Nokia N96 Cell Phone Review - Software

The N96 offers all of the stability and extensibility goodness that comes with the well-established Symbian operating system. Web browsing will be enjoyable with its feature-filled browser and will only be hampered by the size of the N96's screen. While the N96 can play N-Gage games, it doesn't come with any games installed, even a measly trial version. You'll definitely have to pay to play on the N96.

OS (8.0)
The N96 runs Symbian S60 3rd edition, Feature Pack 2. Feature Pack 2 brings some updates that improve the interface and flexibility of the OS, offering things like the ability to change the layout of shortcuts on the home screen, the ability to have 3 captioned soft keys instead of the previous 2, and caller ID pictures for incoming and outgoing calls to and from existing contacts.

The main menu

This is a well-established smartphone operating system that earns a standard 8 points under our scoring system. It's stable and robust and will be very familiar for anyone who's ever used an S60 device before.

Home Screen Score (7.0)
The N96's home screen is the standard Active Standby screen seen on all S60 devices. This screen offers you good information at a glance, including upcoming appointments, outstanding tasks, and shortcuts to 7 applications, which you can change to whatever you please from the defaults.

The Active Standby home screen

At the top of the screen are the standard signal strength and battery level indicators you expect, as well as the time, date, and carrier. At the bottom of the screen are are 3 labels for the left and right soft menu keys and the D-pad's center select button. In general, we always like home screen's that offer you this amount of information so that you don't have to open applications to see what's coming up on your agenda.

Extensibility (8.0)
The S60 operating system is highly-extensible, with literally thousands of 3rd-party applications available for download to enhance functionality. As with the N95-3, the N96 can also install and run Java applications, increasing the available software catalogue even more. Smartphones are where it's at if you want to do more with your phone beyond its capabilities out of the box.

Customizability (7.0)
In terms of customizability, we consider if a user is able to change the overall look and feel of the interface by doing things like changing fonts, wallpaper images, applying themes, and re-arranging icons. All of these are possible on the N96. If you simply want a different background for the home screen, it's very easy to apply a different wallpaper image. Themes can change the entire color scheme of the phone's interface - the N96 only comes with a few but there are thousands more available online at sites like www.zedge.net and many more.

OS Responsiveness (7.0)
We had no major problems with the responsiveness of the N96 - though we didn't find it impressively snappy in responding to button presses, it was more than adequate and we had very few frustrating moments wondering if our key presses had actually registered. Compared to the N95-3, the N96 is presents no noticeable progress in this area.

Browser Features (12.0)
The N96's browser easily handles HTML and WAP web pages, plus JavaScript elements, Flash video, frames, and Java. It can also view and manage Atom and RSS feeds and subscriptions. While you can't save images on web pages to memory individually, you can save a web page for offline reading later. It can also handle encryption, cookies, and manage passwords. This is a pretty robust set of features for a phone's browser and we find little fault with the N96 here.

Browsing Interface (10.0)
The browsing interface on the N96 has not changed from the N95-3 and it still has many advanced features that avoid making browsing a chore as it is on many other cell phones. Though it does not show you a view of the entire page when you first navigate to a full HTML site, there is still the mini-map feature that puts an icon representing the page in the corner with a box outlined in red to show you where you're at, allowing you to quickly scroll to a particular section. Regardless, it still takes a little time to scroll through large pages with the D-pad, and the mini-map function can pop up when you don't want it - fortunately, there's an option to turn it off in the menu. You can zoom in to 50% or out to 125% through the Zoom menu and you can rotate pages to view them in landscape mode. Your history is shown in neat little thumbnail views that you scroll through with the D-pad. Bookmark support is robust, with the ability to create folders to organize your bookmarks, and the ability to move and edit them.

Viewing a page in the browser

You can also keep multiple windows open at once and switch through them, much in the same you do when looking through the browsing history. You can manually clear caches and clear private data as well. A toolbar with shortcuts to commands to go back, see an overview of the entire page, reload the current page and search within it appears when you press and hold the d-pad center select button over a blank area on the page, or by going to Tools in the Options menu.

The scrolling thumbnail history view

The N96 manages to match and even exceed the browser interfaces on many smartphones we see and the only thing hurting the N96 here is its relatively small screen size compared to other competing devices.

The bookmarks view

Browser Access (4.44)
For this test, we count how many steps it takes to navigate from the home screen in the closed, unlocked state to navigate to a web page. We do this instead of timing how long it takes takes to get to a web page since this is largely dependent on network connectivity and speed, and we do not count the number of presses needed to enter the URL itself, counting it as a single step instead. If a phone must be opened to reveal the keyboard for text entry, this counts as a step, as is the case with the N96. The N96 has a shortcut to its browser on the home screen by default, and it takes 4 presses to get to it and open it and a few more to be able to enter the URL and go to it for a total of 9 steps, the most out of any of our comparison phones.

Gaming (4.0)
The N96 has an N-Gage application that acts as a source for games and also allows you to track your progress and interact with the larger N-Gage community. Unfortunately, the N96 does not come with any games installed – even trial versions – and you must download one to get anything to help you kill the time while standing in line at the grocery store. We downloaded a trial version of Tetris and found it to be easy to play using the D-pad controller. When we went to purchase it, we had 3 options: $9.49 for unlimited access, $6.99 for 7 days of access, and $2.99 for 24 hours of access. That is pretty pricey compared to other platforms - Tetris from Apple's App Store for the iPhone costs only $4.99 in comparison.

The N-Gage application

We do find it disappointing that a phone promoted as a multimedia device doesn't even come with a single game installed and that buying one can cost an arm and a leg relative to other offerings, though we do appreciate that the N96 is capable of taking advantage of the extensive N-Gage offerings that include titles like Prince of Persia, Asphalt 4: Elite Racing, Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3, and more. Java games can also be installed on the N96, expanding its potential gaming library.

Calculator (6.0)
The N96's calculator is standard fare for S60 devices, offering basic arithmetic and memory functions. For anything more complex, you'll need to look to a 3rd-party solution.

The calculator application

Alarm (7.0)
The N96's alarm options have improved since the N95-3 – you can now set multiple alarms and there are now repeat options to have alarms go off within 24 hours, daily, on work days only, or weekly. In the settings menu, you can define your workdays, which is handy if you work a non-standard week. You can change the description of an alarm so they're easily identifiable by name as you look through the list. While you can't set a unique alarm tone for each alarm separately, you can choose the alarm tones from the available ringtones. The user guide notes that the N96 will turn itself on to sound an alarm if it's off, a nice feature to ensure you don't miss something.

It's good to see more robust alarm capabilities on the N96 to better meet the needs of those who require multiple alerts on various recurrence schedules.

Document Software (4.0)
The N96 comes with QuickOffice software that allows you to view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents received as attachments in emails or saved to the device's memory. If you want to create and edit documents, you'll need to upgrade QuickOffice, and at the time of this review, this could be done for $39.99 direction on the N96.

The Quickoffice main menu

You can also view PDF documents on the N96 with the included Adobe PDF application.

Other Software (1.0)
In this section, we consider additional included applications that add significantly to a phone's feature set. We found that the N96 included one such application - the Message Reader application. This application reads your received text and email messages out loud and could be a real boon to visually impaired users or busy users who want to listen to long email messages during their commute. You can download additional voices and languages to suit your needs, and adjust speech speed and other settings in the Speech settings menu. This functionality earns the N96 a point in this area.

The Message Reader application

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