With Nokia’s N96 now making its way back to WOM World I’ll share with you my final thoughts on their current flagship multimedia device…
It may not seem like a big deal that a $1,000 CAD N96 wrecks a $1 cell phone charm — see this full-res pic for details — until you consider that a wrist strap or lanyard would get the same treatment, thereby compromising the security of your investment should it fall out of hand.
Previous readers will know that I much prefer QWERTY to T9 when it comes to text entry, and the N96’s numeric keypad certainly isn’t going to win me over.
It looks classy and all, but with flat, stiff keys and short travel entering anything but a phone number is a frustrating experience.
Compare that with this, the keypad you’ll find on Nokia’s aging N95.
With contoured keys that have a nice, spongy feel, the N95 is still the best keypad in the Nseries line — at least until the N97 comes out later this year.
Oh, and the N95’s D-Pad doesn’t emit any horrid, plastic-y sound, either…
In fact, N95 owners have little if any reason to upgrade to the N96. In exchange for a bigger screen and the (so-far) empty promise of mobile video they would be giving up a better keypad, an N-Gage install that actually works, a potentially better camera and a mature product that has benefitted from almost two years of firmware upgrades.
I’d hesitate to call the N96 a dud, but as a fan of Nokia’s products I’m relieved that better handsets — like the N97 and N85 — have potentially eclipsed it.
