Nokia has announced that the Nokia N96 is scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom on October 1st 2008.

The N96 is the Nokia release from the N-Series and is here to replace the ever popular Nokia N95. With more features than ever before, the N96 is an attractive powerhouse.

Similar to the N95 8GB, the N96 is designed with a two way slider which when opened one way presents you with a numeric keypad and slide it the other way to access media control keys. As with the N95, the N96 is equipped with a vibrant 2.8” colour display to view all you features and images. Flip the handset over and you are given a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus, flash and Carl Zeiss optics which improve the picture quality significantly. The N96 is also clever enough to tag your photos with the location you took them at thanks to the GPS receiver so you will always remember where you were when the photo was taken. To compare other mobile handsets with similar specifications please click here.

Nokia have exceeded everyone else with the first handset to offer a massive 16GB memory with an option to expand the 32GB via the MicroSD card slot. The increase in memory is to allow you to use the phone as a video player which is why it has a built-in stand to prop it up when in use.

Nokia have invested a lot of time on the satellite navigation capability and integrated advanced GPS so you can obtain directions whether on foot or in the car. The one draw back to the N96 is the fact it doesn’t have a touch screen so controlling it whilst driving is not as easy as it could be.

Nokia have added a DVB-H digital TV receiver to the N96 so you can watch live broadcast TV over the air if you have DVB-H coverage in the area.

Connectivity is vital on mobiles these days and the N96 is a fully equipped dual-band 3G phone with Wi-Fi, quad band coverage, HSDPA support, GPRS and EDGE. The web browser now has full flash support, stereo Bluetooth and will be able to integrate with Nokia’s N-Gage platform in the future.

The Nokia N96 is an impressive piece of kit and looks like it will be flying off the shelves faster than the very popular N95. It would have been nice to have a touchscreen and FM transmitter but it’s very difficult to find fault with the latest Nokia device.