NIC HARALAMBOUS

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Nokia's N96 - A curios piece

I loved my Nokia N95, LOVED IT. I can't verify that fact any more than stating it that emphatically. It truly was a great piece of hardware and software in combination. But the nature of technology nowadays pushes companies to develop new tech that attempts to outdo the old.The Nokia N96 was such a piece of tech. It tried to outdo the N95. It succeeded in many areas yet struggled in others.I've been using the phone now for a few months and overall I like it. I think. It has some issues, one being speed. It's one of those phones that does a lot and achieves it all but very slowly. So opening up your contacts, loading an application or receiving a text message takes a bit of time - when I say a bit of time I am part of the generation that is frustrated when Internet on a plane doesn't work and when I wait for 20 minutes to get on to a giant piece of metal that flies. So it's not really THAT slow but takes that extra 5 to 10 seconds to search for a contact or read a text msg.With that said there are some pros to the phone. The GPS is fantastic and has allowed me to not purchase yet another technological device to clutter my car. It is seemless, effective and works 99.9% of the time.The multimedia capabilities are great with a 5 megapixel camera and fantastic video recording. Once you've got the media though it's a bit slow.I also made fantastic use of the phone's mp3 player on my trip to Kenya to listen to music - the 16gb flashdrive is a great help with this.Overall I must say I wouldn't buy this phone at it's going rate, I'd rather wait for the N97 to come out. But I am glad that I've had the chance to mess around with it and make great use of it in presentations and for much of my citizen reporting.