The latest hero phone to wend its way
out of the Finnish company’s labs is finally here, and we’ve given it
an exhaustive hands-on testing.
The original N95 was a revelation for smartphone users. Pre-dating the
iPhone, it was one of the first mobiles to feature HSDPA, Wi-Fi and
GPS, and it also packed an industry-leading five-megapixel camera and a
design optimised for multimedia. An update to the N95, the N95 8GB,
added a larger 2.8in screen and an 8GB flash drive.
But
a year and a half later, the features that made the N95 such an amazing
device aren’t as exciting any more, and phones like the iPhone 3G have
really raised the bar for what constitutes an impressive mobile. It’s
in this ultra-competitive environment that Nokia has released the N95’s
successor, the N96.
Design
As Nokia’s flagship
phone, we expected stunning aesthetics, innovative controls, and other
delicious eye candy, enough to make everyone that didn’t own one green
with envy. Alas, the N96 is remarkably plain-looking. It looks like
your everyday slider phone, and it’s chunky besides, measuring nearly
two centimetres thick. It’s available in a single colour, black, with a
champagne-coloured strip around the middle and an in-laid wave pattern
on the back.
Compared to the N95 8GB, it’s slightly thinner and
marginally taller, and weighs a couple of grams less at 125g. It also
uses the same dual slider design, revealing a standard numeric keypad
when slid one way and a set of multimedia buttons at the other end. And
just in case you missed the point about the N96 being a media-centric
mobile, there are also playback buttons around the navigation pad.
Continues : http://apcmag.com/
