The Nokia N96 has a pretty hefty reputation to live up to. The N95 was a true powerhouse, and the finest converged device of its time. With a 5 megapixel camera, 3G data, the powerful S60 UI and eventually 8GB of internal memory there were few devices that could compete with it, and arguably no one could do it as well. Then along came a little device out of Cupertino and the cellular landscape changed. Not one to be reactive, Nokia has stuck to its guns with the retooled N96 and delivered an upgraded device that once again aims to sit atop of the mobile industry; improvements include 16GB of internal memory with microSDHC expansion and an integrated DVB-H tuner for mobile TV. But is it enough to compete with the almighty iPhone?

Design

Though definitely inspired by the dual-sliding N95, the N96 is a much more modern and sleek device. Like the N81 everything on the device is flush with the exception of the directional pad and Multimedia key, giving the N96 a much more modern and minimalist appearance than its predecessor. The sharp corners of the N95 are now smoothly rounded, and the keys are only apparent when illuminated.

The front of the phone is comprised mostly of the 2.8” QVGA display. At 16 million colors, the same as the iPhone, the display is extremely vivid and colorful. It is easily readable in any lighting conditions, though oddly enough colors tend to wash out in direct sunlight. At the top is a pinhole front-facing VGA camera and earpiece. Below is the navigational cluster, which features right and left soft keys, the five-way d-pad, send, end, menu and clear keys and a multimedia key. Also hidden are multimedia playback controls, which sit outside the four corners of the d-pad and illuminate when the keypad lights up. The menu and clear keys, which are on the corners, can be a bit cramped and awkward to press.

The phone slides up to reveal a standard 12 key dialpad. The keys are all flush, and while they offer sufficient feedback navigating without looking is all but impossible. As is often the case with sliders, the overhang can interfere with the top row of keys. The keypad is also a bit too wide for our liking, and on the whole we weren’t too crazy about tapping out messages on this thing.

A downward slide changes the screen orientation to landscape and reveals four media keys- FF, Play/Pause, Stop and RW- that can also be used for gaming controls. N-Gage is also on board, and there are a few pre-loaded demos as well as plenty of downloadable content for the user. Like the keypad, these keys are dark at rest but illuminate white when being used.

The black face of the phone is offset by the silver housing surrounding the N96. Unfortunately it is plastic, and cheep feeling plastic at that. It’s not incredibly cheap, but cheap enough that we’re ashamed to see it in such a high-end device. The right side of the phone features stereo speakers at the top and bottom corner, which sit at the top of the phone when watching TV in landscape mode. It also houses the volume rocker and camera key. On the left side is simply the covered microSDHC slot. The card sits a bit too deep in the phone for our liking, which makes it hard to both press to remove and to physically take out of the phone once it is pressed in.

On the top is a lock switch, the 3.5mm headphone/output jack and the power/profile button, and on the bottom is the microUSB data port (that can also be used to charge) and the 2mm pin charging port. The power button is too small and travel too far, and you cannot hold the phone by the sides and press it with one finger, you have to brace it at the bottom.

The back is a glossy dark plastic, with a wavy pattern “etched” into it for aesthetic purposes. The 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera is prominently displayed, and is ringed in silver housing that flips out to act as a stand for the phone while viewing video. The single LED flash of the N95 has been replaced by a double LED one in the N96, but unfortunately does not have the Xenon of flash of the N82.

All in all the N96 feels just ok. It is actually wider and taller than the N95, though has slimmed down considerably. That’s not to say that this isn’t a portly phone, because it most definitely is. In these svelte days of the iPhone and Touch Diamond the N96 is the fat kid doing the truffle shuffle. It feels too wide in our medium sized hands, and while that may be a good thing for those of you with big mitts it pretty much eliminates the fairer sex. The sliding mechanism is good, and we have confidence it will hold up over time. The weight has also been reduced, down to 4.4oz, but with its plastic construction the phone’s lightness leads to a cheaper (but not cheap) feeling. It could definitely do with some metal trim or a glass display (hint: touchscreen,) and while the design is a step in the right direction Nokia still has some considerable work to do.

Display

The 2.8" treat of a screen is probably the best way for Nokia N96 to salvage some pride. Excellent picture is a perfect complement to its generous size. In all fairness, brightness has been slightly reduced compared to Nokia N95 8GB but still keeps a very high level. The contrast is also commendable.

Sunlight legibility has always been the Nokia element. Nokia N96 makes no exception remaining perfectly legible even on the brightest of days. Colors do get a bit washed away in the strong sun but this doesn't greatly affect usability.

Keypad

Remember that "frightfully ugly fellow, but he does have his uses!" line? Well, we cannot possibly think of any better way of describing the alphanumeric keypad of Nokia N96 (could've said the same about the navigation pad).

The cheap plastic looks (6220 classic, anyone?) aside, the keypad of Nokia N96 is OK to type on. Size is adequate even though the rows are a little narrow. There are no distinct borders between keys and the key stroke isn't the best we've seen but that's nothing you can't live with. With some time getting used, you may as well get to enjoy typing.

The keys reveled on top of the phone are quite nice to use with their size making them very comfortable even for people with larger hands. They have two modes - "music keys" where all four are usable and "gaming", where only the middle two are actually active.

The backlighting of Nokia N96 is strong enough but somewhat uneven. It also has a distinct yellow tint, which we don't really like. The white backlighting of Nokia N95 8GB looked a whole lot better.

User interface: Latest Symbian

Nokia N96 runs on the Symbian 9.3 OS with Series60 3rd Edition user interface. Feature Pack 2 comes preinstalled, bringing both visual and performance improvements that we first saw in Nokia N78. In all fairness, the performance updates are also available to some FP1 devices through firmware updates, but there are still some goodies exclusive to FP2.

One of the most important benefits of the new UI is the new Active standby layout, which now allows quick access to a lot more features. The standby screen is organized in vertical tabs with the D-pad used for scrolling them. Other than that, its functionality basically remains the same. The active stand-by screen is a nice and convenient way of bringing shortcuts to all favorite applications to your home screen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access.

Active standby or not, you can always change the shortcuts assigned to the two soft keys to best suit your needs. The Navi wheel functionality is also extended as compared to N81 and it reveals its full potential. Among some of the other FP2 upgrades are a new picture gallery and picture geotagging. They will get their the due attention later on in this review.

The task manager is a well known Symbian application, which has improved in terms of looks with the new FP. It is also now appearing on top of every pop-up menu. The shortcut used in previous versions of the OS by pressing and holding the menu key still works.

Finally, the S60 UI Feature Pack 2 brings some nice menu transition effects. The Symbian OS has been all too well known for offering little eye-candy but now it seems to be trying to catch up. It is still far from, say Apple iPhone standards, but those are too different devices for such a comparison to be fair.

The CPU and the built-in RAM are probably the two most important factors concerning smartphone performance. The 128MB of RAM are a feat in Symbian terms and is almost impossible to deplete. The things with the CPU are however somewhat different.

The dual ARM9 264 MHz CPU used in Nokia N96 is still faster than most other devices out there but is a downgrade from the dual ARM 11 332 MHz that we saw on both Nokia N95 versions. Truth to be told, only heavy apps (N-gage for example) can make the difference as far as we can tell. We still can't help but wonder why downgrade one of most important parts of what's supposed to be the new Nseries flagship.

The Nokia N96 user-available memory extends to a little less than 15GB (it's an old trick rounding off every 1000 bytes to a kilobyte, plus there's system-reserved capacity). It still is an impressive space to fill up but even if you do there's a microSD card slot to help you. Accessing content on the card or the phone memory is done at about the same speed.

The multimedia menu is among the Nseries highlights and the Nokia N96 is hardly an exception here. It is launched by pressing the dedicated key and provides quick access to the multimedia features of the handset. It is identical to the ones found on Nokia N81 and Nokia N82 with icons sorted thematically. They appear as drop-down lists when the respective tab is selected. Those can also be freely reordered if the layout isn't to your liking.

As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It's doing a very good job actually, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a high percentage of the spoken commands. You don't need to prerecord the commands nor the contact names from your phonebook, which is really convenient.

Multimedia
 
The N series has always differentiated itself with its multimedia integration, and the N96 brings this to new levels. The 2.8”, 16M color screen produce crisp, clear videos and the 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera produces vivid images. The integrated Nokia Music Store allows users to download tracks.

Nokia lists H.263 and H.264 codec compatibility up to VGA and 30fps (scaled to QVGA on device, SDTV max via TV out) but it was not able to play any of our H.263 files which were QVGA at 24 and 30fps. However, it handled all of our H.264 files which ranged from QVGA all the way up to 480x240 and went up to 60fps. Videos looked very good on the high resolution display, though we have to admit they weren’t as clear as on the iPhone. Either way we found the integrated stand to be very useful, and appreciate the thought that went into the design.

The music player is minimalistic and extremely well designed; though not as pretty as the iPod interface. It had no issues with any of the music we loaded, though it only recognized album art for one of our six albums. Artist and name recognition were flawless though, and it handed subfolders just fine. In addition to loaded music, the N96 offers extensive internet radio solutions and an FM tuner (with the included headphones).

Music Player 

Unlike the N95, the N96’s multimedia keys work at any time meaning that the phone does not need to be opened to control your media. Truth be told, the slide out media keys are now worthless as such, and in future devices we’d expect to see a heavier focus on their N-Gage integration as opposed to media control.

Sound quality was very good with the right headphones, but the included ones are sorely lacking. With our headphones the bass was rich and the highs crisp, definitely on par with an iPod. There is really no reason for N96 owners to carry a separate PMP, though sadly it does not support gapless output. The stereo speakers were plenty loud, much more so than the iPhone, and quality was about the same. The highs and lows aren’t there and the sound was hollow, but for watching video and TV they were just fine. Stereo widening, which is not enabled by default, has a very positive effect on the sound output.

Web browser

Browsing the internet with Nokia N96 is at typical smartphone heights. Even the most complex and elaborate of web pages are rendered problem-free and fit the screen perfectly.

The virtual mouse cursor earns the browser another point. It is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help finding your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level and font size are also adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses.

The large display is one of the best things about browsing the web on Nokia N96. Even the smallest font is readable on the 2.8" unit and that allows you to fit more content and save some scrolling effort. The large amount of RAM makes sure you will never get memory full warnings even if you load several quite heavy web pages.

Organizer

The organizing skills of Nokia N96 are really top-notch. The handset comes with a huge number of time-managing applications and they all have nice functionality and user-friendly interface. The calendar has the typical three different view modes - monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for setting up - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The mobile office is also very well geared, with preinstalled applications able to open Word and Excel, PDF and PowerPoint files seamlessly. Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included version of the Quickoffice. If you would like editing enabled you will have to purchase the complete application from the Nokia Download center for a rather hefty fee.

   
Some of the other included organizing and time-management applications are a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you're good to go. This is quite convenient for, say, setting up your wake-up alarm.

Conclusion

On the whole we are impressed with the N96. It offers noteworthy upgrades to its forerunner, such as the DVB-H tuner (not usable in the States) and 16GB of internal memory with further expansion, and the design is also greatly refined. Running S60 Feature Pack 3 gives the N96 the flexibility to handle most anything the user throws at it. With an overall capacity of 28GB of memory (and theoretical capacity for 48GB) and a large screen it serves as a worthy PMP replacement. The camera and camcorder on the whole was very good, and would do as an everyday point and shoot.

Our real gripe is with the fit and finish of the phone. Though it is improved over the N95, the key layout is still cramped and we’re not a fan of the materials used. The white backlighting seeps out of cracks on the front cluster so much that it resembles a cheap knockoff in the dark. No matter how you spin it the N96 is fat; it’s too wide in our hands and too thick in our pocket and the simple way to remedy this is to remove the slider and keypad.

Nokia is definitely moving in the right design direction and as far as function goes the N96 still on the short list of premium devices, but we’d recommend US users wait until the North American version is released, which will support 3G on this side of the pond. With the likes of Samsung, Apple and HTC nipping at their heels with converged devices that take form just as seriously as function, Nokia seems to have taken more of a lateral step than pushing forward with innovation. Of course, the same could be said of Apple.