Nokia Kills N96 Before It's Even 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.

When you compare the N96 to the N85 it loses on all fronts, the N85 has:

• Better battery,
• Better screen (not bigger),
• FM Transmitter,
• Smaller,
• Cheaper,
• Naviwheel
• Micro-USB + Charging
• One Handset - No Variants
  

From what I can see, the N96 was an attempt by Nokia to do another N95, bring something out that would blow everyone's mind, except they have failed miserably! But that comes with trying, if you don't try you can't fail, and if you don't try you can't achieve anything either. It's good to see Nokia trying to innovate and push the boundaries - but I think it might be worthwhile taking note on what consumers want from a handset rather trying to tell us what we want and having a stab in the dark.

The N95 users all wanted a better battery, we never got that with the N96. The N96 hasn't improved much on the N95, it has a bigger screen and dual LED which are welcomed but the poor battery will make these useless. The DVB-H is redundant. The internal storage of 16GB is welcomed, but it's going to hinder more than help the handset operation in general (the N95 8GB suffers from slow operation because of it's internal storage, data transfer is slow and arduous), an external MicroSD is a better option, it will have a whopping 128MB of RAM, but that's going to be used on video streaming etc, and that will kill the battery.

All in all it's good seeing Nokia try, but next time they might want to look at what they're building and see what it offers that isn't there already and make sure the product itself will be appealing to the consumer.

I may be totally off the mark and that would be great news to Nokia, but my gut instinct tells me the N96 isn't going to get the numbers they are expecting.

Posted in: Nokia