Kitchen Confidential - N96

I did get to handle one of these back in October with the N Series team at The Energy Clinic in Shoreditch, but was contractually obliged to not talk about it. However, now that its been leaked to the blogging media I guess its safe for me to talk about, but at the time I wanted to twitter that I'd just seen one as it looked and felt so nice.

I've had a real chance to evaluate the N95 a lot more since this post, and play with some of the apps that Nokia Beta Labs provide, as well as synch the unit with my Lenovo Thinkpad T61 to use as a PDA. I'm beginning to like it more as a business tool as it synchronizes with my office software. The improvements are mainly in the keypad which are poor on the current model, the flatter and wider screen which I thought was close to bleeding off the edge in the model I held, the user interface display is also cleaner on the N96 and I see there is a double flash now for better night time photography.

I've heard that the 'in-between' 8GB model doesn't reboot automatically and that its faster which are two of the main complaints with the first model but in principle the N96 is looking slicker and sexier. Here are the pics as supplied by www.ubergizmo.com

I still don't rate the camera as responsive enough on the current model. There's no point having 5 megapixels and Carl Zeiss lens if the shots are slow to set up. I speak as someone who does photography a fair bit. I hope that Rob is going to let me have a play with his client's Sony Ericsson K850i because I'd like to know how good the photography is on it.

Update: I'm not on contractually bound 'gardening leave'. You know, one where my former employers ensure I don't speak to client-conflicting future employers contractually. If I was, you can be sure I'd be the last to throw stones in glasshouses.