Nokia N96 Shipping Today (And You Can’t Afford It)!

Great news for Little Lord Fauntleroy and anyone who recently had a bank error in their favour, the Nokia N96 is shipping to stores early!

So put down that quail sandwich, and ask your driver to bring the carriage around and get going to your local purveyor of portable telephony equipment!

Yes, you might have guessed by my subtle turn of phrase that this phone is not cheap. Due to arrive on European shores a tad earlier than expected, the official party line is a price tag of €550 before tax, or £449 in real money.

Funny how the usual suspects have the phone on preorder for the princely sum of £579 (€708, a lot in dollars and cents), heck even Nokia’s own shop has it for the knockdown price of £535 ($940, exchange rate fans!)…

Granted, you do get an excellently kitted-out handset for your money including live digital TV through DVB-H technology, 16GB memory of expandable internal memory, a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera and Wi-Fi support.

It’s a no-brainer to wait for more palatable contract deals, where you would look at paying around £150 or so for the handset in a 600 minutes/unlimited texts deal at the most. Educated speculation on our part, but much like the N95‘s success story, the popularity of this new model will push prices into the realm of the pauper (like us) in no time.

So sit back, take a sip of Earl Grey, and wait for the deals to flow in the coming weeks!

Sources: Gizmodo/Dial-A-Phone/Nokia