Nokia new N96 launches – is it the iPhone’s biggest threat?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 26 September 2008 19:55

Your IT - Mobility

The RRP of the Nokia N96 is set at AUD $1349 as an outright purchase. While this is more expensive than an iPhone, when the N95 first launched, it started at a similar price.

However there are already reports of the N96 being sold in Australia outright for less than $1100, and clearly by Christmas the N96 will be available for $999 at “street prices”, although Nokia naturally does not confirm this.

Undoubtedly we’ll soon see N96 offers from the major carriers on some kind of subsidised plan, letting you pay so much per month on top of your phone bill over a 24 month period, as is the norm in Australia and other parts of the world.

There’s some nifty free content included with the N96. To start with, there’s an AUD $20 voucher in the box to buy $20 worth of music from the Nokia Music Store, now available in Australia, and soon to move from a web based interface to a standalone program a la iTunes.

There are four BBC “season 1” series to choose from, of which you can pick one whole series to download onto your PC and to then “sideload” onto the N96. The TV series in question are Little Britain, Walking with Dinosaurs, the Catherine Tate Show and Yes Minister.

Nokia’s N-Gage gaming client is also loaded onto the phone as standard, and comes pre-loaded with 5 trial games, with an in-box voucher to turn the car racing “Asphalt 3” game into the full version. Moby’s “In My Heart” song which featured on the N95 and some other N-Series devices has now been replaced with 8 funky songs from other artists.

You also get 3 months free usage of the inbuilt turn-by-turn GPS navigation, after which you can choose to extend you license via credit card. Nokia’s Ovi service for online synchronisation and unlimited storage is also freely accessible.

Nokia’s “Download!” application is as ever on the phone, and a quick look through showed a variety of things to download. If you have an N-Series phone you’ll have this icon, it’s like the Nokia version of the iPhone “App Store” and it’s worth checking out if you haven’t already.

When I asked what came in the box, there’s the USB cable, a power adaptor, the video out cable N95 users are familiar with, but instead of a case the N96 is instead being bundled with a “car cigarette lighter adapter”, which is a handy thing for anyone planning to use the N96 as a GPS satnav, a feature I’ve definitely been using on the N95.

Also a feature that I’d read online was going to be supported turns out not to be included. While there’s an FM radio, as standard on Nokia phones, I had read the N96 would include a built-in FM transmitter, but this does not appear to be the case.

The aforementioned new Nokia Australia GM, Emile Baak, said that: “The Nokia N96 is simply in a league of its own. It is our most advanced multimedia computer to date. It is a force to be reckoned with, taking video and camera capabilities, music playing, navigation and internet connectivity to the next level.”

Please read on to page 5 for the Nokia N96 TV commercials and my final initial thoughts...