Well there’s no doubt about it. In my humble opinion, the Nokia N96 is one of the coolest multimedia phones to have ever graced this planet. Now, let’s take this phone feature-by-impressive feature, shall we?

First, it looks great – exactly the way you imagine a multimedia phone from Nokia would look. It has a black glossy face, metal-grey sides and a glossy but textured black back panel. Not only does it look great, it also feels solid and sturdy and not at all plasticky. It is not the smallest Nokia phone, but in this day and age, nobody seems to want a small multimedia phone.

In the case of the Nokia N96, the size works great. It has a 2.8-inch LCD, a good size for watching movies and music videos. It doesn’t look ungainly because of the sliding keypad design. Oh, and speaking of the sliding design. Slide it up to use the dedicated media player keys; slide it down to use the standard phone keypad.

The fantastic physical attributes are backed by the phone’s superb functionality. Among its most impressive features is the 16-gigabyte internal memory, which could be expanded further through the addition of an 8-gigabyte memory card. You can actually store around 40 hours of video in it, or you can use some space for your playlists and music files – it’s up to you. Most multimedia file formats are supported so you should have be very satisfied with its multimedia features.

If you don’t want to watch your old clips, watch TV with the Live TV feature. The phone is capable of receiving TV broadcast. It can even replay the past 30 seconds of a TV program and record TV shows as well. If you don’t want to listen to you old playlists, tune in to FM or connect to the internet radio of your choice. Connect to the internet through your WLAN (through Wi-Fi), network data services (e.g. HSDPA and GPRS), or through your computer or another device (through Bluetooth and USB).

This also has one of the best imaging features among mobile phones today given its 5-megapixel camera with a Tessar lens. Wait, let me rephrase that; this is one of the best mobile phones available today.

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