Nokia N96 16GB smartphone

Images can be uploaded directly to sites like Flickr, Vox and Nokia’s Ovi service, as can video clips. The camera can capture video at up to 640 x 480 at 30f/s - a higher quality than you can get with most mobiles.

Nokia has paid plenty of attention to the N96’s video playing capabilities too, making for an enjoyable spread of content viewing options on its sizeable screen. It can play back a variety of formats, and puts in one of the best mobile video performances around. An in-box TV cable means you can play content from the phone on your telly too.

A neat design touch is a fold out kickstand, built into the lens surround

Watching streamed video using iPlayer over Wi-Fi is mightily impressive: there are no jitters and playback is extremely smooth. In fact, whether you want to download programmes to watch later - using RealPlayer - or whether you want to watch streamed content, the iPlayer app, although in beta, works excellently.

Nokia’s Video Centre app enables users to browse and download or stream content from a wide range of online video services. There are also feeds from various TV broadcasters, including ITV, Sky and the BBC, while the phone also supports Flash video through the Nokia web browser.

The N96 can comfortably carry out duties as a music player too. It has a similar easy-to-use set-up to the N95 8GB, with typical categories for tracks and support for cover art. Transferring tracks is a simple matter of hooking up the USB cable to a PC and syncing with Windows Media Player or Nokia's PC Suite app.

Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop tracks with the phone in mass storage mode, or slip in a loaded Micro SDHC card – the phone automatically updates its music lists to incorporate new tunes. Over the air downloading of tunes is another option, but the N96 is not part of the Comes With Music range.