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Connectivity

Stay connected to the world with the Nokia N96. Blogging, IM or even gaming with your friend, while on the move, are no longer dreams. With up to 3.5G connection speeds and the versatility of utilising WiFi hotspots, you can be assured of the latest news, gossip or gaming thrills anywhere. Experience Web 2.0 with the very best!

I found that connecting the device onto the 3.5G network is done at a speed which we have all come to expect from most smart phones. However, I felt that getting connected to the WiFi network takes a little more time than usual. But once you are connected, it works fine for all purposes, e.g. surfing, internet radio and even chat on msn messenger. Bluetooth connectivity to the earpiece might be a little of a challenge. For some reason, when I connect the phone up to my Bluetooth headset, the connection gets broken and re-established repeatedly. Otherwise, call quality is ok when on Bluetooth headset. Nothing a software upgrade won’t fix.

From: Chiep Ping
Surfing the net is great due to the big screen. But patience is required when using IM as a keypad can never be compared to a keyboard.

From: Chun Hui
The screen has been stretched to 2.8”, which was a real plus when surfing the web and watching videos, making the browsing exercise less laborious. Otherwise, the Nokia N96 connects to Wi-Fi (802.11G) and 3.5G networks swiftly, in a similar way to the Nokia N95 8GB. A suggestion for the future: Could Nokia consider adding an extra functionality so that switching in-between two browser windows is a more convenient experience? Currently, users have to go through a not so user-friendly process via menus and sub-menus. Perhaps a shortcut like “Alt-Tab”, used in Microsoft’s Windows.

From: Darren Kong
Internet connection is much faster than the Nokia N95. WLAN setup was simple and straightforward.

From: Dzulazmi
An unlimited data plan will see you using the phone to surf any website. Since watching live TV is not available, YouTube will be your next best friend. Downloading speed was fast, not sure if it’s my imagination but it’s slightly faster than on the Nokia N95 8GB.

From: Frank Foo
3.5G and built-in WiFi are vital features for a serious web 2.0 user like me. Facebook, blogging, Flickr, or just plain web-browsing – the Nokia N96 makes life on the go a lot easier with its fast connectivity. Nokia also did a commendable job in ensuring that the Nokia N96 is stable for on-the-fly switching of applications. While the connectivity is great, the Nokia N96 does have a slight drawback for a heavy web user like me – its keypad is less responsive than desired, making lengthy text entries rather tedious.

From: Jeffery Yeo
Phone calls on the Nokia N96 were loud and clear, whether it was on 3G or a normal line. Connecting to my home WiFi network was a breeze too. 3G connection was fast and prompt. No complaints in this section as I think the Nokia N96 performs everything in good order.

From: John Low
Nokia N96 includes the usual bells & whistles of Wi-Fi, 3.5G/GPRS and Bluetooth connectivity. Most useful would be the high speed 3.5G capability: ensuring you have instant internet connection to perform the numerous entertainment, navigation & online sharing features that the Nokia N96 supports. With almost island-wide coverage, 3.5G is a god-send; else if you desire faster connections, the built-in Wi-Fi allows you to speed on the fast lane when you’re in a hotspot. Finally, browse the WWW using Nokia’s famously user-friendly, fast & full-featured web browser to satisfy your online thirst; it’s certainly one of the better browsers out in the market, keep up the good work Nokia!

From: Sean Lau
Connecting to the internet was a breeze as no complex setup was required. Navigating through websites was easy, though some time is required to scroll from top to bottom of some long pages. Rotating from vertical to horizontal view was easy and most pages loaded quickly and error-free.

From: Vincent Chan
High-speed, internet-capable phones always catch my eye. I was able to log on to Windows Live and chat with my friends all day long without being disconnected. Viewing and writing blogs are also possible in a mere few seconds because of the near-full-fledged Nokia browser. However, the phone gets very hot when I leave my Live Messenger on.

From: Yu Xiang
It is easy to connect the Nokia N96 to the internet via its built-in WiFi. I could conveniently read my emails at WiFi hotspots or watch YouTube videos on my home wireless network if I am lazy to boot up my notebook computer. Installing Nokia N-gage games was much simpler when I used the Nokia N-gage application pre-installed in the Nokia N96. It was comfortable reading websites via the built-in web browser. However, it will definitely be more enjoyable if there were vertical and side-scrolling functions or better still, a touchscreen to move the webpage on screen.

From: Ng Yee Tat
To be honest, without a touch screen, I was really skeptical about the functionality of internet browsing. My first contact with WiFi in town sure changed my mind! Fast and user friendly, web browsing easily trumped my old handheld. The huge screen also meant that I would probably still have my eyesight after reading my favourite sports news on the go. Really, the only thing keeping me from running away with this phone is because Hardware Zone probably knows where I live!

From: Ian
I tried the Bluetooth, wireless. Indeed the internet was faster because of the 3.5G; sending data to my laptop through Bluetooth was another good point as I can use wireless to send data over.

From: Eric
I didn’t have any bad experiences with a 3G connection - no dropped calls or data packets.
The Wi-Fi connection is smooth when used with my home system.

From: Tan Ghim Hoe
Connectivity issues haunted me for quite a while. The phone connects perfectly fine to basically-secured or non-secured networks and you can surf the net within seconds, but when it comes to networks with newer encryption and security technologies, it’s a pain to configure. You can forget about getting it connected to a network secured with WPA2 encryption. I wasn’t given any option to configure the network myself too, which is quite strange. I would love Nokia to include in this feature in order to allow users to configure non-standard Wi-Fi networks.

However, connection to available Wi-Fi networks works out of the box as long as the WLAN scanning is turned on. But I noticed this issue on the WLAN scanning - it repeatedly refreshes the list of available WLAN networks. Even though I was connected to a Wi-Fi/WLAN already, it still refreshes it whenever I navigate to the WLAN scanning on the main screen without doing anything. I think it shouldn’t be refreshed anymore, as I’ve been connected to a network, only when I select “search” again, then it should search for me, thus, allowing me to consider whether to connect to other networks nearer to me for stronger signal strength.

From: Jenson
The connectivity features on this phone are impressive, being able to use Wi-Fi or the 3.5G connection, it enables you to be in touch almost everywhere. Messenger is already included in the phone and it also lets you sync up to an email account.

From: Marcus Lin
Connecting to the world has never been easier with a mobile phone. With WiFi hotspots across the island, the phone becomes a blogging or IM tool on the go. With fast connection and loading speeds, getting online news updates. reading your friends’ blogs and watching your favourite YouTube videos is a breeze.

From: Donald Jiang
The on- week trial is insufficient to fully enjoy the extensive functions, like linking photos to TV-out. The USB 2.0 and the Wireless LAN was nice to have for net surfing.

From: Joseph Teo
I am able to be constantly connected to the internet even when on the move, be it browsing the net at WiFi hotspots or using 3.5G. Web browsing on the Nokia N96 is decent, but I wish it was a touch screen phone so the whole browsing experience would be much better.

From: Donald Owng
I got to test out its connectivity features such as quad-band GSM, dual-band WCDMA, HSPDA and Wi-Fi, plus Bluetooth 2.0, USB , and UPnP, for connecting to other UPnP equipped home media devices, such as TVs and Hi-Fi. I was kept busy the entire trial period, plugging and connecting the gadgets.

From: Jerry Lee
Out of the box, I found the Nokia N96 often trying to make use of GPRS for connectivity, which was unnerving for me seeing that I don’t have an unlimited data plan. Exploring the options and manually setting the default connections to “Wi-Fi” took a little time, but was time well spent. With Wi-Fi selected, connection speeds are top notch. The pre-installed IM application doesn’t work in Singapore, due to network provider unavailability, but applications like “fring” (available from “Downloads” in the main menu) are free, effortless to install, and work seamlessly with the Nokia N96, allowing one to connect to MSN Messenger, Skype, etc. VoIP calls via Skype when WLAN is available makes for some nice savings. An option to set Wi-Fi as the across-the-board default connection setting would be nice.

From: Nicholas Goh
This is my first time jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon and it was a pleasant experience. I had no problems browsing the web on the phone, though viewing it on such a small screen (when compared to a normal-sized computer monitor) took some getting used to.

From: Faith Y
Internet videos loaded very quickly.

From: Erda
Connectivity is pretty good. I particularly like the internet browser. As you scroll around the page, it shows small window to tell u which part of the page you are on. Also, when scrolling backward & forward, it shows a snapshot of your previous page, much like switching between minimized windows on a Mac which I found out has been a feature on the Nokia N-Series for a while already.

There is no indication on the phone to tell u that it is connected to GPRS. Also there’s also no indication of the Bluetooth status. I’d prefer it to show the connection when connected to GPRS on the screen and an LED indicator for wireless and Bluetooth.

From: Matthew Seeto