The handset was publicly announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 2008, and started shipping in September 2008. Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific are the first locations to provide the handset for consumers. The American and Chinese versions were expected shortly thereafter. The general UK release date for the N96 was October 1, although London had a separate date of September 24 when the device went on sale exclusively at Nokia's flagship stores on Regent Street and at Terminal 5 (Heathrow airport).

Feature	Specification
Form factor	Two-way slider
Operating System	Symbian OS v9.3, S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2
Screen	2.8" QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) LCD TFT display with up to 16 million colours
Size	103 x 55 x 18 mm
CPU	Dual ARM 9 264MHz
Internal Dynamic Memory (RAM)	128 MB SDRAM
Internal Flash Memory	16 GB
Camera	5 megapixel camera(Auto Focus) with Dual LED flash, Carl Zeiss Optics: Tessar lens
Video recording	Yes, VGA (640×480) video capture of up to 30 fps
Graphics	Fully HW accelerated 3D (OpenGL ES 1.1, HW accelerated Java3D)
Memory card slot	Yes, microSD/microSDHC
Bluetooth	Yes, 2.0 + EDR
GPS	Integrated GPS with A-GPS
Wi-Fi	Yes
Infrared	No
Data cable support	Yes, USB 2.0 via Micro-USB port
Email	Yes (ActiveSync, POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP, with SSL/TLS)
Music player	Yes, Stereo speakers with 3D audio
Radio	Yes, Stereo FM Radio with RDS support
Video Player/editor	Yes
Polyphonic tones	Yes
Ringtones	Yes, MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA/M4A, RealAudio
HF speakerphone	Yes, with 3.5 mm audio jack
Offline mode	Yes
Battery	Nokia Battery BL-5F (950mAh)
Talk time	up to 160 / 230 min (WCDMA / GSM)
Standby time	up to 200 / 230 hrs (WCDMA / GSM)