Some minor issues

I love Nokia. Have been using it for years now, pretty loyal. I think they make great phones: good looking, functional, solid, right size, good OS ..
Anyway, I was thinking about the iphone, but I’m very glad I got myself a brand new N96 at the beginning of this year. It’s my best phone so far .. except for the battery, that’s just a pain in the ass

At first I thought something was wrong with my particular battery, but I did some research, and it’s a global problem. Nokia are you listening? Just Google “N96 battery” and you’ll see what’s going on.

In short, the battery just isn’t powerful enough! I’m no battery expert, but what I learned is that they used a 950 MAh battery, and this should be at least 1200 or even 1400 MAh.

The N96 product manager explained the early concerns by saying they used a smaller battery to keep the device small + the the device would work more efficient. They say it would be ok for most users, but perhaps not for heavy users. as you can see in this movie.

What? I guess if you buy a device like the N96 you might be considered a heavy user in the first place don’t you think? More efficient working: I don’t see this. The phone underperforms my previous N95 big time (which had a better battery). And sure, it might be optimized for music playback (in offline modus) but I guess this is not what is most important, at least not for me.

Then about the size, that’s absolutely bollocks as you can see in this video

What they did is use the 1200 MAh battery of the N78. This almost fits, is only just a bit to big. This can be easily fixed with a new back cover. The better solution would obviously be that it was designed the right way, or that they would create a 1200 or 1400 MAh battery that would actually fit. I’m sure this must be possible after seeing that video.

So to conclude: I still think the N96 is a fantastic phone, but I just can’t recommend it to you because of this limited battery live. If you use your phone somewhat more heavy (calls, wifi, bluetooth, gps, ..) it won’t survive the day. This is extremely annoying when traveling.

What I would like to see is Nokia responding to this. We as consumers (an brand lovers) can ask a solution from them I recon!? What can we do: well just make some noise about it, it’s the social media age remember. Blog about it like I did, put it on twitter, create some Google juice. I discovered a Facebook group called “Nokia N96 Owners needs a better battery from Nokia” what I joined. If you have a N96 yourselves I’d like you to join this group as well. It’s just another way to put some pressure. Let’s see if Nokia is listening, and picking this up. Let’s see if they are serious about this, and respond to us. Let’s see if they treat us with the respect we deserve.

It’s an experiment. But it’s a demand as well.