Nokia N96 Review
The new Nokia N96
I currently have an N95 and use most of the applications and services available to me. I heard a lot of hype regarding the N96 model so I jumped at the chance to have a play with one and put a personal review up online.
I’ve heard all the negative stories re: the N95 and I must admit my first N95 was poor – rubbish battery life, an eternity to load up a few applications and it wasn’t the toughest of mobiles. The 2nd N95 (and current phone) is much better though and fixes all the issues mentioned above, so maybe some are just put together better.
As I didn’t have any other phones handy to compare with the N96, I used my N95.
Design
The first thing that hit me was the updated design, the corners are rounded and the edges have a smooth feel to them. The size is also smaller than the N95; when checking the phones specs the N95 was around 21mm in thickness, the new N96 is now 18mm – not the greatest of reductions but it does feel lighter and more comfortable in your pocket.
The screen is nice and big and you can see everything really easily and clearly, even in bright sunlight. The keys are all flush with the rest of the casing and the T9 keyboard is probably the only let down – I much prefer a slight raise and edging to each key so I can feel instantly which key I’m pressing. I couldn’t do this with the N96 and my blind “I’m running late” test text message was not good!
The N96 media stand
A new feature is that of the mobile stand that is on the back of the casing – you need talons to get to it, but once its out, you can rest the N96 like a mini TV set so you can watch videos etc. without the need for holding it in your hands. I also think the positioning of the 3.5mm jack is better compared to the N95 when you’ve got the phone in this kind of position.
Durability
My N95 has survived the ultimate durability test of my 2 year old nephew constantly sliding, dropping and playing with it for over 4 hours. Personally I couldn’t test the N96 that much as I didn’t want to hand it back broken but I think I prefer the chunkier N95 in this instance.
The N96 does feel solid and a tight fit with the rest of the casing and movable parts, but there is an underlying feeling that one too many drops from a height over 6 inches would result in some damage occurring.
Speed / Performance
This is one area where I was hoping to see marked improvements, sadly I was let down. I ran tests from idle (with no applications open) to having 3 to 4 apps running at the same time and there was very little difference between the N95 and the N96, in some cases the N95 was a second or so quicker, in other cases the N96 was slightly quicker. Overall though there are still massive lags when switching between apps and this can get frustrating.
Having said that, the menu system worked with no problems and it was intuitive and easy to pick up and navigate through the tree menu. Once applications were open, they worked like a charm and the Internet and GPS seemed to connect fairly quickly.
Features / Applications
The N96 does have everything you can possibly think of rolled into the package. The camera is great and takes excellent photos, even with full zoom on. The range of connectivity available is dizzying – HSDPA, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, A2DP stereo, bluetooth, 16GB of memory, a micro-SD expansion slot, support for a range of music and image file extensions and so on. My only problem is that the N95 has most of this too!
The 16GB of memory is great though and means you can get more out of your phone than ever before.
Battery Life
Not much to say on this one other than it is still pretty poor! If you’re just using a few apps here and there, you can generally last a few days before you get the annoying reminder beep to tell you Nokia haven’t bothered to spend any further work on improving their battery.
If you’re hooked up to GPS or Wi-Fi while taking calls and listening to some music, then you’d better take a charger with you as you won’t get through the working day.
Cost
A quick check online for the N96 has shown the average price to be around $900 to $1,000. I checked on myshopping.com.au, shopbot.com.au,getprice.com.au and ausprices.com.au.
The cheapest I could find it was $880 for an unlocked phone. I didn’t want to spend too much time looking at the different contract offers that companies promote as you can generally play them off against each other and get a better deal than is advertised. Personally I think $880 is quite alot of money for the N96.
The Nokia N96
The Nokia N96
Overall
The N96 isn’t necessarily the next step up from the N95, but you would think that Nokia should have made some significant improvements or enhancements to their current flagship model of the N95. Unfortunately this phone just struggles to impress, which is a real shame as I was itching to get my hands on one for Christmas!
It has some great features and small improvements here and there, but I think I’m currently happy with my N95 so I’ll be staying with that for the time being.
Thanks,
Tony
