Yesterday, Nokia not only introduced the N85 and N79 but also announced that a North American version of the N96 was also coming. The new version, with model number N96-3, will work with the high-speed 3G HSDPA networks widely used in the Americas. It was back in February that Nokia announced a European version of the N96.
The N96 improves upon its predecessor, the N95, by doubling the internal capacity to 16GB while retaining the SDHC expansion slot, and adding a DVB-H tuner and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the hardware side, N96 comes with a redesigned dual-slide keyboards with improved layouts for multimedia and gaming, a built-in kickstand, and built-in 3D stereo speakers. It also has quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band HSDPA/UMTS connectivity, a 2.8-inch QVGA display, 128MB RAM and 256MB ROM, built-in A-GPS, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, a microSDHC card slot, a stereo FM radio, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack, and TV-out support.
The North American version of the N96 will be available in the fourth quarter of 2008 and will sell for USD$895.