobile TV Phone: Nokia N77

Focus at technology DVB-H which is popular, Nokia dedicates N-Series N77 having ability of mobile TV, enables owner of this phone can watch television digitally by subscribing to at having system digital television operator Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld ( DVB-H).

Nokia N77 has design bar that simple, under colour of design adopts N73. But, do not mean technology owned by it is also simpel. N77 focussed x'self in technology DBV-H for broadcast TV in ponsel. Simply info, this popular technology in the world.

Attention of lover phone will surely directly inhaled at display TFT which is big enough, namely 24 inchs which will present colour 16 million. this phone has suport stereo Bluetooth, microSD memory card slot, camera 2 MP and 3G support which video calls able to.

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Cellphone Review : Three Dimension Navigators from Nokia 6110

Nokia has launched to marketing newest phone navigation of N 6110 stripper has not is. Nokia 6110 is navigator equiped with by telephony ability and design for segment ritel. Complete feature navigation of course is countersinked in it. Nokia merges function of GPS ( Global of Positioning System) and AGPS ( Assisted Global Positioning System) in the handset. Cellphone which its plan will start marketed at second quarter 2007 is equipment of personal navigation with function of map integrated, routing a real easy is accessed.

Amenity of this access can be done with one touch navigator key. With this feature, consumer can see clearly and quickly its location in map. Do not only that, looks for specific destination or route and also location of restaurant, finite hotel of shop closest, only requires time split second oncely click only.

Besides can present three dimensions navigation, this HDSPA also can suggest best route to reach a location which will be gone through either applies car and also by foot. The instruction is suggested to applies voice manual and arrow guide at map to emphasize quickest street a destination which wish to be gone to.

The user claimed able to enjoy having immeasurable advantage from function of navigation in everyday life. Service bases on location also is including in it, which applicable to look for restaurant, sees estimate of weather or looks for tourism guide for week end.

This cellphone applies operating system symbian 92, ability of push to internal talc and memory 40 MB. Nokia 6110 also is equiped with fairish camera of 2 mega- pixel and a camera QVGA to do video call. For requirement of the user music, MP3 and MPEG4 also is countersinked in phone which is simple permanent with the b/w color wrapping.

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Cellphone Deal :Nokia to buy photo-sharing site Twango

Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, said on Tuesday it would buy U.S.-based photo-sharing social networking site Twango (http://www.twango.com/), but did not disclose the price. Twango was founded in 2004 but U.S. traffic data from measurement firms Hitwise and Quantcast and global data from Alexa.com show it has found little audience so far compared to sites like YouTube, PhotoBucket or Flickr.

Nokia has increased its acquisitions under Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who took over in June 2006. He has said the firm is looking to acquire more companies to strengthen its multimedia and corporate offering. "The Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks," Anssi Vanjoki, head of Nokia's multimedia unit said in a statement.


"We have the most complete suite of connected multimedia experiences including music, navigation, games, and - with the Twango acquisition - photos, videos, and a variety of document types," he said.

Analysts see Internet social networks as a key element in the future of the media business. News Corp.'s 2005 acquisition of MySpace has boosted the value of Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate as a whole.

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Cellphone News : Nokia's Mobile Printing Service

Nokia's latest foray into the photo printing market is the XpressPrint service, which so far is only available to European Nseries phone users.

Nokia's XpressPrint application allows European users to get photos delivered quickly and easily.

The concept is absurdly simple - snap a picture, open up the XpressPrint application, select a photo option (put your picture on a set of 10x13 prints, a greeting card, a mug, or maybe a teddy bear), and pay by credit card. The photos will be sent to CeWe Color for processing and you'll receive them in a couple of days.

So far, the software is only compatible with a couple of specific Nseries phones - the N73, N73 Music Edition, N93, N80ie, N76, and the N95. I'd also assume the N93i, but unfortunately it's not listed. Maybe they switched it with the N76 by mistake?

It's a cool idea, with one little problem: previewing your photos (and the final product) on your mobile phone is always for me a bit of a hit-or-miss. On such small screens, almost every photo looks good - until you transfer it to a PC and discover that the picture received a free Motion Blur thanks to those shaky hands of yours.

Still, I'd love to see the service in the USA, but unfortunately due to that sad fact of life in which the USA is about 2 years behind Europe when it comes to anything wireless, it doesn't seem likely in the near future. Whatever happened to NFC, anyway?

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Cellphones News: Nokia Theatre's Email Grabber Contest

In the latest attempt to get people to sign up for its Weekly Newsletter, Nokia Theatre NYC has an ongoing contest to win what appears to be a Nokia 7610, the "spiderman" phone.

If the prize really is a Nokia 7610, then you're looking at an older triband Symbian phone (v7 to be exact), with a 1 megapixel camera and rs-mmc expandable memory. It's a solid phone. The downside, of course, is that by entering the contest you're optin

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Cellphones Review : Nokia N76

My first impressions of the Nokia N76 phone: sleek and sweet.

• The N76 is definitely much thinner than expected. It's a tad bit slimmer than your typical RAZR V3 phone. It's also noticeably longer than the RAZR.
• I like the weight. It's heavy enough that it feels solid and has a nice heft, but light enough so that it's not a burden in your pocket. (the N80 is almost .7 ounces heavier)
• Build quality is excellent. The N76 feels like a million bucks - you don't get that plastic feel associated with cheaper phones.
• I'd have to call this Nokia's "densest" phone ever created - removing the back cover exposes the entire back housing, which is so tightly packed that Nokia barely found space to insert a SIM card.
• Speaking of which, the process of removing the SIM card is a little odd - you have to pull a yellow tag which is connected to a small piece that holds the SIM card. Problem is the piece is completely removable (it's not connected to the phone in any way). Losing one of these would not be fun.


• The flip opens and closes with a firm click. It's also pretty tight in terms of movement - you can't flip open the N76 with one hand very easily.
• Music sound quality is good, but the stereo speakers are not quite on par with the N95's.
• There's almost zero lag (post-processing?) after taking a picture. Wow. That's unheard of on any other Nokia phone I've used.
• You can't exit the Music Player. This has got to be a bug.
• The N76 keypad is responsive and provides pretty good feedback even though the buttons aren't raised. On the flip side, it's also easily smudged and covered with fingerprints. Can't win 'em all.
• That idle mode blinking blue light is inobtrusively hidden by the mirrored surface (front flip), in contrast to the N80 where it was in-your-face and just flat out annoying.
• The dedicated music buttons are actually useful, since they also control the camera options as well as the music player when the flip's closed.

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Nokia N95 Louis Vuitton Edition

While some mobile phones have had the privilege of being subject to cross-branding (Prada and LG, D&G and Motorola), some are just subject to faking. One of the more recent fake brand combinations is the Nokia N95 “Louis Vuitton edition”. If it were real, I’m sure we could expect more style from such a phone instead of a shadily-made LV casing.

• Nokia N95
• Louis Vuitton n95
  

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DVB-H is Official in Europe

It's official, all right: the European Commission today endorsed - no, not the next David Beckham - but the new mobile TV standard: Nokia's DVB-H.

It was a widely expected move, since the European Union already made a pre-announcement that it would be backing the standard.

Honestly, it's not that hard to see why: Nokia, DVB-H's main backer, is the only European company of the mobile TV bunch of bedfellows that included Qualcomm's MediaFLO and South Korea's T-DMB. Qualcomm's an American company.

While Europe has to abide by a single standard, it's just not that way in the USA. MediaFLO has an iron grip on the nation, mostly due to agreements between Qualcomm and Verizon, and soon AT&T.

DVB-H in the States is so far only present in a trial run somewhere around the New York City area, by a company called Modeo. Unfortunately, there's a serious lack of DVB-H handsets here, because 1) Nokia makes most of them, and 2) it's rather pointless to sell DVB-H phones to a country that won't be using them a whole lot. Seriously, the company has enough problems bringing in normal GSM phones (Nokia is only the fourth largest phone manufacturer in the USA) so DVB-H is just out in right field.

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Nokia 7500 Prism Phone

Nokia 7500

Who would've thought you could design a phone with just a bunch of triangles? Only Nokia, and only the Nokia 7500 Prism. See the whole preview below.

Operating Frequencies: Triband 900/1800/1900 and 850/1800/1900
Form Factor: Candy bar
Display: 240x320 resolution, 16.7 million colors supported
Camera: 2 megapixel w/ flash
Interface: Series 40
Memory: 30MB onboard, expandable microSD up to 2GB
Battery: BL-4B (700 mAh), up to 2.8 hours talk time, 10.4 days standby time
Other Features: Java MIDP 2.0, FM radio, loudspeaker, Bluetooth 2.0, EDGE/HSCSD
Weight: 83 grams / 2.9 ounces
Thickness: 14.4 mm
Colors: Black, Pink, Blue
Release Date: Q3 2007

The Prism is really aptly named. While the shape is traditional Nokia candybar, the front and back covers are adorned with triangular cutouts which is sure to set it apart from every other "normal" cell phone out there.

There's the full complement of S40 features onboard including Java 2.0, FM radio, mp3 ringtones, and Bluetooth (2.0). Camera is the standard 2 megapixel with a flash and 8X digital zoom, and a dedicated camera button. Additionally, the 7500 Prism supports up to 2 gigabytes of microSD expandable memory. Nokia's chosen to fill up some of the 30 megabytes of internal memory with a couple games (Sudoku, Tower Bloxx, Snake III, Music Guess) as well as five as-yet-unknown music tracks and "organic screensavers." Your guess is as good as mine.

The retail package comes with 2 interchangeable side covers, a Prism headset, pouch, and phone strap.

Nokia's Hong Kong site lists the 7500 Prism as planned for third quarter release, so you'll just have to keep salivating over those triangles 'till then.

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Nokia seen gaining from Motorola woes

Market share of the world's top mobile phone maker Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE) is rising, industry analysts said, after its closest rival Motorola Inc (NYSE:MOT - news) warned investors of a second-quarter loss and lower sales.

Analysts said U.S.-based Motorola had lost market share, much of it probably to Nokia, which sells more than one in three cellphones in the world, news that lifted the Finnish firm's shares.

Nokia was up 1.2 percent at 21.21 euros by 0827 GMT, against a DJ Stoxx technology index (^SX8P - news) up just 0.2 percent.

"With Motorola losing market share in several regions -- Europe and Asia -- I think the biggest beneficiary is Nokia," FIM Securities analyst Jussi Hyoty said.

"Nokia has a very strong product mix from the bottom to the top, this is a good chance to put distance between it and the number two and increase scale benefits."

Motorola said on Wednesday it no longer expected its mobile phone business to be profitable this year, blaming weak sales in Asia and Europe.

"Motorola lost a lot of share," Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder told Reuters, after the U.S. company warned investors on profits and rival Sony Ericsson (6758.T)(ERICb.ST) released its second quarter results. Click on story at

"A little bit went to Sony Ericsson. A lot went to somebody else, probably Nokia."

Analysts said earlier this month they expected surging cellphone demand from emerging markets to have cemented Nokia's leading position in the April-June quarter.

Motorola said it shipped 35-36 million handsets in the quarter, down from 45.4 million in the first three months, which could see third-placed mobile maker Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) knock Motorola from its No. 2 ranking.

Before Motorola's profit warning, Nokia was forecast to have sold around 100 million handsets in the quarter.

"Motorola's market share is coming down strongly and it could continue ... As it comes down, Nokia benefits directly from the vacuum in the market left by Motorola," Danske Markets analyst Ilkka Rauvola said.

"Sony Ericsson said competition has tightened and I think this is due to Nokia having ramped up its mid-range and high end products," Danske's Rauvola said.

Shares in Samsung rose on Thursday on expectations ahead of its second-quarter results announcement on Friday.

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Nokia says adds Skype to N800 Internet tablet

Nokia, the world's top cell phone maker, said on Wednesday it has made Skype telephone services available on the Nokia N800 Internet tablet.

With Skype, Internet tablet users could make calls through a wireless internet connection, Nokia said in a statement.

Nokia added Skype would be available for download for existing users.

The two companies have earlier said they planned to work on adding Skype to additional devices.

Skype is a unit of online auction leader eBay.

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