First Look: Nokia N96

Battery life is more difficult to gauge. As I mentioned earlier, this is a preproduction phone so I can't pass final judgement on it. But by putting two and two together you can assume that it's unlikely to be a vast improvement on the original N95, which had a 950mAh lithium ion battery and could even be less impressive than the battery life of the N95 8GB, which boasted a more capacious 1,200mAh unit.

Bizarrely the N96 appears to have taken a step backwards, including a battery of just 950mAh again, which just doesn't look enough. Sure enough, when I tested it by playing an MP3 file continuously on loop, I achieved a mere seven and three quarter hours, which isn't anything to write home about. That equates to around one-and-a-half to two days of light use, and light use is far from the most common usage profile for the multi-talented N96.

In final production units battery life could well go up, but that minimal capacity suggests that it's highly unlikely to be an earth-shattering increase.

Final Thoughts

The N96 feels a bit like a missed opportunity for Nokia. It has honed the design of the N95, true, including more memory (plus expandability), a slightly sleeker design and some additional features, such as internet radio and a DVB-H tuner. It's an incredibly capable multimedia phone, no doubt, but for one reason or another, it just doesn't seem a dramatic-enough upgrade to justify the sky-high prices being bandied around right now.

Had Nokia endowed the N96 with E71-like build, sleekness and battery life in addition to its innovative audio, video and GPS capabilities, I'd have joined the queue at my local mobile phone emporium. But as it is, it looks set to join its predecessor, the N95, in the the nearly but not quite there stakes.