Details of Nokia's eagerly anticipated top-of-the-range N96 handset have appeared on the manufacturer's German website.

The page listing the specs of the successor to the N95 has since been taken down, but was up long enough to be feasted on by the mobile press.

In an overt effort to outdo Apple's iPhone, the N96 looks likely to feature quad-band GSM and dual-band HSDPA.

The phone will run on the Symbian S60 FP2 operating system and will sport a 2.8in QVGA screen with a 16.7 million colour pallet.

According to the leaked specs, the N96 will include a built-in GPS module, DVB-H reception for TV on the move and a TV-out port supporting standard definition resolutions.

A 5-megapixel camera comes with full auto-focus and a dual-LED flash, backed with 16GB of storage which can be increased to an impressive 24GB using a microSD card.

Geo-tagging support is also built in allowing users to employ the camera and GPS to add location information to photographs.

Nokia has also crow-barred Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi into what it is calling a "multimedia computer" rather than a mobile phone.

The Nokia N96 is expected to ship in the third quarter of 2008 with a pre-tax price of around €550.