Nokia N96: incoming!

When it was launched, Finnish giant Nokia's N95 was the flagship mobly for the convergence generation, lobbing together plentiful features and applications in its portly plastic bod. Then the iPhone appeared and cruelly stole its limelight with its touchy feely loveliness.

Nokia is fighting back though with its new flagship dual-sliding N96, which if Play.com's pre-order page is to be believed will be coming to Blighty from 31 July, nearly two months after the expected 3G iPhone release on 9 June.

The N96 promises to channel DVB-H TV tuner for live telly action, WLAN, HSDPA, Nokia Maps with Assisted GPS, Carl Zeiss optics endowed five-Meg camera with flash and video light, FM radio, 16GB internal memory and 2.8-inch screen into your information receptors. Well endowed.

Hold on to your happy horses though, as the originally touted 550 euro (that's about £440 in proper money) price has seemingly been injected with cash collagen by Play.com, who is offering it up at a bank breaking £599 for an un-locked SIM free model. Ouch.

For that kind of cash we'd rather buy a 3G iPhone and take our mums to Butlins for the weekend.

source : http://www.t3.com/