Nokia N96-This is what computers have become!

Nokia's flagship smartphone just got better! Complete with 16 GB built-in memory, GPS satellite navigation, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, 3G video calling, and every other gadget you can think of! On the downside it's large, battery life is poor, and the Symbian operating system is still not 100% reliable.
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The Nokia N96 is probably the most eagerly anticipated phone release of 2008. But that's partly because we've been anticipating it for so long! Lengthy delays usually mean that the engineers struggled to deliver what the marketing boys promised, so we're going to be checking the N96 very carefully for signs that some of it may not work quite as it should.

But first of all, let's take the phone out of its box and just admire it, because it's a lovely piece of kit. It's big of course - slightly bigger even than the N95, and a touch heavier too - but it's not the heaviest phone ever. But putting that to one side, it's still a really nice phone to look at. It's smoother and curvier than the N95, and the buttons are less confusing.

Now, looking at the specs, it's hard to see why the N96 took such a long time to appear, because on paper it's not very different to the N95 8GB. The only significant differences are the upgrade of the Series 60 user interface from 3.1 to 3.2, the increase in flash memory from 8GB to 16GB, and the addition of Live TV. Yes, with an internal antenna and a DVB-H TV tuner, the Nokia N96 has been designed to let you watch telly on your phone. But unfortunately there is no DVB-H system broadcasting in the UK, so you can't! The good old BBC has made its iPlayer application compatible with the N96 however, so you can at least stream BBC TV and radio content to your phone, which is arguably more useful than watching broadcast TV anyway.

We noted above that the operating system has been upgraded. Well about time too, because we found the N95 to be slow and unreliable. The N96 seems to be a more stable platform, but it still freezes from time to time. Also, in our reviews of smartphones we always like to point out that if you're not familiar with the Symbian operating system, you'll find using a smartphone like the N96 much more of a challenge than using a mobile phone with a "dumb" OS.

The rest is the same as the N95 8GB:

* Built-in GPS navigation with Nokia Maps application
* 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss & Tessar optics
* Secondary video camera for video calling
* Wi-Fi wireless internet connection
* 2.8 inch display with 16 million colours - one of the largest and best screens available
* Ultra-fast HSDPA data transfer (3.6 Mbps)