The famous virtual world, now on your N96

Oct 3, 2008 12:39 GMT  ·  By

Second Life, the hugely popular 3D virtual world created by Linden Lab, is now accessible via Nokia's N96 Nseries smartphone, which has recently reached the European and Asian markets.

Coming as the latest addition of Vollee to the list of Second Life-supported devices, Nokia N96 joins the other compatible Nokia handsets, as well as the ones manufactured by Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG (basically, all the major producers). An interesting fact is that Second Life can now run on more than seventy 3G-enabled handsets, which, in turn, makes it possible for a wider range of users to play it.

In case Second Life is a new concept to you, we should present it a bit. Since it's a virtual world, you'll need a downloadable application to access it. This is called Second Life Viewer, and allows users to interact with each other in a 3D universe, through realistic avatars. Users, also known as “residents,” can explore the surroundings, meet new people, interact with them, make and trade items and so on.

As for the Nokia N96, this is clearly a handset built for mobile games and 3D applications. Among its features, we have a 2.8-inch TFT display with 16 million colors and 240 x 320 pixels, accelerometer, dedicated gaming keys, advanced audio capabilities, DVB-H TV broadcast receiver and many others. Nokia N96 also offers16GB of internal memory that can be expanded with a microSD or microSDHC card for up to a total of 32GB (since the SanDisk 16GB cards will soon hit the market).

The retail price of Nokia N96 is of around 550 Euros (760 USD), give or take some – depending on the place you buy it from.

If you haven't tried Second Life yet, you can download the application, for free, directly on your mobile phone, from the Second Life Mobile official website.