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We have already covered the N96 quite extensively here on Symbian-Guru, with thoughts from the Guru, Mrs Guru, and yours truly, but as *the* flagship S60 handset from Nokia, we probably didn’t give it as much spotlight as it deserves, and for good reason. The last time I mentioned the N96, I said that the firmware was excruciatingly slow and that I’ll update my thoughts when I update my firmware. That being said, the N96 remained in my drawer, collecting dust, until a firmware update was available for my product code. I updated the firmware OTA and reluctantly convinced myself that I should give the N96 another shot.

The first thing I wanted to test it for was video consumption, because during the N96 launch in Lebanon, the handset was presented as a convergence device geared towards the video experience. The ultimate test was to use the N96 as my in-flight movie device during my flight back from Paris to Lebanon for Christmas.

Setting Things Up

I had a few *cough* pirated *cough* movies that I’ve been wanting to watch for a while. All of them are 700+ MB movie files, encoded in a higher resolution than that of my phone’s screen, and in .avi format. I wanted to take at least 2 or 3 movies with me, without any previous conversion as that usually takes 2 hours per movie because I didn’t have the luxury of time on the eve of my flight.

The first issue I would normally face on other devices would be space. Even on my 8GB microSDHC, I barely have 500MB of free space, so where would I fit my movies? The N96 makes this matter irrelevant: with 16GB of onboard storage, I was easily able to select 6 movies of different genres (totaling 5.7GB) and dump them there. That way I knew that no matter what mood I’m in during the flight, I have a movie to fit it.

The second issue I thought would face me was transfer speed. I believed it’d take ages to transfer these 5.7GB to the N96’s memory using the USB cable, but I was wrong. With USB2.0 improved speeds, the transfer went smoother than I expected.

The third issue that scared me was HOW to play these .avi files, without needing to convert them first. That’s where I remembered hearing about CorePlayer. That GENIUS CorePlayer application is amazing. I verified that it read .avi files and installed it on the N96. After adding my movies to the playlist, I hit play, thinking that there’s no frigging way an application can make my *phone* handle a 700MB+ video file encoded in a computer-friendly format and resolution. But surprise! All my movies played in crystal clear visual and sound quality. I could even change the color mode, aspect ratio, equalizer settings, control the zoom… Simply astonishing!

In-Flight Entertainment

After having set things up a few hours before I headed to the airport, I wished that things go smooth. And so they did, thanks to 3 important factors.

Firstly, the 2.8″ screen is as small as it can get if you want to enjoy watching a movie without making a massacre to your eyes. Positionned at around 30-40cm away from your face, it makes for a very decent viewing experience.

Second, the kickstand on the N96’s back is, simply put, a GENIUS idea. I can’t go on for 2 hours holding a device in my hand to watch a movie! The kickstand made it easy for me to position the N96 on the food tray, hence surprising a few of my neighbours who were all wondering what that “small DVD player” in front of me was. *grin*

Third, the two sets of multimedia keys are an awesome plus. I thought that they only worked in the built-in Real Player app, but as it turns out, CorePlayer comes with a set of bundled Hotkeys that make use of these multimedia buttons. I was able to easily control my movie, play/pause/stop/FF/RW without having to worry about scrolling through tons of menus.

A Small Plus

I didn’t want the whole passenger cabinet to hear my movie (plus I think that’s kind of forbidden), so I used a headset, but not a wired one, I used my Jabra BT3030 stereo bluetooth headset. That way I avoided wire tangles in the small airplane seats, and had a decent pair of almost sound-isolating earpieces.

Aftermath

My flight lasted a bit over 4hours during which I was able to sleep a little and watch 2 full movies in great sound and picture quality, without hours of preparation and conversion at home. I avoided watching Pocahontas (the only offered flight movie that I hadn’t seen before), I also had a very enjoyable experience though one of the two movies I watched was Passengers, a story about a plane crash, which is probably not the best film to watch when ON a plane *grin*.

After 4 hours of display, sound and bluetooth always turned on, the N96 still had 4 battery bars. All of that gives the N96 a 10/10 grade for video consumption.

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