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]

Yeah, we know, this one's a pretty monstrous stretch, but we are so stoked about Nokia's N96 that we figured you'd be just as happy as we are to get some news -- and by news, we mean hopeful rumor. Well the folks at the Carphone Warehouse Insider page have plopped the N96 in all its black glossy glory on the watch list and the date they've set for release is August 2008. Sure, this could slip forward, back, or even get canned, but we'll take what we can get as a tentative date is hair better than no date, right friends? Place your release date bets down in the comments section and the closest to the real deal will get a hardy pat on the back coupled with a rousing thumbs-up.

[Via Trustedreviews]

Rumored for a few weeks now as the N95's successor in waiting, the mighty N96 dual slider has gone all official on us at Mobile World Congress today. Though the phone it replaces is still a beast by any measure, the N96 pushes the envelope further by packing a solid 16GB of storage internally in addition to a microSD slot, something the N95 8GB lacks. The 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens carries over, but there are now two LEDs doing flash and video light duty. The 2.8 inch QVGA display will come in handy for the integrated DVB-H mobile TV tuner, while a 3.5mm headphone jack, A2DP, and integrated stereo speakers should handle audio with aplomb. Other features include WiFi, AGPS, and morphing lights on the smaller second slide that hook the user up with game controls when it's time to relax with a little N-Gage action. Unfortunately, the first version of the N96 (and the only version announced thus far) supports HSDPA only on the 900 and 2100MHz bands, but we imagine the strength of the spec sheet should still be enough to sell a few of these stateside when it launches in the third quarter for €550 (about $797).

At first glance, the pretty real-looking N96 spotted in the wild late last year looked like little more than an N95 updated to match the new Nseries design language debuted by the N81. If specs leaked (and since apparently pulled) on Nokia's German site turn out to be accurate when the phone presumably debuts at Mobile World Congress next week, it'll turn out that the assumption isn't exactly true. While it'll carry over the 3.5mm jack, 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, and AGPS, it seems the new king of the Nseries hill will begin life as a quadband GSM / EDGE handset with HSDPA on the 850 and 2100MHz bands, supporting Europe and Australia while forgoing North America. There's a DVB-H tuner in there, too, but here's the best part: the phone's going to sport a nice, thick 16GB chunk of internal Flash -- in addition to a microSD slot! We'll hold off on calling this thing a winner until we see it in person, but other than the lack of HSDPA 1900, there's nary a spec in the list that we find ourselves frowning over. Guess we'll have to wait a few months for an Americanized version again, hmm?

[Via IntoMobile, thanks Khattab]

That, friends, is an N96. Or, at least we're led to believe so. Judging by five mysterious images that surfaced over at Mobile-Review, it appears that Nokia's N96 (which looks like a jazzed-up version of the N81, actually) has leaked out, and while no specifications are available, it looks as if this thing is packing a 5-megapixel camera (with the obligatory Carl Zeiss lens), a dual LED flash and a sexy black motif. Check out one more look after the jump.

[Via IntoMobile]