Welcome, the N96.
Planet N96 has had a hands on look at the N96, and boy did we like what we saw. Although many may be crying out to compare the N96 with its predecessor, the N95, the new phone looks and feels so much more.
The smooth, rounded corners give the N96 a sleek elegance, and the dual slider ends feel reassuringly solid and well built. Indeed the N96 looses none of its elegance with the ends extended; they just fit well within the device. Although not the lightest of phones at 125g, this makes the N96 feel comfortably solid and robust.
The screen is truly lovely, bright and clear, so much so that the on screen icons make you think it must be touch screen ready! Unfortunately not, but the navigation system is familiar and should not let users down.
The camera is activated by pressing the dedicated camera key on the side of the phone, and comes to life fairly fast. The screen is used as the viewfinder, as in other N-Series phones, and there are a similar set of controls and settings to use when taking and manipulating pictures. The GPS tagging system is a clever add on, letting you know where the photo was taken, and if the system can not get a fix at the time the photo is taken (if you are inside, for example) it keeps on trying until it can get sight of a satellite.
The initial photos we took showed the camera to respond quickly and even with our modest camera skills the pictures were clear and bright, confirming what others have said that the auto focus has possibly been improved from other N-Series devices.
One slight concern was that the N-Gage application seems to take a long time time to initialise, even before the game starts to load, but this may just be down to our first experiences. Once loaded everything seemed to play fine though. In addition the ‘kick’ stand is even more flimsy than we feared, and I can see lots of complaints due to breakages occurring in normal use of the phone – either that or people just won’t use the kick stand.
All in all, and after only a short period with the N96 so far, there is lots to love about the N96, and only a few things that were not quite as good as we had hoped.
Tags: Nokia N96 Review