For any UK readers champing at the bit over the Nokia N96, it's now officially available on the Nokia UK shop, for £535 inc VAT, in stock on the 24th Sept, plus "3-5 days delivery". If you're in a hurry, this seems a good way to go?
Read on in the full article.
I hope this means it'll soon be available in Sweden too. I've preordered one, and when I called the shop they said that they didn't have a confirmed date, but that they'd heard "october or november".
Awww. I just checked www.nokia.se, and it said it'll be released on October 13th. Sucks. Guess it'll be another 4 weeks for us poor Swedes before we can get our N96s... Very annoying.
The Finnish site Verkkokauppa also has the N96 (and N85 too) on pre-order. It says 2 - 4 weeks but that's just the standard label they put on something that's coming soon where they're not sure exactly when.
I wonder how well this phone will sell - particularly in the UK where you can't get live TV....
As many people have noted, the N96's sales may suffer because of the N85, which offers similar features, similar form factor and similar looks, but at a much lower price and with a smaller physical size.
For example Verkkokauppa has the N96 listed at 769 euros (including taxes) and the N85 at 569 euros (including taxes): that's a heck of a price difference, and if you don't want DVB-H or the 16gb of built-in storage space there's really not much reason to pay 200 euros extra.
Perhaps Nokia should have swapped the model numbers round, because the N85 seems the much more likely heir to the N95's crown, and makes more sense as a follow-up device.
Right. Being a current N93 owner who has preordered the N96, I fear that the N96 may follow the same path as the N93 did. The N93 was the latest and greatest for 6 months before the N95 arrived, at which time Nokia seemed to totally forget about the N93 (no more firmware updates, new software releases would require FP1 and wouldn't work on the N93, etc).
I suspect that the same thing might happen with the N96 when Nokia starts releasing touchscreen phones. I hope I'm wrong.
Has there been a comparison between the N96 and the N85 on this site? I might have missed it but after looking at the two phones I really can not see a major difference that is worth the extra price. In a way, it seems as if the N96 is late to the party.
N96 has been available in Singapore for the past 2 weeks but no working set at the Nokia Shop.
https://secure.starhub.com/shop/jfn;jsessionid=LSQ9v88zDzjSS53fXJ7JTcn9xG1XXCq2yK06sY4j68V4Js6dGXzF!-601350253!-423134839?cfunc=455&mfunc=106&octx=4b.8d.db&jfnRC=1&selectedColor=89216
I really can not see a major difference that is worth the extra price.
From a marketing point of view, the N96's 16 gigabytes of on-board storage plus the memory card slot (giving an official total of up to 24 gigs and unofficially up to 32 gigs) may be seen as a big enough difference to justify a price difference.
If you look at music players for example, they can have identical hardware but extra storage space causes very large price differences. For example the iPod Touch 8 gigabyte costs about half of what the same-generation 32gig version costs.
I don't personally think that's enough to justify a 200 euro price difference, but maybe the marketplace will say something different?
Has there been a comparison between the N96 and the N85 on this site?
I think we'd want to wait for the final production models to be available before making direct comparisons, the previews we've done up until now have been based on prototypes and preview releases which may differ from the final hardware.
!!
it's around $110 US cheaper than in Indonesia! what the heck!
can i order this and have them deliver it to Indonesia? lol..
typical i had a phone call from the nokia web shop yesterday - saying they didnt have an exact release date. where as the regent street store was saying 24th. they seem to have a communication breakdown!
i'm still tempted to go N96.
but not sure why. screen and memory and hopefully premium build quality.
i can always flog it on ebay when n97 comes out. 😉
I was just wondering when is it going to be available in Germany.