Nokia N96

Nokia N96 is a new member of the N series of phones which have always been the most feature packed and desirable but not only geeks, but also very demanding users.

Introduction:
The new Nokia N96 is maybe not the pretties cell phone of the market, but in many respects it is most certainly one of the most powerful. The phone features 16GB of internal memory and a memory card slot supporting 8GB cards and supposedly also 16GB ones so it seems that Nokia N96 might have up to 32GB. Additionally, the phone has great loudspeaker, 5 megapixel camera, and GPS receiver. It all sounds very well, but how does it work? Let’s have a look at the details.


Nokia N96 pros:
+ 2.8″ 16M-color TFT LCD display of QVGA resolution
+ 16GB built-in storage
+ Dual ARM 9 264 MHz CPU
+ 128 MB of RAM
+ 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
+ 3G with HSDPA support
+ Quad-band GSM support
+ Wi-Fi with UPnP
+ Built-in GPS with A-GPS functionality with 3 months of free voice-guided navigation
+ microSD card slot
+ Built-in accelerometer for UI auto-rotation

Nokia N96 cons:
- Terrible battery life
- No camera lens protection
- Cheapish look
- No document editing out of the box
- Doesn’t charge via the USB port
- Appalling camera key


The design:
Nokia N96 measures 103 x 55 x 18mm and weighs 125 grams. The front of the phone is dominated by the 2.8-inch screen with excellent brightness and direct sunlight legibility. Below the screen are several buttons which for people with bigger fingers might seem too tightly squeezed together. The front of the phone looks a bit cheap  and in fact it looks a bit worse than the rear, surprising though it may be. There are dedicated music keys, of course, the call keys and 11 keys altogether with the D-pad. Generally, all the keys that you will find there are responsive and pleasant to use.
On the right side of Nokia N96 you will find the dedicated camera key (of very low quality, and difficult to use) as well as the volume rocker.  Also, at the very top and bottom of this side of the phone there are the two speakerphone grills. The left side of the cell phone houses the microSD card slot and the lanyard eyelet. On the top of Nokia N96 is the standard 3.5mm audio jack, the power key and the keypad lock slider. The bottom features the charger plug, the mouthpiece and the microUSB port. As I have already mentioned before the back of the phone makes slightly better impression than its front and it houses the 5 megapxel camera lens together with dual-LED flash. The general impression of the built quality is that the phone is made of cheap materials which is quite surprising considering the price of the new Nokia N series flagship.

Performance:
Nokia N96 does not suffer any difficulties when it comes to reception, sound levels, or generally making phone calls. The Nokia N96 supports all common message types: SMS, MMS, email. The first two share the editor and provide information about the number of characters, or messages that the information will be divided into. The email client is really easy to use and is set up practically automatically after you provide your email account details.
With 16GB of internal memory the Nokia N96 is an ideal multimedia device. The music player is really good and the sound quality is truly remarkable, as is the loudspeaker. There are five equalizer presets  and your music collection can be browsed by artist, genre, album or composer. Of course, you can also create your own play lists. The video player is not bad too and thanks to the DVB-H tuner you can receive digital TV with your Nokia N96.


The camera you be fine if it wasn’t for the dedicated camera key which makes it difficult to take a good photo. Nokia N96 features a 5 megapixel lens with 2592 x 1944. The autofocus is very fast in good light, but also in moderate, or low lighting it is works very well. With plenty of manual settings such as white balance, sharpness, contrast, ISO, and exposure compensation the photos taken with Nokia N96 might be good if it wasn’t for the terrible dedicated key which is a total failure. Maybe if you are persistent enough and get accustomed to it you will notice that the general picture quality is quite good.
The GPS receive is also of very good quality and it is surprisingly fast for a cell phone. Nokia N96 comes with Nokia Maps and 3 months of free voice guided navigation which is very pleasing.

Menus / ease of use:
As the phone runs on Symbian 9.3 OS with Feature Pack 2 it works seamlessly and allows great customization. The multimedia capabilities together with large display and dedicated buttons make it perfect not only for making phone call but also for having fun. As a standard the Nokia N96’s menu has four different views to choose from and a few themes, but if you get bored with them you can find plenty of new ones on the Internet for free. Nokia N96 comes with the standard organizer with calendar, voice recorder, unit converter, calculator, alarm application. Of course there is also a document viewer, but, unfortunately, you cannot edit the documents out of the box.
All in all, apart from the quite cheap looks the Nokia N96 is a good and very powerful mobile phone whose main drawbacks are the poor battery life and annoying key for the camera. If you can live with that (and its quite high price) it might be a phone for you.
Selected Nokia N96 features and specifications:
Memory Functions:
16GB internal flash memory
MicroSD memory card slot (hot swappable) for expandability and flexibility
- Expand up to a total of  24 GB, for example with the Nokia MU-43 8GB microSD memory card (sold separately)
Approximate dynamic memory capacity indication with 16GB storage: 
-Video: 40 hours
-Music: 12,000 tracks
128MB RAM, 256MB system memory (operating system plus dynamic user data area)
Power Management
Battery: Nokia Battery BL-5F, 950 mAh
Talk time: up to 160 / 230 minutes (WCDMA / GSM)
Stand-by time: up to 200 / 230 hours (WCDMA / GSM)
Video playback: up to 5 hours (offline mode)
Music playback: up to 14 hours (offline mode)
TV playback: up to 4 hours (DVB-H)
Display and User Interface
2.8” QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) LCD TFT display with up to 16 million colors
User Interface: S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2
Active standby screen, Multimedia menu
Media keys, Multimedia access key, lockswitch, volume key, numeric (ITU-T) keypad, menu key, clear key, soft keys, send and end keys, power key, camera shutter key
Third Party Application Support
Operating system: Symbian OS 9.3
Nokia S60 third edition, feature pack 2
Java™ MIDP 2.1, CLDC 1.1 (Connected Limited Device Configuration (J2ME))
Flash Lite 3.0
C++ and Java SDKs
Downloadable third-party Java™ and Symbian applications
Support for Widgets
Call Management
Contacts: advanced contacts database with support for multiple phone and e-mail details per entry and thumbnail pictures
Speed dialing, voice dialing (speaker independent) and voice commands
Logs: lists of dialed, received and missed calls
Conference call
Integrated hands-free speakers