Nokia N96 Review

Looks like the initial hands-on reviews of the Nokia N96 are starting to roll in. As my reception problems with my iPhone 3G continue, this is the phone that I am leaning towards replacing it with.

While the iPhone is probably going win in the long run on the number of available applications, the N96 is very attractive. While the iPhone camera is a paltry 2 megapixels, with no flash and no video, the N96 is 5 megapixel, with flash, with 30fps video recording.

Other features include:

• 32 Gigabyes of total storage - 2X that of the iPhone
• Wide variety of available S60 applications for almost every need
• Ability to sync music with iTunes

For me the biggest draw is the camera. As a professional photographer, I find that I often want to take pictures of everything around me at all times. However, I don't always want to carry another piece of equipment with me. Examples are times when hiking, or at music concerts, or even just walking to lunch in the city.

What did I learn from the review? Well, it appears that the camera's pictures are decent, but still seem a bit muddy. They appear to suffer quite a bit of red/blue noise in the dark areas, and suffer from muddy image/noise patterns that remind me of early Panasonic models.

While it is tempting for me to switch at this point, the biggest sticking points for me are lack of a touchscreen, slow GPS response, and no QWERTY keyboard.

So for now, I guess I'll wait to see if firmware 2.1 for the iPhone fixes the reception problems. If not, I might be phone shopping again. I just can't keep a phone that drops calls 3-5 times per conversation, and that's what is going on with the iPhone.