Nokia starts to ship N96

In the shops shortly

Nokia may have said in the past that its N96 flagship multimedia phone would arrive here in October, but it announced today that the N95 follow-up has begun shipping.

Nokia's N96: N95 successor leaving the factory as we speak

There's no contradiction. Shipping from Nokia's assembly plants and arriving on shop shelves isn't necessarily the same thing, and we can well imagine the handset arriving in, say, Carphone Warehouse's holding facility in the coming weeks ahead of launch day.

The dual-slide handset sports a 2.8in display, 16GB of internal memory that can be further expanded with Micro SDHC cards. It also incorporates a DVB-H TV tuner and it supports most common video formats, including MPEG 4, WMV and Flash. The handset features a "kickstand" on the back that allows the device to stand up for hands-free viewing.

Stand up and pay attention

It also features media keys, a 3.5mm headphone connector and built-in 3D stereo speakers plus the Nokia Maps application with Assisted GPS, a five-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, flash and video light and video capture. It has Wi-Fi and HSDPA connectivity.

Nokia reiterated that the N96 will set you back €550 ($794/£448) minus sales tax, or less if you buy it tethered to a network.

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