As they say - better late than never! After being announced way back in Febuary at the Mobile World Congress, the N96 has finally started to make its way to retailers worldwide at an unsubsidised price of EUR 550. Since the time it was announced, I have been looking forward to it inpite of it being dubbed as a N95 8GB-N81 clone. More recently, after the N85 announcement, prospects of its doing well have further diminished, but something still tells me I will like this device.
Have you already made up …

Much to my delight, Nokia today officially unveiled the N96 here in India, over a month before the global expected shipping date. The reason I am so happy about the release date being advanced to early September is because the iPhone is all set to rear its head in India on August the 22nd at an exorbitant 700$ plus price. What this means is that the N96 will be able to take on Apple’s offering and this will make for an interesting watch in the coming months. This post shares …

The N96 Starts Shipping In October
The word on the street is that the latest Nseries flagship, the N96 will start shipping in October. Across UK the expected date of arrival is the 1st and 3, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Phones4U, T-Mobile and Vodafone are expected to carry the phone. Also, keeping recent trends in mind, the device should be available across the world at approximately the same time. The N96, as you may recall is the 5 megapixel, dual LED touting, GPS & WiFi enabled, 16 GB holding, DVB-H enabled, TV …

I’ve got some ultra cool news for all those of you who are anxiously waiting for the N96. If you want to be amongst the first to get their hands on the N96, Nokia are going to be releasing 96 individually numbered, special edition handsets at the end of this week! (Friday, 11am CET to be precise - iPhone anyone?)
To be in with a chance of getting one of the special editions you’ll need to wait for the ‘shop window’ to be open on www.facethetask.com (Click ‘Get The Nokia N96’ …

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Mc04HK4y4]
Nokia Conversations caught up with Danial Dhondt, designer of the upcoming N96 and Joeske Schellen, designer of the soon-to-launch N78. In this series of two videos, they chat about the collaborative process of designing Nokia devices and what goes into giving a phone a sense of identity.
In the second video, they talk about the role of sustainability in design and how the smallest design details can often be the most significant ones. (Video after the break)

Bery from the SWB has found the N96 in white on the Nokia Europe website. White till now was an unknown variant but I must say it looks great, much better than the black. However as of now the White N96 has been removed again. Probably goes to show another incident of publishing unreleased products. Keep doing it Nokia we love it!
Generally Nokia releases a product, it sells like hot cakes and then after a while when the sales drop the release a Black version and the sales catapult gain. …

 
There has been word going the blogosphere that the N96 is in fact going to get a xenon flash instead of the dual LED’s. This has been picked up by Intomobile, The Nokia Blog, Engadget Mobile, SymbianWebBlog and numerous others. I am glad to say that I can confirm this after receiving confirmation from trusted sources. But contrary to popular opinion the LED’s are also going to stay to assist in video capture. The N96 is finally a worthy N9x device!
Also, when the N96 was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this February, …

So far this year’s biggest announcement from Nokia, the latest Nseries Flagship device the Nokia N96 has been reviewed by Eldar from over at Mobile-Review. The huge review, with pictures was originally written in Russian and now has been translated into English. It is well worth a read if you are even remotely interested in the N96.
To conclude he looks at N95 8GB as a potential N96 killer in markets where DVB-H is not prevalent and also weighs the price as a consideration. My own thoughts based on the brief period …

 
It has been a few days since I got back from Barcelona and the N96 product launch and I have been thinking about it more and more. Will it work? Won’t it? What might be the reasons for its failure or success? In this post I will try and give a run down of all of that and compare it to some of the Nseries devices already in the market.
The N96 is expected to be out in Q3 at about 550€ unsubsidised. Now what that means is that the price …

I have just had hands on time with both the devices and a meeting with the product managers of both devices. They were kind enough to answer everything we wanted to know about the respective devices. In this post I will go over my initial impressions of both devices while trying to incorporate all that I learnt talking to them. More shots here.