Nokia N96 Review

This review has been updated on 11 November 2008

Introduction:

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?

Included in the box you’ll find:

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.



You can compare the Nokia N96 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

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.

User Interface:

The N96 upgrades the Symbian S60 smartphone OS to the latest Feature Pack 2. The OS runs plenty snappy; animations are smooth, and there is rarely any lag. Now and again it would take a bit longer to respond to a key press, especially when opening the multimedia shortcut menu, though the lag was only a second or less and we’re really just nitpicking.

The multimedia key brings up a slick looking carousel shortcut menu for TV and Video, Music, Photos, Games, Maps, Internet and Contacts. Nokia’s OVI suite of N-Gage, Maps and Music Store are on board, but the rest is standard S60 fair. As we have covered S60 in other reviews such as the 6210 Navigator and 5320 XpressMusic we will not cover it here, as there is little new of note.



Camera:

The 5 megapixel camera has a Carl Zeiss Optics Tessar lens, auto-focus and dual LED flash. The front facing, secondary camera is a simple VGA camera.

Outdoors and in good lighting picture quality turned out very well. Color representation was true and for the most part lines were sharp. The camera performed much better at close distances, as you can see in the close-up flower pictures. The further the distance got the more blurred the lines got, and the leaves of the trees would run together when viewed at full resolution.


Indoor pictures were decidedly less crisp. Whereas outdoor pictures were closer in quality to a point and shoot digital camera, the N96 showed its cellular heritage when used indoors. Color representation was not as good, and lines were blurred from all distances. As we would expect from any camera with digital zoom, image quality degraded the closer you brought the camera in.


Videos can be captured in VGA resolution at up to 30fps, and the camcorder mode allows for video stabilization. We were very impressed with the results we were able to achieve on our test video. We shot out of a moving car at speeds up to 50mph near the end, and the N96 had no problem keeping up with us. Of course we’re not going to be shooting professional video, but we actually prefer the videos from the N96 to our point and shoot Canon.

Camera Interface

Nokia N96 sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution
* Note that the video is around 38MB in size

Options are plentiful; when taking pictures you have several scene modes: auto, user defined, close-up, portrait, landscape, sports, night and night portrait. You can choose the white balance from five predefined settings, and adjust the exposure from -2 to 2. Users can also adjust the sharpness, contrast and ISO. For videos the options are decidedly less plentiful. You simply have auto and night mode, white balance and color tone adjustment and the ability to turn the light on and off.

Another very cool feature is geotagging, which embeds GPS info into pictures so the user can remember where it was taken. We were pleased with the camera, but have to mention how much we dislike the camera button. Like the power button the travel to engage it is too far, and being small you really have to press it the right way to make sure it is fully depressed.

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).


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.

Unfortunately we were not able to test out the DVB-H tuner for mobile digital TV, as we are testing this phone in the US.

Performance:

The N96 retains the same 128MB RAM/256MB ROM found on the N95 8GB, but upgrades the processor from the 332MHz ARM 11 found on the original to Dual CPU ARM 9 running at just 2x264MHz.

We got rave reviews about how clear we were, with our typical test caller saying we sounded the best we ever had.
Our end was not nearly as good, however. We’re not quite sure how to describe it, because we had no issues understanding the caller and his voice tone was normal, but he sounded distant and for lack of a better word muddled, like there was a handkerchief over the earpiece. Speakerphone performance was admirable as well. Our caller said we sounded more tinny and hollow, but he could still hear us well enough and on our end it was clear and coherent. It’s plenty loud for most settings.

We were not able to run our own tests, but according to Nokia the battery life is actually decreased from 5 hours of talk time on the N95 8GB down to a mere 3.66 hours on the N96. It is listed at 14 hours of music playback or 5 hours of video (4 hours of DVB-H TV.)

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.