5 days with the n96

[buxz777]

hi there

i thought id write a little bit about my user experience with the n96 , ive one for 5 days now so have had a little time to play with it

when my friend asked me to borrow his n96 and debrnd it for him i asked if i could use it for 2 days and lent him my n95 , hes not really a phone addict like me and knew id look after it and my n95 is pretty full with good software and stuff to keep him ocupied

anyways back to the phone

when i opend the box i was pleasantly suprised a nice shiny glossy back phone incased in the plastic box that nokia seem to use latley under the phone was all the bits and bobs , 8gb mem card , tv out , manaul etc etc

the phone seems a little on the heavy side but this gives a nice solid feel when its in your hand and it feels like it weighs more then the n95 but this is obvously the 16gb hardrive inside

the phone dosent feel cheap but it dosent feel exspensive either which is a shame as this phone retails at over 500 pounds it should have a more exspensive feel to it , maybe turning the silver plastic trim into a nice light metal would have been a good start

the glossy black looks awesome and put my n95 to shame in the looks department , allthough its a fingerprint magnet it easily wipes clean and when wiped it looks brilliant the screen dominates the front of the phone and allthough i went from a lagre screen the slightly bigger screen of the n96 is very noticeable indeed ,

when the slide is open the keypad is toatally flat , this took me a little while to get to grips with but i really like the keypad on the n96 , buttons are nice to press and again the gloss black keypad looks really nice the smooth texture is also nice to press and feels good

the multimedai keys are again totally flat but are nice to press they light up in a really nice way when you open the multimedai keys which was a nice touch

overall look wise i say the phone is on to a winner here , ok it is a fingerprint magnet but hey so is a gloss black piano and they also look pretty hot :-)

the phone does have a few slight light leakages no where near the n95-1 but there is a bit around the c key and the menu key on the front of the phone again its not bad but for a 500 pound phone its a shame theres any

id say the build quality is ok , the phone feels solid and i must compliment the slider here , it is rock solid on this handset and iam guessing spring loaded this time as it has such a nice crisp action i was really impressed and glad i didnt have to take a 500 pound phone apart to do the loose slider fix like i did on the n95 , however the plastic of the phone could be mixed with some more exspensive materials so it feels a bit more exspensive

there is also a slight creak from the top right of the back of the battery cover as you look at the back of the phone and also around the camera lens plastic cover

i havent dropped the n96 yet so cant comment on that but it does feel solid allthough i wouldnt want to drop it to much incase of cracking the plastic fascia and also damaging the hardrive via a shock ie while music is playing etc etc

i had a play on v10 and it seemed buggy allthough this was voda firmware so that was probably to blame , i debranded to v11 and it was much better

when loading the phone up with data i found after you disconnect usb or reinsert micro sd card the phone will be slow for around 5-10 mins iam guessing this is caching files for faster access later i advise just leaving it for a min when you have loaded data on it , dont just jump in and start looking for the new songs etc

one thing that really really impressed me was the music player via headphones , i use cx-500s and they were really crisp and clear with the n96 the sound coming through sounded much more amplified then through the n95-1 and it made the bass really kick in and punch and the vocals were pretty decent too i heard that nokia removed the 3d chip but have added a dsp like the n91 if they have it has defo made a difference to music playback as it is much better as an mp3 player then my n95-1

graphic equaliser also seems more detailed ie listing frequencys that you are adjusting etc

the speed of the phone is pretty decent i have loaded up my 16gb memory card with mp3s and put it in the phone , the mass memory has , 6 full movies on it , garmin and full euro map , nokia maps and uk map , and the rest full with more mp3s , the phone memory has 39mb left as this is where i installed the apps , it disapointed me a bit that the phone memory after a fresh firmware upgrade was 70mb when it was clean on voda it only had 39mb so imagine the rubbish they put on the phone nearly 30mb of it

i would compare the speed of the phone with my n95 on v30 it is pretty fast allthough it does have its moment s but lets remember that this is on the 2nd firmware and it has 32gb of memory nearly full to the max

the ram at boot up isnt great i was expecting it to match the n95 8gb or n82 but after a fresh reboot i have 37.4mb which is abit dissapointing , i have even had a memory low message while heavy web surfing via tv out and listening to mp3s something i was not expecting at all , i have checked my ram manager during the day and at 1 point it said 23mb allthough all apss were closed , maybe this is the downside to 32gb of files , alot of ram used so you can access them quickly?? anyway i was a little disapointed with the ram at boot but the phone performed well and that dreaded low memory warnung was a once off so far opera mini never gives it at all and the native browser has done it once

video playback is pretty good as youd expect froma device like this , the big screen is crystal clear and i really do like it , videos have stuterd on playback now and again but i read on the net to defrag the hardrive , i did this and it may be coincedence but playback has been smoother since maybe if you have stuter during playback you could try a defrag a few other users have reported that it helped

i didnt like the way it came with n series printed over the screen protector but if you scratch at it slightly it will come off the same with the silver bit in the corner of the screen protector , this is quite handy as i still got to use the screen protector that came on the phone for my mate

camera is not bad iam pretty suprised with the duel led flash ok it will never beat xenon at nightime pics but it does a good job of lighting a pitch black room and taking a pic at say 1m distance video is also really good and its nice to have the light feature for recording in the dark allthough ive not had much to film at night its just been testing it out it might be a gimmick but it does light the room up and could even be used as a decnt torch

outside and out and about the duel led flash isnt great but like i say it works quite good in rooms where the flash can reflect off walls etc id say indoors the flash is usefull from close up to 1meter max

the camera not having a lens cover is abig issue and one iam not to happy about , no matter how hard you try it will get finger print smudges on it and grease marks from fingers , these will obvously affect your picture it dosent take a genius to work that out , and ive become quite paranoid about wiping it with anything but a glass cleaner incase my fabric from say a jumper marks it , the plastic lens cover sits level with the fascia so could easily be scratched this is a major design flaw and it will no doubt be a deal clincher for some people , no camera lens cover no purchase

one other slight gripe with the camera is the actual camera shutter button (the one you use to take the picture) it is very akward , i have found over the 5 days to hold the right side of the button more , this makes it easier , otherwsie youll find the button actually nearly resides into the device in the take picture posisiton , let me explain , auto focus is a slight press but this slight press on the n96 takes a little more then other devices it nealy sits level with the side of the device , so obvoulsy the take picture posistion of the button is further down which means that the button is pratically inside the device , this isnt the easiest methos of taking pica and alot of my pics have come out blured due to me having slight troubles with the button it could have been alot better designed and even the n95 button would have been alot better as i never had troubles with that , like i say i have got used to it a bit but why should a user have to get used to how to press a button it shouldnt be hard should it ut nokia seem to have made it a bit harder then it should have been

ngage games seeem to run ok without the 3d chip allthough i havent tryed many of them the ones i did were ok allthough i could imagine it wont play quake very well

the phone has crashed several times not froze crashed but just rebooted , it has happend around 3 times when i have been listening to music after around 2 hours

feature pack 2 is very good and iam really liking it at the moment there are a few things i dont like , like the way the sms / mms editor turns a mesage that has 20 contacts straight into a mms it should ask you if you wish to do this.

a phone that takes away user desicions isnt a good thing , why not ask me if i want to do that and i select yes or no , or why not have an option for it ,

i dont have any fancy menu transitions on but they do look quite good when switched on

feature pack 2 just feels really polished up to the previous version and you can see after a few updates that this phone will become very very good and stable as after the 2nd update it seems very good allready

the gps reciever is on the back of the phone so no more having that keypad open when youre hunting for signal it picks up a gps signal very quickly and stays stable even in my bedroom it picks up a signal , ive tested nokia maps garmin v 5 , built in gps data and they all work well

becuase of feature pack 2 unsigned apps are very hard to install id recomend finding a developers certificate then signing them yourself to get your fave apps on the phone

battery life seems better then my n95-1 and it looks like ill get at least 2-4 hours more music out of this device compared to the n95-1 , just a shame they didnt put the blf6 1200mah battery in it , that would have been even better and there is rumors of people allready using the n95 8gb 1200mah battery in the n96 apparently they can just about get the battery cover back on allthough i havent got battery around to confirm this but please google it iam sure youll find something

i was so impressed with the n96 i went out and got one on a 12 month contract for 55 pound a month works out at 660 pounds which is 110 pounds more then the phone costs but i get alot of mins with that and unlimited txts and unlimited internet so its not to bad a deal as over the year id spend more the 110 popunds on top ups anyway and i get insurance on this model incase i break it

the thing for me is the storage of the device and what i use the phone for , mainly a mp3 player and web browser and sat nav system so a big screen large memory and fast internet connection really make it a perfect phone for me iam a bit worried about how the plasticy housing will hold out over time so when using it at wrok as my mp3 player it sits ina grey/black ipod sock wich fits it nicely and seems to protect the gloss black from getting marked , i was tempted by the n85 and the n82 as upgrades from the n95 but iam someone who allways wants more memory so the n96 was allways in the back off the mind when i saw a 12 month contract i thought why not ,

i would of loved it to have
fm transmitter
xenon flash and duel led
camera cover

cant think of anything else that id want apart from other obvious dreamy things that will come soon iam sure like

otpical zoom
better display quality
etc etc

overall iam enjoying my n96 allthough a bit paranoid about that camera on the back with no protection iam hoping nokia proove me wrong and it dosent get scratched but after a year i think it will have at least 1 scratch just by the way it isnt reccessed and it sits flush with the back of the phone

if anyone has any questions please just ask in this thread and ill awnswer asap

hope i havent bored you to much and youre having a nice evening

ps

bbc iplayer on the n96 is great you can download the programs easy as it was made for the n96 it works very well on it without many glitches i had on the n95 , however i found one really annoying problem many downloaded programs cant be watched via tv out it just wont let you , now iam guessing this is drm at its best but iam also hoping its a firmware fault allthough i doubt it as all my other vids work over tv out so iam guessing its that dam drm protection working at its max , if it is its a dam shame becuse downloading programs i missed and watching via tv out with my girlfriend would be brill

ADDED 28/10/2008



id rather of had a camera cover thats for sure :-)

the phone isnt perfect by a long shot for example the camera button really annoys me and makes taking a picture harder then it should be , the kickstand feels very delicate and your supposed to have faith in resting your device on it , no camera cover is quite a big thing iam allways looking to see if ive scratched it yet , one other thing i forgot to mention is the nokia photos app its a bit of hit and miss for me at the moment iam not liking it alot , pictures are taking ages to load up , i have 800 pictures roughly about 80 of them are 4mb pics taken from my digital camera it will only half load these up blurry it struggles really bad with these large high quality pictures even my n95 handles them better then the n96 and the new nokia photos , i do like the idear of it , the user interface could be really good it has many caergerioes like , juts captured , months ,albums , tags , downloads , all , share online , you can now even tagg a photo with something like cornwall 2008 and it will show up in the tags folder along with other tagged photos , as you can see there is alot of opurtinity for this to become a good app but for that to happend it has to become more usable at the moment it kind of feels like a bea application which is a shame as its the default nokia photo browser lucky for me i have resco photo viewer 5 which does a much better job then the built in phot app and thats a bit of a shame that a 3rd party app is doing a better job then the nokia app

but it does have so many good features and it carrys them in such a stylish way its just ahrd to say no to it for example

the 16gb built in is very good for me , the screen is excellent and makes the sat nav even better , music quality for me sounds very good , the feature pack 2 actually makes it feel a little like getting a new phone again it was a nice experience to get a little bit lost in the options again and see some nice changes , the light on the video recording makes an excellent torch even if you dont plan on recording any night scenes , bbc iplayer works very well with it and is very nice to use compared to the glitchy n95 experience i had allthough that will probably be solved over time for the n95 if and when they support it offically , i love the look of the phone it is very smooth and looks very modern and clean , the gps is imprroved over the n95 , its alot thinner then the n95 or the shape at least gives that impression and feel , loudspeaker seems a bit louder then the n95 over voice calls allthough music via the speakers is abit more tinny then the n95

so coming from the n95-1 with 16gb card i have doubled my storage , improoved my ram , got a larger screen , got better gps results due to better location of gps no more keypad open etc , more stylish phone , got an improoved mp3 playback via my cx-500s , longer mp3 playback capabillities , better iplayer experience , battery life seems better even though its the same bl5f battery , nightime video recording feature and duel led flash as you can see there are quite a few improovements over the n95 and if you cant wait for the next nokia flagship with groundbreaking features like the n95 was when it 1st came out then you may find this a very good stepbetween untill it gets here as it is much more polished then the n95-1 and makes it a nice experience using it

[sfauts]

Nice review, similar to my experience, although I just couldn't be arsed to write that much :)

The iPlayer wouldn't be much use on TV out at the minute as it's in 3GP format and would look awful.

It'd be nice if they could have an MP4 version which would be awesome quality.

[Tommie]

Amazing review buxz777 , there are not many qwestons left..:)
Sounds real good with the musicplayer and the video playback.
Is it any improvments from the N95 with the links to OVI in the N96 ?
share contakts , calender , pics etc?

[Micky]

Well done buxz777 mate, great write up that. Quite enjoyed reading it. Im experiencing an N96 right now too, and will be putting a review together in time.

What do you think to the kick stand? Im very disappointed with it to be perfectly honest. It just don't sit right. From cheap felling, to not standing the N96 correctly on a flat surface.

[samperry209]

yeah its naff.. my friends kickstand snapped!!... really bad

[buxz777]

thanks for the postive feedback everyone :-) much appreciated and glad to know you enjoyed reading it

tommie -thanks mate :-) sorry i dont personally use ovi that much if at all ,i tend to use shozu for uploading and sharing between websites like flickr and facebook , it still has the share online built in and is on the main stanby if switched on and it pops up in camera which is the two main places ive noticed it mainly but i couldnt tell you if its more advanced due to me not using it , sorry , contacts have quite a few options for example , go to web adresse if you have one saved to the contact it will take you to their web page , quite handy for buisness use etc overall feature pack 2 has alot of nice options and touches that finish the ui off nicely but it also has a couple of annoying things like i mentioned with the sms/mms editor and the 20 contacts

mickey-- i hope you enjoy the n96 , have you had a chance to try the music player yet?? would be intrested to hear what you think about it , id love to get to test products like you do :-) very lucky chap indeed :-) the kickstand humm i forgot to mention that and thats probably because it does nothing for me really , nokia seemed to speak it up quite a bit but to me its one of them features that a phone either has or it dosent , if it dosent you will use a matchbox ciggarette box etc to prop it up if needed and if it does you might use it , its not like a camera shutter/lens protector which to me is vital and if there you will use it 100% , iam still a bit annyoyed that nokia didnt put that on it and do away with the kickstand , to be honest i will bearly use it , i have tryed it and i agree with you it feels kind of akward , its not central enough on the device which makes the balance of it feel out , also the bottom of the phone seems heavier then the top , the kickstand is more at the top and the weight is at the bottom so it feels like it wants to allmost topple over anyway , i also found it feels cheap and even opening it feels like it could snap and it becomes quite a delicate situation opening it.

id rather of had a camera cover thats for sure :-)

the phone isnt perfect by a long shot for example the camera button really annoys me and makes taking a picture harder then it should be , the kickstand feels very delicate and your supposed to have faith in resting your device on it , no camera cover is quite a big thing iam allways looking to see if ive scratched it yet , one other thing i forgot to mention is the nokia photos app its a bit of hit and miss for me at the moment iam not liking it alot , pictures are taking ages to load up , i have 800 pictures roughly about 80 of them are 4mb pics taken from my digital camera it will only half load these up blurry it struggles really bad with these large high quality pictures even my n95 handles them better then the n96 and the new nokia photos , i do like the idear of it , the user interface could be really good it has many caergerioes like , juts captured , months ,albums , tags , downloads , all , share online , you can now even tagg a photo with something like cornwall 2008 and it will show up in the tags folder along with other tagged photos , as you can see there is alot of opurtinity for this to become a good app but for that to happend it has to become more usable at the moment it kind of feels like a bea application which is a shame as its the default nokia photo browser lucky for me i have resco photo viewer 5 which does a much better job then the built in phot app and thats a bit of a shame that a 3rd party app is doing a better job then the nokia app

but it does have so many good features and it carrys them in such a stylish way its just ahrd to say no to it for example

the 16gb built in is very good for me , the screen is excellent and makes the sat nav even better , music quality for me sounds very good , the feature pack 2 actually makes it feel a little like getting a new phone again it was a nice experience to get a little bit lost in the options again and see some nice changes , the light on the video recording makes an excellent torch even if you dont plan on recording any night scenes , bbc iplayer works very well with it and is very nice to use compared to the glitchy n95 experience i had allthough that will probably be solved over time for the n95 if and when they support it offically , i love the look of the phone it is very smooth and looks very modern and clean , the gps is imprroved over the n95 , its alot thinner then the n95 or the shape at least gives that impression and feel , loudspeaker seems a bit louder then the n95 over voice calls allthough music via the speakers is abit more tinny then the n95

so coming from the n95-1 with 16gb card i have doubled my storage , improoved my ram , got a larger screen , got better gps results due to better location of gps no more keypad open etc , more stylish phone , got an improoved mp3 playback via my cx-500s , longer mp3 playback capabillities , better iplayer experience , battery life seems better even though its the same bl5f battery , nightime video recording feature and duel led flash as you can see there are quite a few improovements over the n95 and if you cant wait for the next nokia flagship with groundbreaking features like the n95 was when it 1st came out then you may find this a very good stepbetween untill it gets here as it is much more polished then the n95-1 and makes it a nice experience using it

i had a little play with the n82 i recieved from the ebay company ecell today and that defently feels a bit more solid then the n96 but that could be because it dosent have any moving parts and is in the allways solid candybar design , ill probs write a little review on that in a few days as iam deciding wether to keep it , after the trouble ive had with ecell i might just cut my loses and keep it iam sure if buying a phone from such a shoddy company can be so much trouble sending it back could be even worse , well getting my money back anyways

iam waffling again lol

have a nice evening everyone :-)

[Micky]

I will let you know once I have had time to use the music player mate.

I contacted ECell after hearing about what trouble you had. I asked them about the N85's they were advertising, and I asked if these were actually in stock, or shipped from Asia. They sent me a reply a couple of days later.

"All our items are sent from our UK Warehouse"

Blatant lie.

[buxz777]

Originally Posted by Micky

I will let you know once I have had time to use the music player mate.

I contacted ECell after hearing about what trouble you had. I asked them about the N85's they were advertising, and I asked if these were actually in stock, or shipped from Asia. They sent me a reply a couple of days later.

"All our items are sent from our UK Warehouse"

Blatant lie.

cheers mate

to be honest mate DONT USE ECELL it dosetn sound like you will but just incase your tempted please dont , they took 17 days to post my item , i contacted them several time via the phone , every person i spoke to was american which i though was weird for a blackpool/manchester branch , they were rude on the phone and had trouble understanding my essex accent making phone conversations quite hard , they say it takes 5 days for them to check payment , i think this just gives them extra leway with the ordering the phone you bought from asia somewhere , i did test the n82 i got and gps camera and wifi all work as they should , might keep it as it was a bday present from my girlfriend anyway and like i said i can see me getting my money back a long hard process and i dont know if i can be bothered with the stress

hope you have a good day mate

[Micky]

I won't be buying from them thats for sure. I tried to buy an N95-2 from they a while back, and they refunded my money after a week due to my address not being verified, this was because I had just moved to Finland from the UK. They would not even ship to my UK verified address, where my mother lives. Ive heard other people having poor experiences with their service too, so best to leave well alone.

Im having an ok day so far, still recovering from an MRI scan yesterday where i had several injections. Some good news though, Nokia set me my replacement Ninja costume items that were missing from the N96 trial challenge package, so at least when im feeling a little better, will be getting geared up for many photos

[buxz777]

my girlfriend so want one of them ninja costumes :-) hope you feel better after a day of tests and stuff i hate hospitals hope it all goes well and tests come back good to mate speak soon iam off to work :-) have fun with the n96 and that ninja costume