First Look: Nokia N96

See? Now i'm confused... Got my upgrade due now and I was holding out for this phone on O2!
Question for Jonathan: Would you say wait for the N96 or get the N95 8GB or iPhone?

My God it's awful.

Maybe it's just me surfing on the hype of new E-series styling, but the new N-series look shit, new SE phones look shit, new Motorola's... well, there isn't any.

Thank you.

No phone can stand against the sexual power of iPhone

To each their own, Randy. I don't think it looks that bad at all

What happened to the "pencil" (edit) button? I use that a lot on my N73! Does this mean copy and paste funtionality has gone now?

personally, i'd be happy if nokia just put a 3.5mm headphone jack on their e series devices. i can't see the reason why two ranges cannot converge - making, i dunno, the EN71 (or the NE71 or something). both ranges offer things i'd like and things i need.

Its disappointing to see companies in such awe of Apple as to blithey copy every aspect of its designs. Up until recently it was the E66 and now this phone. Nokia used to employ a signature style to their devices that gave a better emphasis to ergonomics than any of its rivals including Apple. You only have to look at the grip enabling backplate etching on the E51 to see for an example.

Personally, I think the phone looks good; what else can you do with design these days?
Went into an O2 shop to upgrade; the nice lady was desperately trying to get me to buy an iPhone until i pointed out the following: 1. crap camera; 2. no copy and paste; 3. no drafts (SMS); 4. No MMS (which I do use!)... Saying that the iPhone is hot (in the same way that Paris Hilton is hot... Style over Substance).

Anyways, after spouting all this, you know what she said:
WAIT FOR THE N96!!!

@CHAOS....

The seperate pencil button is now removed in symbian 9.2. Instead, you use the # key to mark files. And now you can even mark a single file, unlike the pencil key which could not.

Thanks for that info nyukeit, that's good to know, however the copy and paste I'm most interested in isn't for files, it's for text. Used to be that holding the pencil and moving the cursor highlighted text, then left soft key copied, right soft key pasted. Being able to do this between notes and texts is a feature I use a lot! The # key changes between caps and lower case so can't be used for this!

Just in case the moderators are still reading comments on this article (it's about to go off the second page of reviews afterall)

Does the camera on this phone still suffer from the annoying "press button, image freezes, shutter sounds, wait a second, photo takes" issue or does the image take immediately now?

@CHOAS This is my first post but I own a Nokia N81 8GB which is a little old but it doesn't have the pencil like my old N70 did,but if you hold the hash and move the arrows and keep the hash key pressed the left soft key copies and when you press the hash key again you can press the right soft key to paste. As the new N96 looks so much like a sleeker version of my phone maybe it does this too.
I think it looks good but I've always liked the N series styling to be honest.