Mere mortals will need to wait until the third quarter of the year -- if not longer, depending on their region and tolerance for some probable price gouging in the early going -- to get their hands on the mighty
Nokia N96. On the other hand, Mobile-review apparently knows the right hands to shake and eyes to wink to get hold of a prototype unit extraordinarily early, and they're taking full advantage of the opportunity. A few hours of your time devoted to the novella of a review will net you a deep understanding and appreciation for the N96's strengths and follies, but in a nutshell, the site seems to come away with a pretty ambivalent opinion of a device that should be knocking everyone's socks off -- especially for a sticker price that'll hover in the $800 arena. Problems included a penchant for picking up dirt and fingerprints (the price you pay for a beautiful glossy face, we suppose), a cramped nav key layout with the tricky touch-sensitive Navi Wheel front and center, audio performance that wasn't bad but was expected to be far better in light of the dedicated DSP, and a "shovel"-like feel in the hand, a symptom of the phone's generous dimensions. Everyone owes the production version of the N96 a chance to show its true form when it's released later this year -- and hey, at least Nokia's got a checklist of things that need improvement in the prototype now -- so we're keeping our chins up that this'll still make the
N95 8GB a proud daddy when it comes time to hand over the crown to the Nseries kingdom.
[Via
Tech Digest and
NokNok]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
BlackCoffeeNoSugar @ Mar 28th 2008 9:33AM
You can actually see the dirt in this picture. At first I thought it was on my screen.
huh @ Mar 28th 2008 10:25AM
I hear early in 2009 Nokia is going to release a pink N96. Then, late 2009, the n97, which will be identical except it will have a 5.5 mpix camera. With no flash, but wait for the n98!
Seriously, Nokia has too many product lines, each with something missing, they'll never make the perfect device.
MTM @ Mar 28th 2008 3:47PM
Which begs the question: Who does?
It's not economical wise to do so and probably not technical possible, anyway.
huh @ Mar 28th 2008 4:04PM
MTM, can you explain why? After all, they would be serving their customers best by selling a device that does what their customers want.
I believe it's technically possible to have a near "perfect" phone with a contemporary feature set if they roll out consistent updates. The n95 could have been it if they'd adopt an iPhone type strategy of cross the range updates, because the hardware is quite good (aside from the lack of a touch screen), the software just needs bug fixes and tweaks.
Instead there are different firmware versions for every version of the n95, leaving many deficient and compatibility within the same product line an issue.
It must be very costly to have a product team for 10 different products, I am sure Nokia could make good money and serve their customers better (building strong loyalty rather than "I'll see what Sony has next time") by focusing on three or four lines to address different needs (obviously with modifications for the carriers), but not 15 completely different products, or however many they have now.
You'd think smartphone users would be more discerning, after all they're paying as much as you'd pay for a fully upgradeable and expandable notebook computer, but it seems like most are resigned victims of these policies. With the competition from iphone, gphone, etc and the general convergence of the handheld as a computer hopefully it will improve and so many people aren't left with devices that just about do what they want.