New Nokia N96

Wow, New Nokia N96 Coming.

I can’t read German, but it’s more than obvious what it means, and you can do the Google Search yourself and you’ll see!

Edit by Chris: Because I´m from Germany, I´ll translate:

“Nokia Germany - Nokia N96 - Features
Video- and TV-Entertainment in premium-quality. Just turn on and enjoy entertainment on the go.“

After I read the 16GB part, I realized that this might be in direct competition against the newly announced Apple iPhone 16GB, although we know that the iPhone doesn’t stand a chance against it.As mentioned in most blogs, the N96 surely seems like a dual slide N81, bundled with N95 specs.

What isn’t very interesting are the specs, I am really wondering why the Dual LED was chosen instead of a powerful Xenon, surely the N96 doesn’t live up to the standards of Nokia flagship phones.

Another disappointing feature is the mediocre battery power, there isn’t much that can be done with 950 mAh battery, especially if the product you are creating is better than a Nokia N95.
One improvement is being Quadband, which means that 3G speeds could be achieved anywhere in the world where you find a network. Of course that brings the battery issue again, how can HSDPA speeds be maintained, say if you leave you IM on background, the battery will most definitely run out very quickly.

GPS can also be discussed, I’m quite happy with N95s GPS on the latest firmware version, I don’t allow it to connect to network and I still get a lock under a minute, but for the N96 they could have implemented the long awaited Sirf Star III. The battery still plays a role here, on a N95 the battery runs out in 3 hours from fully charged, if you leave the Maps running with a GPS lock.

Camerawise, 5 megapixels aren’t enough anymore, especially when you are talking about a N9x, and the competition that is coming up this year. A good thing though is that you will be able to use the flash during video recording. A extreme disadvantage of the camera is the lack of optical zoom, which sounds like tradition on Nokia phones.

A feature only really marketed in the rare Nokia N92 and N77 is the DVB-h, but again the battery life isn’t promissing, and I remember how I couldn’t even watch a movie on the DVB-h enable Nokia 7710.

N96 Specs:

Quadband EDGE
Dualband HSDPA 850/2100 MHz
DVB-H Class C
92 cc volume
125 gram weight
103 x 55 x 18 mm
16 GB internal memory and microSD slot
950 mAh battery
6.1 cm (2.8 inch) 320×240 display with 16 million colors
3.5 mm headphone jack
WiFi (802.11b/g)
AGPS
5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens that also does VGA video recording at 30 FPS, Dual LED flash that can also be used when video recording!
S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 (Flash Lite 3 enabled web browser included)
microUSB