Nokia N96 - the ongoing test and questions invited

[slitchfield]

As you know, AAS's guest Nick Anstee is now well over a week into his 'exclusive' Nokia N96 experience. Seeing as production N96s seem to be a couple of weeks away, this is as close as most of us will get for a while. Below are more thoughts from Nick, along with an invitation.

Read on in the full article.

i want to know how is the sound quality through headphones.. is it comporable with the n91 in terms of sound quality and sonic experience..

[Enfors]

Do we now know for sure whether it has hardware 3d acceleration or not? I've heard that it doesn't, that it does, that it doesn't, that it does so many times my head is spinning.

[macwhu]

Nokia Media Transfer for mac - is still fairly betaish - whatever handset you have
but is at least usable now - i used to just remove the memory card and use a card reader to add music/remove photos.

what interested me is how well it handles video files

will it play back high-ish res video files
such as 640x420 etc. N95 would stutter and fail on larger than 320x240videos

also the N95 player is a pain in never remembering where you were watching last.

somethign the iPhone /iPod touch trumps it on big time as a UI experience.

for me being a 'play all video' phone is the only reason to get the n96 over an N85.

Hi nick, can u please tell me if the navigation wheel really works or not like in N81? or rather the N85 and N79?
and also..i'd like to know if N96 can rotate it's screen like the way the animation on N85 does..i'm sure u've seen it...
or maybe this will be updated in the future? with newer firmware of course..i hope it does, since if i'm not mistaken N85 also runs on the same feature pack as N96. thank you =)

Is the navi wheel enabled as some people are saying that it doesnt work. Also can you have the photo light pernantly on while video rec. Thanks

I had a similar video stuttering effect on my N95 8Gb. Seems to only happen when i've taken a lot of photos/uploaded a lot of mp3's to the mass memory. Not sure whether its a file thing or fragmentation of the drive but after downloading sai photos, the stuttering goes away.

[Enfors]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Also can you have the photo light pernantly on while video rec.

Yes, you can.

[bjornb]

I also own a N96 (obtained through the facethetask donation thing).

Originally Posted by Unregistered

i want to know how is the sound quality through headphones.. is it comporable with the n91 in terms of sound quality and sonic experience..

I havent owned the N91, but my impression is that it has noticeably better sound quality than the N95.

Originally Posted by Enfors

Do we now know for sure whether it has hardware 3d acceleration or not? I've heard that it doesn't, that it does, that it doesn't, that it does so many times my head is spinning.

It seems like it doesnt according to the smape.com review, but it does have improved video hardware acceleration compared to older models.

Originally Posted by billy k

Hi nick, can u please tell me if the navigation wheel really works or not like in N81? or rather the N85 and N79?
and also..i'd like to know if N96 can rotate it's screen like the way the animation on N85 does..i'm sure u've seen it...
or maybe this will be updated in the future? with newer firmware of course..i hope it does, since if i'm not mistaken N85 also runs on the same feature pack as N96. thank you =)

The navi wheel does not work. It may (hopefully) be enabled in a future firmware update. The N96 does have auto rotation.

Also can you have the photo light pernantly on while video rec

Yes, you can turn on the flash leds when filming video.

Hi Nick,

i got as well a N96 , you said the Pictures are really amazing,

thing is when i make pictures , no matter if use the auto-fokus on the general mode the pictures look a bit milky & fuzzy---

You think somthings wrong with my lense---or that this hopfully will be gone with the next update ...

???! :-/

Thank you --

oh i see, thanks for your reply..
so in other words, there is no option to turn on or off the navi wheel in the setting menu?
about the auto rotation, yes i know it does have one, i think it's similar to the one on N82 and N95 8gb (with firmware 20 and above) i presume?
what i meant was the auto rotation like the one on N85, where it has that little animation..
thanks for the info by the way =)

[Dr Tran]

Stereo mics or mono?

I'm planning to buy either N96 or Samsung INNOV8. I'd like to know which has better sound quality between those 2 phones. Can we have a comparison article of those 2 phones please?

This phone is a serious let down, Nokia needs to sought out its strategy.

Thanks for that Nick,

Would you try out Global Racer on the phone, Just to see what its like as thats a 3d game that works fine on the n95. Barry