Nokia Kills N96 Before It’s Born?
With the announcement of the Nokia N85 has Nokia killed the N96 before it’s even taken a breath?
There’s a great post over at The Nokia Blog by Mark, which brings up a few points on why the N85 is better than the N96, most of which I myself agree with.
Looking at this from a consumer point of view, why would anyone get the N96 if they have the N85 to compare it with? Is it because of the bigger screen? If so then why does the N96 come with a smaller capacity battery? It surely can’t be because of the DVB-H tuner, that would drain the battery even quicker!
The fact is the N96 is aimed at the high-end of the market, but it has features which more or less are weaker than the N85 and misses many the N85 has.
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My worry is that the 16GB internal memory is going to be slow and sluggish like the N95 8GB is, it's horrible. It's evidently clear with a screen that big and a DVB-H tuner being used at the same time a 950mAh battery isn't going to cut it. Look at the difference in Talk Time estimates alone: N85's 6.9 hours compared to the N96's 3.8 hour, and that is on GSM only.
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If Nokia can put in a DVB tuner into a handset, I'm sure they could put in a bigger battery if they really wanted to. But from what I can see the N9x series uses the same type of battery across the range and they are going to stick with that, irrelevant of the fact if it's acceptable or not.
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I am pretty sure they could not put in a bigger battery because they wanted to keep the phone with certain measurements but at the same time include the DVB tuner AND 16 GB memory AND the Micro SD slot AND the kick stand AND the good quality camera unit. It's a simple enough notion to understand.
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And, N95 8GB (the closest comparable) is NOT smaller than the N96, in fact its 4CC bigger. Check your facts first, please. And N96 ADDs the DVB while keeping the micro SD slot (and adding any component adds more to the size of the phone than just the volume of the component itself as nothing can be added "skin to skin"). Futhermore, N82 is NOT a slider so you are comparing apples and oranges. We can probably agree that the slide form factor is not the most efficient in terms of pure measurements/volume as you have to add a slider mechanism to the mix, PLUS N96 has to add a double slider at that). Basically, a big reason N82 has a bigger capacity battery is because of that exactly - it has space for it as it is not a slider + they wanted to add it anyway given the higher power consumption of the Xenon flash (albeit partly compensated for by the smaller screen).
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In the end, the N96 is going to be failure.
As I've repeatedly said, most of those features are on the N85 and it has the higher capacity battery in addition to the FM transmitter and better OLED screen. Try at least to read what I'm writing here?
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And yes, unless there is a new generation technology becoming available, all other things equal: a bigger capacity battery is also physically bigger.
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The N85 for me wins purely on the OLED screen and great battery, the look, and other features I couldn't really care about.
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check it out...
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And you did it again "most probably could" - again, just explain to the benefit of all of us why you think they "_most probably_ could" (btw, you should say "most probably could HAVE at the time of the design of the phone") add a bigger battery in the shell of the N96, given all other specs and harware it boasts?
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"The battery life is much better than expected, the N96 lasted a full day of me fiddling around with power hungry activities."
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/7968_F...
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AAS is a fantastic resource and Steve is as good as they come in terms of authorities on S60 but the the statement quoted above is subjective. It all relates to personal usage. What are "power hungry activities" and what is "a full day"?
If Steve is listening to music with the default player, browsing the web and using the default email client over 3G, etc he will certainly experience better battery life than someone who often streams Slingbox and internet radio over WiFi, uses SEVEN for email, Nokia Maps often for navigation, etc.
Personally, I was not impressed at all with the battery when I tested the N96. I found that it didn't even last as long as my N95 8GB which is a handset that is already bordering on unusable battery life. After about 5 hours of SEVEN email, some live video streaming, web browsing, talking, etc I was down to 3 bars on the N96 and had to use it sparingly. By the time I got home a few hours later I was getting battery low messages. Unacceptable, for my personal usage.
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ps. The AAS article was not written by Steve.
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Regards: james
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