Nokia N96

First Impressions

Initial impressions of the Nokia N96, despite the hype and expectations are a little underwhelming. Persevere with the handset however, and it's a different story. Function wise, it's an improvement on the N95 in almost every way, and tantalisingly hints at the shape of things to come from the Nseries.

Getting the nice shiny new Nokia N96 out of the box, we pop the installation CD into our PC and get cracking.

The first thoughts that hit you as you weigh the Nokia N96 in your hands are all negative. The plastic back, the understated black and silver design, the fact that it is not a touchscreen, the fact that the interface can be real slow at times, and the expectations which have been set so high because of the clean lines and precision of the N95 experience. How is anything going to be quite so good? It is after all supposed to be the new N95.

Shifting between menus on the screen feels slower than it ought to be, although this may be due to the hard drive size; we are reviewing the 16GB version here, and we have experienced similar slowdown in other handsets when we've upgraded the memory with a microSD card. Still, you'd expect the menus to be a bit slicker than this given the cost of the handset.

Also, the gleaming plastic surfaces, which, whilst rather nice to look at, don't feel terribly durable or solid, and it doesn't feel as though you've got your money's worth. The slide, whilst definite and robust, feels arthritic in comparison to the slide featured on other handsets, such as the one on Sony Ericsson's C905.

Likewise, the little stand mounted on the back, around the camera lens cover is a neat little addition, but it feels a little flimsy; perhaps if it were made from a more durable feeling material, it would be more confidence inspiring. So, initial impressions of the N96, despite the hype and expectations are a little underwhelming.

Persevere with the handset however, and it's a different story. It takes some hours, but by the time you wrap the N96 up to say goodbye to it you have travelled a long way, fallen in love with its ability to handle all kinds of stunning video, and made yourself a promise that you will only EVER have a phone which has access to Ovi web services. Yes, the phone is that good.

Ovi is at the heart of the N96, and although they are not to be confused with one another, because Ovi is available on other handsets, and is of course a portal. The video elements are however well integrated into this handset, more so than the N95 and you come away with the impression that this is first time Ovi has shown itself in the best light.


Getting Started

What's in the Box?
Mains adapter/charger
In-car/cigarette lighter charger
USB cable
TV-Out cable
Remote Control for music player
Headphones

Setting Up

The battery charges in just under an hour, the back comes up very easily and simply clicks back into place with pressure, and the flip-open SIM holder, characteristic of Nokia, is far easier than most to deal with.

As soon as you switched on the phone, you get an immediate text about downloading software for WAP and pre-pay MMS and that went fairly smoothly, however most of my internet connectivity was using my own Wi-Fi router, which it discovered in seconds and just needed the WEP key entered. That obviously led to fairly agreeable downloads speeds.

I never got around to installing the Nokia PC Suite which is supposed to be good for installing more applications and transferring multimedia but that's because I freak out when it says that it will take 500 MB and at least 20 minutes. I press cancel, but it now says "tough I have to finish" or the equivalent, and it still takes 20 minutes just to fail to load the latest update of the Microsoft.Net framework 3.0, tying up my computer for the duration during which time I cannot even get Word to respond so that I can write more of this review. It's irritating, but the applications, once loaded form a bridgehead on the PC for Nokia, which I'm not too sure I want at that price.

The N96 packs in a roomy 2.8" touchscreen, which takes up most of the front panel. With a 240 x 320 pixel resolution, the display is really clear and sharp. Text is legible from most angles, and the screen is nice and bright.

The N96 packs in a roomy 2.8" touchscreen, which takes up most of the front panel. With a 240 x 320 pixel resolution, the display is really clear and sharp. Text is legible from most angles, and the screen is nice and bright. Above the screen are the earpiece and video call camera; cramped below it is a control pad with a large four way navigational pad and central control button, four shortcut keys, two soft keys, the call and end buttons, a menu shortcut and a clear key.

Music fans will appreciate the dedicated shortcut keys, though they seem superfluous considering that the N96 comes with the same four big music keys as its predecessor. Nonetheless, the control keys are well laid out, their function self-evident, while decent backlighting makes them legible in the dark. The two soft keys can be assigned any shortcuts of your choice.

The numerical keypad tells a similar story. It is made up of four thin black panels which hold three keys each, and is coated in the same black lacquer as the rest of the phone. But because the pad is totally flat, it is difficult to feel which key you are pressing. The keys feel stiff and are slow to respond.

There is a new default standby screen which invites you to scroll across from left to right trying things out, first contacts first, then messaging, a cool calendar, where days in which you have an entry have a corner marked.

Nokia traditionalists need not fear; you can easily switch from this new style menu layout to the old school Nokia layout. When you press the menu icon at the bottom of the phone (the one which looks like a 'Repeat' function icon on a CD player, located bottom left) the default screen jumps back into that classic Nokia menu mode and if you've had a Nokia before navigation is obvious from this point – if you haven't it's still pretty straightforward. The call and end keys are large and amply spaced, but the menu key is located so close to the bottom of the front panel, you risk letting the phone slip out of your hand when you reach for it with your thumb.

The next icon is the web, and as soon as you start playing around with this, the N96 comes into its own. There is a link to YouTube in the video bookmarks with a recommendation to upgrade to a better data plan (that is, of course, only if you have a 3G-compatible SIM).

Under web feeds is BBC, ITV web sites Sky sports, CNN, Royal Artist Club, Nokia N-Gage. Widsets, the proprietary Nokia Widget system is also here. Next on Menu is Bluetooth – usual rules apply here.

Next is BBC iPlayer which also appears as a shortcut at the bottom of the screen. The new plastic buttons on the bottom on the phone sometimes need pressing twice we find and it’s not until some time later that we find what buttons are for when the slider goes the other way. Whenever you slide the phone the other way, the N96 changes to a landscape view and gives you new buttons on the other side. In video they come alive and give you fast forward, back, stop and go, and a bar comes up on the screen to give a graphical representation of how far you have forwarded into the video, with a minute count as well.

There is a new key on the front, which goes straight to a video menu, on the N95 this was a button for the music player but you can see why the N96 favours video almost immediately.


Gadgets

a. Camera

The quality of pictures taken with the 5 Megapixel camera on the N96 is definitely worth shouting about. The dedicated camera key on the top of the handset switches the N96 into camera mode and is also used as the shutter button. The viewfinder scales images smoothly when you move the camera around to prevent blurring on your image. Operating the camera is relatively easy; all you do is use the D-pad to change the various settings of the camera. As you would expect, the N96 features the full roster of digital camera benefits, such as white balance and exposure settings. Navigating your way through these settings is handled by a bar menu on the right hand side of the viewfinder.

The quality of pictures taken with the 5 Megapixel camera on the N96 is definitely worth shouting about. The dual LED flash illuminates your subjects well in dim conditions; this plus the autofocus and Carl Zeiss optics equals, sharp, clear and highly detailed images.

It's all very intuitive, and thanks to the easy on screen prompts and sensible positioning of the keys. It has its issues though, with stiff keys rearing their ugly head again.

There's also a dual LED flash that illuminates your subjects well in dim conditions, and is (almost) as effective as any Xenon we've seen. This, when combined with the autofocus and Carl Zeiss optics equals sharp, clear and highly detailed images. Colours are rendered pretty well on the phone's display, albeit with a slight blue tinge. But with so many colour options to choose from, such as negative, vibrant, sepia and black and white, as well as a good range of white balance settings, you can easily touch up your photos before you import them to Photoshop. Macro mode is particularly impressive, capturing small handwriting almost perfectly.

Taking pictures in itself is rather awkward, due to a stiff camera key which is difficult to control. Its location right in the bottom corner of the phone means the phone is liable to wobble when you try to take a picture. Also, the lens is not protected as it’s not sunk into the phone, leaving it vulnerable to scratching.

The photo gallery lets you view your pictures in portrait and landscape mode and you can also zoom into them. You can scroll through your photos manually or view them as a slideshow, in which you can control the direction and also add effects. Scrolling through the photos is quite slow.

The slow interface can make this a bit painful but the N96 does give you handy hints as to what each symbol actually means. Going to photos you have already taken does however take some serious button pressing, which is shameful considering the majority of new handsets (such as the C905) have dedicated shortcut keys for your image gallery. The gallery itself, once you finally get to it, has various options for reviewing your shots. You can view them as a slide show and also share them online with your friends. Unlike the C905 the N96 does not put your shots into monthly order, instead it keeps them in a fairly standard and user intensive order as you have to wade through each snap to get to the shot you want.

Pulling your photos off the N96 onto your computer requires you to install a vast raft of N96 applications to your computer. This is very simple and requires next to no user input whatsoever. Simply insert the disc that comes with the phone and you are well away. However after installation is where your problems may begin. To put it simply, the Nokia photo uploading software is an absolute nightmare. It is incredibly slow and cumbersome to use with very little information for the user to cling to. In the end it is far easier to use Windows to move your photos around.

In conclusion the Nokia N96 does have a fantastic camera but unfortunately it is hamstrung but other factors which actually make using the camera a rather painful and time consuming experience. The combination of sticky keys, bad image gallery and poor PC software really pours cold water on the hot 5 Megapixel camera.


b. Video

The media button takes you to a set of video options, one of which is Mobile TV, I press it hopefully, but since I know this engages the DVB-H chip, I know that it will search in vain in the UK for any (this is currently only available in Oxford and Cambridge).

I get a message saying 'no Live TV available' and wonder if the UK will ever have any in the lifetime of this phone. Probably not, but the streamed iPlayer content seems to more than make up for it.

The N96 supports the old H.263 codecs, the newer H.264 and Windows Media version 9 video at VGA and 30 frames a second with hardware acceleration, and can output to TV in Standard Definition. It also has RealVideo but only at QCIF resolution and Flash video is supported in the browser. It has DRM support for OMA DRM and Windows Media DRM.

I look at video that is stored on the phone already and realise that it can store around 40 hours of video there and another 40 if I buy a MicroSD flash card.

On my version of the handset, there is a BBC Three doc called How to Rob a Bank in 60 Minutes, an episode of the comedy Lead Balloon, Mission Beach USA, and the documentary on Oceans (same episode that I caught on TV the night before). This really is mobile TV, and it looks fantastic.

Concerns that streaming video will not be of a similar quality to downloaded content are swiftly allayed; as soon as I click onto the BBC iPlayer which delivers content this way, I am re-assured. I find that someone has left a 241 MB episode of Top Gear on the phone, so I pop out the kickstand, rest the phone on the desk at the right viewing angle wind it up and watch it go – minutes later, I completely forget that I'm supposed to be writing a review – I'm watching TV!

There is a Mighty Boosh episode and one of Doctor Who, and I've stopped thinking about this as a handset. So far I have called no one, emailed no one, done no work, and have just watched video for 40 minutes. This phone could bring down the western economy on its own.

I tear myself away, and then decide just to watch a few more minutes and find that the N96 has automatically bookmarked on the video up to where I had watched. Neat. I have more TV on this device already than I have on my Sky+; TV on the Nokia N96 is highly watchable.


c. Music Player

The Nokia N96 even sounds good when you're not listening on headphones thanks to the two speakers mounted on the right hand corners of the phone – use the stand on the back of the handset, queue up a playlist, and leave it on a table top and you have your very own mini sound system. Even at maximum volume, songs played on the N96 don't suffer from massive distortion, unless you have the bass turned all the way up.

For me, the audio playback quality on a phone is essential, especially if, as everyone seems to be saying that music phones will eventually replace standalone music players in a few years time. I'm still enamoured with my Creative Zen Vision: M (30GB capacity) which I've had for a couple of years now, and it's still the yardstick by which I measure all; until I come across a phone that can surpass both the audio quality and the storage capacity of the Vision: M, and can sync easily with the various music libraries on my home PC, work PC and my laptop, then I'm going to keep my trusty old Nokia 6300 and my Creative player.

Obviously nothing is going to come close to having 30GB on a phone until at least mid-2009, so I'm just going to concentrate on the sound quality here, which is several notches above the audio performance of the N95 and is pretty decent all things considered. I decided not to use Nokia's own headphones, opting for my own Skullcandy ones – the 3.5mm jack means you can use pretty much whatever set of headphones you want – and the songs I loaded onto the N96 sounded great.

There are six equaliser pre-sets – Default, Bass Booster, Classical, Jazz Pop and Rock – which allow you to fiddle with and edit the sound coming out of the speakers; you can easily create custom presets of your own by selecting 'Options' and going to 'New Preset,' although, obviously, you'll have to have the phone in portrait mode to rename equaliser presets, a minor annoyance, meaning you have to switch back and forth between modes if you want to edit EQ settings and then make use of the four media keys.

Those four media keys – Play/Pause, Stop, Skip Forwards and Skip Back – all depress nicely with a satisfying click, and are lit from behind with a nice light brown glow, and are duplicated on the front of the phone, positioned around the main 5-way directional button. As you'd imagine, the headphone remote control which comes in the box also comes with these four keys along.

The Nokia N96 even sounds good when you're not listening on headphones thanks to the two speakers mounted on the right hand corners of the phone – use the stand on the back of the handset, queue up a playlist, and leave it on a table top and you have your very own mini sound system. Even at maximum volume, songs played on the N96 don't suffer from massive distortion, unless you have the bass turned all the way up.

Whilst the music playback quality is commendable, actually getting tracks onto the N96 proved to be something of a task. Maybe I'm just being stupid and not doing it right, maybe it's because Windows Media Player is considered to generally be a bit rubbish, but as soon as I tried to start loading playlists to the handset for the first time, the phone started to sync my entire music library, even though I had more music that it's 16GB of space could handle.

It did seem to immediately recognise my favourite tracks the ones that has been played the most ('Gareth Brown Says' 'Siberian Khatru' and 'Other Animals Are #1' FYI) which is nice, I suppose, but it's annoying not being able to have any control over this. I didn't even realise it was syncing everything until a message popped up on screen informing me that the memory was full.

Nokia Music Manager comes included on the disc with Nokia PC Suite, allowing you to sort and load tracks this way, and should you do so, you may well avoid the unfortunate syncing issues that I've experienced. I'm not going to bother checking it out though. Why should I? I like using Media Player – why should I have to install two audio file management programs on my computer when my Creative works fine with the one I already have? It's the same reason I've not yet got an iPhone – I don't like iTunes.

If music phone makers are serious about making standalone players obsolete, then connectivity issues such as this are going to have to be ironed out.


d. Games


I downloaded a trial version of THQ's Star Wars romp The Force Unleashed from Nokia's gaming device-turned-portal, N-Gage.

I played this for about 15 minutes, running around, stomping Wookiees, after which I earned a solitary Player Point which goes towards my personal profile. Player profiles are for ranking, so when you're looking for online opponents, you can have a quick gander at their profiles, see how many points they have, allowing you to have some idea of what you're up against.

Nokia really does have a quiet victory here. Its Ovi portal can offer music and games, which no other single hand sized device offers, and now it has all manner of video, but it is the games which takes it ahead of the iPhone.

Sure, the Apple App Store features a lot of games, but they are not so sophisticated as these professional games, and although that will come, right now the maturity of the N-Gage eco system is considerable. These are PlayStation (i.e. PS1) quality games shrunk to a handset, and they work. The positioning of the four action buttons and the D-pad also instantly lend the handset to mobile gaming, another thing that the iPhone, for all its touchscreen goodness, lacks.


6. Connectivity

Browser

The N96 has clearly been designed with web browsing in mind and this is really an area in which the N96 can excel. But, like the camera before it, the web browser is hampered by a clunky interface. But it is not without its novel features. When you first switch on the search function the N96 will ask you how you would like to connect to the internet. If you are in a Wi-Fi zone, you will be asked how you would like to connect to the internet, via the Wi-Fi or via your standard 3G (HSDPA where appropriate) connection.

Navigation through the pages is handled by an onscreen cursor and you click around pages in a similar way to a desktop computer. Page transition is swift and there is even an option to have multiple windows open at the same time. Again the sticky and stiff nature of the N96's keys does add a sense of frustration to proceedings, but this is outweighed by the sheer quality of the screen. Videos watched on YouTube looks sharp with no blurring and the quality of the external speaker is another thing that makes you forget those dreaded keys!

The N96 uses the latest Nokia Series 60 browser that can take in normal HTML pages, so you can browse anywhere, but it's not yet a comfortable experience and you have to tab through links using the central square cursor navigator.

We found that getting out of the browser can be quite tricky sometimes as the Back button can just rotate you through the last few screens. The trick is to go back to an earlier screen and then press Back and it lets you out and back to the main menu, but this is not at all intuitive.

As we said earlier it was not easy to try to set up an Ovi account on the phone because it is a clunky interface. After I have given up and choose to do it through my PC it turns out that the help system had told me to use +44 for a UK phone number. What it meant was use 44 and don't use the plus symbol at all. It is easier on a PC and this just shows why handsets are not going to overtake the PC entirely for some generations.


Conclusion

At around £450 unlocked, and free on most deals for a £35 long term contract, your first impressions of the Nokia N96 with its slightly cheap feeling plastic covers aren't going to be great.

However appearances can be deceiving – the N96 with its iPlayer and YouTube support improves upon the video experience of the N95 and titles from the N-Gage gaming portal work a treat. The 5 Megapixel is as good as, if not better than the N95, and pictures taken on the camera look great on the 2.8" screen.