I was all set to get the N96 to replace my well-seasoned Razr V3 (the original-original one) because it has the perfect convergance of all things I wanted in a phone: wi-fi, gobs of internal memory and an expandable slot, 3G, built in camera at 5MP+ (with light), gps, etc etc. I've already subscribed to mobilecityonline to get their stock alerts, but while I was looking at their "coming soon" section today, I came across the i8510 INNOV8 by samsung. Now I'm torn between the two. At face value, the only thing I see different between the two is that the samsung is a single slider instead of a dual slider.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions between the two?

Well,

first suggestion would be a mobile/symbian phones forum

Second, having used sony erricson, samsung, alcatel and nokia phones I can say that the slow & often missing support nokia is offering (updates and so on) is way better than what others have.

I agree with icebox. Other reason that took me to by the N95 was the wide range of free SW. And some symbian SW only runs on Nokia phones.
interesting sites to check are:
http://www.s60.com
http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/applications
http://mosh.nokia.com
http://www.softwaremarket.nokia.com/

The samsung I linked runs the same symbian software; 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2.