Nokia N96 16 GB Unlocked Phone with 5 MP Camera, 3G, GPS, Media Player, and Micro SD Slot–U.S. Version with Warranty
- Unlocked quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and US 3G compatibility via 850/1900 HSDPA plus GPRS/EDGE capabilities
- 5-megapixel digital camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, autofocus, digital zoom and Flickr support; DVD-quality video capture (640 x 480 pixels at 30 fps)
- Wi-Fi networking (802.11b/g); A-GPS for navigation with Nokia Maps app; Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity for both handsfree communication and stereo music streaming
- 2.8-inch screen; 2-way slider design reveals keypad on one side and media controls on other; access to personal email; full PIM features
- Up to 3.7 hours of GSM talk time, up to 220 hours (9.2 days) of standby time.
Product Description
This product is designed for great video and live TV. Turn on and enjoy prime time mobile entertainment that suits your schedule. You can enjoy high-quality video on a large bright display with superb sound, store more of your videos, musics, pictures and maps with massive storage, and choose from several high-speed connectivity options to access content and services. Amazon. com Product Description
The followup to the sensationally popular N95, the Nokia N96. . . More >>
$516.97
I was extremely excited to open up the Nokia N96, because from its specs it looked to be one of the most powerful mobile phones on the market. It certainly lived up to its expectations in some areas, and exceeds them in others, but fell short with some very common issues.
For anyone looking for a camera/media device that also does phone calls, this might have been a serious contender.
The media player works well for audio, the built-in FM tuner is great, and the internet radio feed was easy to use and loaded with content. This phone does everything well, but not nearly well enough to justify its astronomical price tag.
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Things Done Right:
Browser – The browser on the phone rendered the pages I tried perfectly and it was very easy to navigate using the device. Bookmarks and other features you’d want were all there.
FM Radio – This worked like a charm! It was very cool to have this in a mobile device.
Light Weight – The phone weighs considerably less than my AT&T Fuze and Tilt.
Massive Storage – The phone’s best feature is its internal 16 GB of storage.
Looks – Trust me when I say the phone looks even better in person.
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Half-Way There:
Mapping – Rather than relying on a live internet feed for maps, it had very detailed maps of the US right on the phone. This is great if you are in an area with patchy service and need directions. But, it’s no Google Maps. I’ve been spoiled by having Google Maps on my Windows Mobile phones for some time now, and while the mapping application on this phone is good, it’s not Google Maps. Plus, many of the advanced features of this application require an extra fee such as turn-by-turn directions and traffic reports.
WiFi – Connecting the phone to my home wireless network with WPA/PSK was a breeze. HOWEVER, many of the features on the phone such as the mapping tool, internet radio, and others required use of data plan, even if you were connected via WiFi. And despite trying, I could never get it to connect to my computer for WiFi Sharing.
Help – The phone has online help for nearly every menu, most of which was well-written and useful. Some of the more rare settings had no help, however.
Camera – While this phone won’t replace your $200 digital camera, it’s better than what I’ve seen on most mobile phones. I especially liked the on-screen menus for making adjustments on the fly. The flash on the back of the camera is great for close-up subjects.
Voice Command – There is a utility which reads you your messages to you, which was pretty neat. And, you can dial your contacts through voice command, plus launch applications. Unfortunately, that’s all. Voice command apps on other devices allow you to dial numbers as they are spoken, play specific media, or dictate text messages.
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More Work Needed:
No Keyboard – This device lacks both a keyboard and touch screen, limiting all input to the numeric pad and a plethora of other buttons. If you are a heavy text/emailer, this is going to be a deal-breaker for you.
IM Difficult – The phone includes an IM application, but it was intimidating to configure with settings that I had no clue about. Other phones include apps which are preconfigured for Yahoo, AIM, and MSN, but that was not the case here. The manual and help were useless here.
Micro USB – Every portable device I own uses Mini USB for sync and charging, but the Nokia N96 introduces the even smaller Micro USB. That means that I need to carry yet another cable.
No USB Charge – To make it worse, you cannot charge via USB. While the phone comes with an AC charger and a car charger, its proprietary and means yet ANOTHER cable to carry.
WMV Playback – Despite being touted as a media player, the phone would not play any of the WMV files I copied to it. These were non-DRM files that worked fine on other phones.
AGPS – The manual claims that the phone supports Assisted GPS (to speed up your positioning) but it would not work.
Other Annoyances – There were a few other things that bothered me about the phone. For instance, the music playback stuttered while using the phone for text messaging or mapping, and there was no option to disable the power-saving features while on AC power.
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In Conclusion:
For the price that this phone sells for, and comparing it to other devices on the market at half the price, I find it very hard to justify recommending the phone to anyone.
Its only real saving grace is the 16 GB of storage, although some of its competitors will support memory cards with 4-16 GB of capacity.
If the price came down considerably, and they issued a software upgrade to fix several of the above issues, it would probably beat its competitors hands-down. But until then, I recommend passing this phone up for any of its half-priced competitors.
Rating: 3 / 5
It’s a nice little phone. The one I had just had a few bugs to work out. The battery I got in this first one did not last as long as the second one I received. The voice command on this first one was jinxed. About one out of 20 names I would say would 1st pick a wrong name, (which can be expected) but then would commence to shutting itself off and then restart. If I said the same name, it would do it consistently. Like I said it would do it on about 5% of the names. I called Nokia of the problem and ordered one from them because it was so new, and I wanted one made in Finland as Stu promised. It was also from China. The video and photos aren’t near as good as I expected. They were OK if taken in bright light. I want a qwerty pad. So I am going to wait for the N97 coming out in June or July 09. The N96 locked up on me about twice a day, especially if I was doing heavy internet chores, (on wifi). Sometimes if I would just wait it would catch up. But if it was in the middle of something and I got bored waiting I would try to back out and do something else and it was too much for the little thing to absorb so it would lock up. At this point I would have to remove the battery to get it to reset itself. And the release and the little catchs on the rear cover are sort of chincy and it didn’t feel like the rear cover would last very long removing the battery so often.
It’s nice to have the tv out cable ability but the stuff we record does not play back as well as a 99MB travel piece that they have for us to playback. This tells me that they record that on a good camera and downloaded it into the phone. I could get the predictive text shut off on some things but not on the internet browsing. I would have to enter letters til the thing told me to spell the word myself, which I wanted in the first place.
On the toggle buttons for the volume, they’re OK but the volume goes up one way so you would think that when the buttons are used for zooming that to zoom in would be the same direction as the volume increase. Nope. While this is not a big deal It just takes a bit more memorization. The screen shuts off way too fast, (to save battery). This can be reset but that poor battery doesn’t like this new setting. The second N96 I got seemed to last longer with the battery.
If I wanted to hear the sound out of the speakers I would have to shut my bluetooth off. The screen protectors are good just make sure you have every piece of dirt and lint of the screen before install it or it will make a bubble around the piece of dirt.
The thickness of the phone did not bother me either.
I thank Amazon very much for having a place for these reviews. I read them all the time before I purchase anything.
Rating: 3 / 5
This phone is amazing. But please keep in mind that you will NOT be able to use this phone on T-mobile’s 3G network, because the frequencies are different than HSDPA 850 / 1900 (american version). If you dont care about 3G, I really recommend this phone; however you don’t need to get the US version ($100 more expensive than buying it from someplace else) if you are on the T-Mobile network.
Rating: 4 / 5
This phone does it all dvd quality video 5 mp camera wifi and gps. I didn’t give it 5 stars because its a bit slower than my n82 the dual led is good but no were near the xenon flash on my n82. Also the gps won’t lock as fast. I really like the dual slide option with the media control their great they feel sturdy and have a nice click to let you know you pressed them. the screen is bright and pretty big compared to my n82 the over all size is similar with the same build quality. The Symbian OS is the greatest feature its runs very smoothly and theres lots of cool programs to be downloaded from nokia or mosh some are even free . This phone is a must have for a tech freak or any person who doesn’t want to carry a camera a camcorder a laptop an mp3 player a tv and some video games in your pocket ! the mobile tv is already supported in some US states with more to come soon. Also google maps works better than nokia maps in my opinion. Worth every dollar maybe 4 stars and three quarters
Rating: 4 / 5
This phone aims to be an upgrade to the N95 8 GB, but it falls a bit short of that. The feature set is only very minimally upgraded (mainly, more included memory plus a µSD slot, a pullout kickstand around the camera lens, and a newer software release), and instead, it introduces some new shortcomings.
The first thing that struck me was how much of an underperformer this phone really is. Using the included music player to stream audio to my Pioneer Car Stereo over Bluetooth (A2DP), it would stutter every 11-12 seconds, making for a less-than-stellar playback experience. I attributed that to its slow processor, though it is possible that a future firmware upgrade would fix this issue. Either way, i ended up returning it after a few days’ use in favor of the slightly newer Nokia N85, which in contrast performs much better and feels snappier overall. (And by the way, looks much more modern and sexy, thanks in part to its gorgeous AMOLED screen).
Secondly, a couple of other shortcomings from the original N95 (interational version, N95-1) are reintroduced in the N96. Both use a 950mAh battery, compared to 1200mAh in the subsequent N95 models as well as the N85, and coupled with its larger 2. 8″ LCD screen, it means that it must be charged daily with any extended use. Also, although it does include 128 MB of RAM (runtime memory), only about 45MB or so are available for applications at startup, so like the N95-1, it is subject to frequent “out of memory” errors if you leave a few applications open.
Thirdly, although Nokia have resolved their long-standing WCDMA patent dispute with Qualcomm, this phone still only supports North American UMTS bands (850/1900 MHz), whereas the newer N85 has tri-band UMTS (850/1900/2100 MHz) and so will be able to get 3G speeds worldwide. (Conversely, the international version of the N96 will not get 3G speeds in North America). In particular, if you plan to travel to Japan or South Korea, this phone will not work at all, wheras the N85 will. (All these phones support quad-band GSM though, and will work on 2G speeds everywhere else in the world).
The distinctive new feature of the N96 is its support for the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast for HandHelds) standard; however this feature is not enabled in the U. S. version, since carriers here have chosen to use MediaFLO instead. The price, however, remains as high as the international version (actually higher for most, since they would get a carrier subsidy in most countries), so you end up paying a premium for a feature you cannot use.
On the positive side, this phone has much better support for different video formats/resolutions than other phones (also N-Series ones); it will pretty much play any movie you throw onto it without the need for transcoding or resizing.
Also, it built relatively solid (mine did not have any creaking sounds, wobbly slider, or the like), and if you are concerned about build quality, you should definitely choose this over the N85. Or, you could choose to wait for the recently-announced N86 8MP (which upgrades the N85 with a 8MP camera, 8MB of built-in memory in addition to a µSD slot, and more attention to build quality).
One note worth mentioning about N-Series and other unlocked phones in general is that although you pay a higher price upfront when compared to other smartphones that are subsidized by the carrier (mainly, AT&T), you end up earning that back over time — at least if you include a data plan. The reason is that AT&T charges higher prices for their “smartphone”/PDA/iPhone etc. plans than for the standard “data unlimited” plans. For instance, the “data” portion of the iPhone plan is $30/month, wheras “data unlimited” for Symbian S60 phones like the N96/N95/N85 is $10 or $15 per month (depending on whether you also have unlimited messaging). Over the 2-year contract period for the subsidized phone, that’s a $360 or $480 difference – more than enough to offset the initial price difference. (So basically, compared to the iPhone, you get a lot more capabilities at a lower price).
Secondly, “unlocked” means that you are free to insert a SIM card from any GSM carrier in the world, not just those from a given carrier. If you travel abroad, for instance, you can go into a local store to get a prepaid card with local tariffs, whereas with the iPhone you are forced to pay AT&T’s international roaming charges ($1 – $3 per minute, depending on country).
Finally, regarding carrier compatability: This phone is optimized for use on AT&T’s network, with support for the 850/1900 MHz 3G bands. It will also work with T-Mobile USA, albeit at 2G (GSM/EDGE) speeds. It will NOT work with CDMA carriers such as Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, US Cellular, MetroPCS, and so on. For those carriers, there is no such thing as an “unlocked” phone.
Rating: 3 / 5