Nokia N96 Review

Look and feel

Like the N95 8GB, the Nokia N96 is a dual slider which has both a numeric keypad and a set of controls used to navigate the music player and the video functionality. As you’d expect from such a powerful phone, it’s quite a chunky handset, however, the real let down is the plastic battery casing on the rear which feels cheap. Overall, the look and feel is a step down from the N95 8GB.

Features

The N96 is a techie’s delight and serves up everything you could truly expect on a mobile phone, including broadcast TV, a BBC iPlayer application, N-Gage gaming, 16GB storage, a fabulous camera and video camcorder experience, HSDPA web browsing and sat nav with A-GPS. You also get Wi-Fi, an accelerometer, TV out functionality, and a music player with dedicated controls and a 3.5mm headset port.

Ease of use

As with all Nokia’s Series 60 handsets, the N96 is easy to use with a multimedia key which gives you access to the main menu and a selection of soft keys which provide access to key applications like TV and video and the camera.

Performance

The camera is excellent, as is the video functionality, the web browsing experience and the music player. However, the computer-like N96 is also a little slow and prone to freeze at times.

Battery life

As with the N95 8GB, it’s a case of could do better.