Nokia N96, the ultimate Nseries smartphone presented by the Finnish company at the beginning of the year (in February), is now featured in an online Flash demonstration on Nokia's official website, found at this address. Nokia thought that users might want to test the features of the smartphone before it hits the market, so it included mini-guides to all of its capabilities. From installing your SIM card or how to use the handset's keys, to Web browsing, GPS or Bluetooth - it's all there.

Sure, this virtual demo is only a weak surrogate for those who can't wait to get their hands on the real N96, but the interest the phone stirred among users everywhere means the handset could be released earlier than expected. Nokia said the N96 should hit the market in the third quarter of the year, hence it could be anywhere between July and September. Anyway, the most probable date when the N96 will be available is sometime in August, as even big online retailers, like Carphone Warehouse, list August as the release date for the new Nseries smartphone.

Succeeding the N95 (both the 8GB and the original version), Nokia N96 seems to be, by far, the best Nseries smartphone ever made. The handset comes with the same dual-slider design and brings improvements in about all the compartments.

First of all, the N96 has an internal memory of 16GB, to which users can add a microSD or a microSDHC card for a total of up to 24GB. The new Nseries phone runs on Symbian S60 3rd Edition (3.2, more exactly) and, among its highlights, we have: a 5 Megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, flash and video recording (30fps in VGA mode), a 2.8 inch TFT display with16 million colors and 240 x 320 pixels, GPS, Wi-Fi, Nokia Maps, accelerometer, quad-band GSM and dual-band HSDPA connectivity for fast data transfer speeds, full HTM browser, DVB-H TV tuner, TV out, Music and Video players, a 3.5mm headset jack and so on.

The retail price of Nokia N96 is expected to be of around 550 Euros (870 USD) but we hope that, in a few months from its release, the smarpthone will be available for less.