~TECH-BYTES~

The new N96 is official! The word’s all over the Internet, with pictures and a limited spec sheet. Nokia finally made the phone available at GSMA Barcelona today, and our man there reports that the phone is a union of the N81 and the N95.

The N96 has a 5MP camera with Carl-Zeiss lens and Xenon flash, and will come with S60 3rd feature pack, which is yet to make a release. To make the surfing experience a little richer, a fully flash-enabled surfing interface is included. The phone will come with 16GB of space built in, with an option to double that

We got a preemptive taste of what something like this might feel like with that banged up impostor-phone, the “Nokia” N94i — but now things are getting real… ish. According to Microsoft’s mobile communications business international marketing director (phew) John Starkweather, Redmond is in talks with the folks from Finland about getting Windows Mobile onto Nokia handsets. “They obviously have significant investments in Symbian but there are a lot of places where we have significant synergies and we would love to see the day where those synergies would extend completely with Windows Mobile,” said Starkweather, though he couldn’t say when or if any agreement will be met. “We work closely with Nokia and we would love to have them go all the way,” Starkweather said. “It’s something we talk about all the time.”

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Details are still incoming, but here’s what we know for sure:

• Same 4.13-nch WVGA (800 x 480), 65k color display as the N800, brightness increased by ~20%
• GPS with particular focus on the “context sensitive web” via Ovi
• 2GB internal storage (not including memory cards), ships with maps for use with GPS
• Has WiFi (802.11b/g), does not have WiMAX
• Bluetooth (2.0+ EDR) DUNs to capable phones, totally Foleo-like
• 400MHz OMAP 2420 CPU, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM
• Integrated frontal camera, ambient light sensor, mini USB 2.0, hardware lock switch
• Plays back video: 3GP, AVI, H.263, H.264, MP4, ASF, WMV, MPEG-1/4, Real video; audio: MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, Real audio, WAV
• Battery life aimed at 4 hours of “typical use” (movies, music, internet access, etc.), 10 hours music only, and up to 2 weeks totally idle time, and 5 days active standby (”improved compared to previous generation devices”)
• Runs Nokia’s Linux Maemo interface (duh)
• 5 x 2.83 x 0.55-inches, 7.97 ounces
• Ships in November, $479

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