Nokia N96: Initial Thoughts

So, here it finally is. Pictures of it had leaked a while ago, now it's officially announced. The blogosphere is already heated up with previews and opinions, so I'm going to jump right into what I think are the defining points of this new device.

First, you may want to check out Meraj's detailed preview here. It's the most detailed view I read up until now and there are a lot of good points in it.

Yes, I do also think that this should be seen more as an N95-5 than a completely new device. At least to us bloggers, 'techi', 'early adopters', whatever you may want to call the enthusiastic crowd that we are. To me, the spec sheet isn't impressive enough to say I've fallen in love again (as I did when the N95 was announced back in 2006). I don't necessarily feel an urge to buy this right away, therefore I'm not at all put off by it's (only) Q3 release.

However, I really really dig the design. When I first saw the N81, I was really happy, although I didn't plan on buying one, but I saw a new design perspective make its way into the Nseries, and I think it is a welcome refreshment. Traditionally, the Nseries are/were all top notch featured devices for their time, but the design kind of shouted "geek" (and this started way back when 'geek' wasn't even cool). They did sell a lot, but this was, in my humble opinion, mostly because of the Nokia brand (one of the most powerful in the world), and, for those buyers aiming solely for features, because of those. With the N81, N82 and now N96 and N78 I see a more mass-market-adoption-kind-of-chic approach in the design. And I really like it. I even like that they're (for the first time) building a unified Nseries design identity, and therefore all the models resemble each other. That's cool. Anyone should be able to distinguish an Nseries even from a few meters away (just think about what the very distinguishable white headset did for the iPod). I mean, let's face it: we S60 fans will buy Nseries devices anyway, what Nokia needs to do is pack all the features in a nice 'box' and simplify the usage of some of the features so that the Nseries line will appeal to more and more people. And I think they're making some right steps into this direction.

But. This is where the 'nice' ends and the (slight) disappointment begins. So, you roll out this beautiful handset aimed at "multimedia consumption" (it's not my term, those are the words of the N96 Product Manager). Good. You focus on video capabilities. Strangely, not necessarily on video recording abilities, but viewing videos. Ok. 2.8 inches is a lot of screen real estate even by today's standards. But what is the point of this marketing focus if the resolution of that wonderfully big screen is mere QVGA and there is no DivX support? Come on, Nokia, Samsung made a deal with DivX more than a year ago. And it wasn't even for a smartphone. LG has it's Viewty (strange name, I do admit, but still...again not a smartphone)... Encoding videos to H.264 is a time-consuming process. Even ignoring that, please tell me how many 'normobs' (normal mobile phone users - I just love this term!) are aware of what H.264 is and how to convert videos to that format? Or how many are aware of the existence of CorePlayer? (and don't even get me started on the free DivX Player for S60, which is so well buried in their site it'll be a wonder if any normob finds it!) I think it's rather clear that the majority of videos (whether legal or not should not be of interest in this situation) on anyone's PC are encoded in DivX/XviD. If "out-of-the-box" experience is important for Nokia (their recent talks with Facebook seem to indicate that, for example), what's up with this?

Anyway, moving on to the screen resolution. Sony Ericsson just announced a WM6 smartphone (the Xperia X1 - gotta love Sony and their passion for brands, sub-brands, sub-sub-brands, and so on!) with WVGA resolution. That's 800 x 480, as opposed to the N96's 240 x 320! I won't even mention the hundreds of Chinese phones (clones or not) that boast higher-resolution screens, but I will mention that the N810 Internet Tablet does have 800 x 480 resolution. This is just plain odd. Even with 3rd party software that does decode DivX, because the resolution of what you're watching exceeds that of the display a lot of processor usage occurs, and the viewing experience is not always glitch-free. At first I thought it might be a supply-chain issue (that Nokia have already ordered a lot of 240 x 320 displays and need to 'finish' with those first). This might be the case. Or perhaps the problem resides within S60 3rd edition (be it FP1 or FP2), maybe they can't do the necessary optimisations for a bigger resolution. Strange issue, nonetheless.

I am happy to report that, according to the Product Manager of the N96, the USB transfer speed has increased up to 5 (five!) times compared to that of the N95 8GB. This will probably mean you'll be able to transfer files to the phone at about 5MB/s, which is not bad. The thing with USB "2.0" speeds is also funny, if I may digress a bit. All the phones released during the last year or so tout "2.0" speeds, but the actual speed for each phone is rather different. I've seen it all, from 500-600 KB/s in some Samsungs, to the more recent Sony Ericsson handsets such as the W910i doing about 4-5MB/s. And, keep in mind, these are all "USB 2.0" devices. What is the point in a common standard if the differences in speed can be so high, I do not understand. (Note: The N95 has a transfer speed of maximum 1MB/s, however with my also USB 2.0 card reader I can reach speeds up to 16MB/s.)

Getting back to the N96. Given the increase in transfer speed and the existence of a microSD slot, I think the 16GB memory is a very welcome addition. Until the end of this year, SanDisk promised 16GB microSD cards, so that means you may have up to 32GB of memory inside your phone. Very very cool!

Now for the camera. Actually, not the camera itself, as it is the exact same module used in the N95 variations and the N82, but to what has caused a lot of buzz on the interwebs, namely: the flash. I don't mind the dual LED flash. There, I said it. I will explain: I don't mind it, because I understand why the decision to include such a solution instead of a xenon flash was made. The N82 is and has to remain the imaging flagship (think pictures). The N96 should be the video flagship. After including VGA-resolution 30-fps capabilities in N95, N82 and now 6220, Nokia finally decided they should also market this. Why on Earth they haven't done this for, say, the N95, is beyond me.

So, to put it simple: if the power of the flash of the N96 is somewhere between that of the N95 and the N82 (hopefully closer to the latter), I'm ok. Why? Because services like Qik and Flixwagon will gain more and more popularity over the coming months. People will go beyond creating pictures (static) using the cameras in their phones, and will also like to turn to video-recording, live-broadcasting, the works (and I'm guessing Nokia did predict this, by launching Share on Ovi, which provides one-click upload of videos as well as pictures). In such cases the (always-on capable) LED flash is superior to a xenon flash. Why? Because of the way a xenon flash works. It produces a lot more light than any single (or maybe even double) LED, but for an instant. Always-on operation of a xenon flash would require cooling mechanisms and power consumption that are beyond what can today be fitted inside a phone.

And here it is, the dual LED flash of the N96, in action during the meeting with the N96 Product Manager, that a few lucky bloggers attended:


[Video source: The Nokia Blog]

Another question I saw today was why doesn't the N96 have an integrated FM transmitter, if even the N78 does? My opinion is that the FM transmitter (what it does it it sends whatever is playing on the phone via FM-radio waves to a compatible receiver, such as a car stereo, any type of FM radio, etc.) is a rather low-end feature. I have friends that can't afford an MP3-player in the car, and so they resort to such FM transmitters. However, if you shell out about 600 euros for a device, one might argue that the need for this feature could be somewhat limited. And I can also guess space (or lack of it, to be precise) also had to to something with this.

And now, the battery. It is the exact same unit I have in my N95. I charge my N95 twice a day. Nokia said they improved the battery consumption of the software and this will result in better battery life than we have come to expect from a 950 mAh unit. Doubtful. My N95 runs on v20 firmware (the latest available) which also supposedly brought such 'optimisations'. And while there may be a 10-15% increase in battery life, it still is not enough. And this, battery life, is a very relative issue. What I mean is a 700 mAh battery in a Nokia 1200 is more than enough for anyone, since it doesn't even feature a color display. Put the same battery in an N73, and the result would be...catastrophic. This device (the N96) screams "use me, use me, use me to shoot videos all the time, use me to take pictures, use me to browse the internet, upload stuff, watch YouTube videos" and so on. If I had one, I would probably browse twice as much and watch twice as many videos on it as I now do on my N95. Where would that take me? To the power outlet, twice a day. At least.

As for DVB-H (a standard that Nokia is pushing for watching broadcast TV on mobile phones)... let's (for the sake of the N96) hope it gets picked up by more and more operators around the world (right now I think there are under 10 countries with active DVB-H broadcasts). I personally think such implementation of mobile TV is already dated, because of the ability to view Flash video on the phone - which to me seems more flexible. But given the amount of cash Nokia poured into DVB-H, I will be glad if I'm wrong on this one.

So there it is. These are my initial thoughts on the N96. Dedicated posts for the other newly announced Nokia S60 handsets to follow.

The full spec-sheet of the N96 is available here in PDF. More pictures of the N96 are available here.

P.S.: Please understand that even if this post (and maybe others in the future) may seem overly rant-ish, my goal is to provide constructive feedback.