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Nokia N96

By Joseph Hanlon on 08 October 2008

Without any significant technological advances since its predecessor, the N96 struggles to impress. Its 16GB of storage is great, and the kickstand is a handy addition, but overall Nokia's latest "flagship" model has little to justify its top-shelf price tag.

Editor's rating:6.9 User rating:7.4

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  TAG gave a review on 21/08/2009 00:16 Report abuse

  Had this phone since Feb, and it is by far the worse phone on the market ever! Everything has failed from texting to calling to accessing anything on the phone! Even as I write this the phone has knocked my network coverage out
  
  Cant believe with the modern technology being produced, Nokia pumped this expensive piece of plastic and metal out which cant even perform the simple tasks without failing.

  • Good: 5MP Camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, Stereo Speakers
  • Bad: Everything else!
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  mobile dik gave 1/10 on 11/08/2009 14:36 Report abuse

  i hate this mobile to the core....

  • Good: Design, memory,
  • Bad: Battery life, processing time, practicality
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  smellycatislurvvvely!!! gave 9/10 on 04/08/2009 06:42 Report abuse

  For a while i was worried about dropping it because it is so shiny and just looks expensive (it is), but its a nice phone and it does a lot of stuff. All of my friends were impressed when i showed them!

  • Good: good camera, good features, wi-fi, personally i like the fact that it's big, 2 cameras, good memory, gps, shiny and it just looks like a fancy phone
  • Bad: it can be a bit slow at time and the screen does just go black every now and again, Also, if you take pictures, sometimes they don;t appear in the photo gallery
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  sz gave 9/10 on 01/08/2009 23:11 Report abuse

  the n 96-1 is that ive nevr had a problem with it and its 900mhz/2100mhz and it was cheper than the n 96-3 850mhz/1900mhz and i can use it in most countrys and 96-3 its more for the usa and canada and mexico. i had a n 95-3 i had nothing but problems with it and i was with telstra the first time i put it in for a warranty repare telstra service center didn't find any problem with it and it had a loud beep like a call waiting beep repeting over and over and then i took it to nokia care center to put into repere the 2nd time they found the problem so they changed the transciver board twice a few weeks apart from each other with the same problem and the telstra shop wouldn't swap it because of telstra polesay so i another brand nextg phone and no problem then i herd that the nokia n 96-1 came into the shops so i switched my ph number to optus and never had a thing go wrong with it and ive have had the battery run for a week without recharging it works great on 900mhz umts without any dropouts and i would recamend it for anyone in country areas and the signal meter was at full bars and the 2100mhz works very well as well

  • Good: Solid phone and very relirable
  • Bad: quite bulky and hard to get a case for
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  Jayzy gave a review on 27/07/2009 01:39 Report abuse

  I'm a big Nokia fan. Since I get to have my own mobile 12 yrs ago, I always had Nokia and I have always been on a plan with Optus. Every 2yrs I get to choose a new phone and it had always been the best Nokia on the market. I have this N96 last October and tell you what, its the worst Nokia phone I ever had. I am so dissapointed with the Nokia company for releasing such a shitty phone ever even for their own record!!!

  • Bad: 4
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  honei gave a review on 03/07/2009 16:11 Report abuse

  its look like a fone
  price is high

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  bridie gave a review on 24/05/2009 14:29 Report abuse

  wen i saw this phone i thougt it was realy good and i was thinking about getting it but wen i saw how bad it realy is im am SO NOT GETTING IT.

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  astro gave a review on 08/05/2009 15:31 Report abuse

  Bought n96 in singapore came back to australia to find out it wont do next g does anyone know how to get around this i live in the Pilbara so need coverage

  • Bad: next g
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  Ian gave a review on 22/04/2009 21:12 Report abuse

  Don’t be too quick to praise the N96 - I bought mine six months ago and is the worst phone I have EVER owned…
  
  First of all, it is slow. VERY slow. My contacts list takes 15-20 seconds to load when selected - and I have the latest firmware available to me here in Australia (12.043).
  
  The TV is useless. Like most places around the world, there is no-one transmitting DVB-H - at least, nobody does in Australia. Nokia make a big thing in their marketing here about a feature NOBODY can use, and are unlikely to in the life of this phone (unless they take it overseas).
  
  Voice-dialling is pathetic. My old N80 was pretty good, but the N96 doesn't even PRETEND to understand me. Annoying, because I used this a LOT in the car on my N80.
  
  The turn-by-turn GPS is not out-of-the-box. Here in Australia, you get a short free-trial and then you have to pay an additional $130/year to use it! Nowhere is THAT mentioned in their marketing! I tried the free-trial and it was useless - frequently crashing the phone and constantly gave wrong directions. The user interface is, quite frankly, terrible. I gave up and bought a dedicated sat-nav instead. At least that doesn’t disappear when a call comes in!
  
  Bluetooth A2DP? Don’t even get me started! Put simply, IT DOESN’T WORK! The music suffers from the equivalent of a disk-skip every 10 seconds or so - the music isn’t constantly streamed. As good as useless. My $200 Parrot Party Bluetooth speaker unit is useless as a result (correction: everyone else in the office can connect with THEIR phones - SonyEricsson, LG, Samsung etc. - Me, with my ‘market leading Nokia’ phone that cost more than theirs PUT TOGETHER simply won’t stream the music cleanly and sounds horrible).
  
  Nokia have short-changed their customers by supplying a phone with a grossly-underpowered processor. It simply is NOT fast enough to handle the features.
  
  I have never regretted a purchase decision so badly as I did when buying the N96. For me, it was like waiting for Christmas only to find my new toy was smashed and broken upon opening it. Nokia’s customer service has been abysmal - TWO requests for service submitted via their own website - WITH confirmatory emails from them saying someone would get back to me in 72 hours, but so far, nothing. That was 5 months ago.
  
  I guess they’re busy fighting all those other N96 fires.

  • Good: Looks nice. Expandable memory. Works ok as a phone.
  • Bad: Slow. Poorly implemented features (GPS, A2DP). Untested software.
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  icemint gave a review on 19/04/2009 01:31 Report abuse

  I think most of the views here try to compare N96 with N95. Get real. I bought N96 a few weeks ago (for about $609) while my boyfriend had his N95 8GB last December. I'm sure N95 is a great phone but N96 is quite much better. The keypad looks more elegant for me. It's lighter than N95 and has dual led flash. How can you say this phone really sucks?

  • Good: The looks. Great design. The 2.8 inch display is much better than what N95 8GB has (as my boyfriend says). Slimmer-more handy (compared to N95!!) Great sound and video quality. TV output.Great and expandable memory (N95 doesn't have a memory card slot). Dual led flash.Kickstand is also cool
  • Bad: battery life